Hero specialty

Hero specialty is a characteristic of every hero that typically improves their performance in combat. Specialties can be categorized into four types: spells, creatures, secondary skills and production. Production specialties do not have an effect in combat, but instead generate certain resources (except wood and ore) for the kingdom. Most of the specialties are unique, but there are also specialties common to several heroes. For example, secondary skill Offense is a specialty of Crag Hack and Gundula (and also Corkes in Horn of the Abyss), and the spell Resurrection is a specialty of Alamar and Jeddite.

Additonally, Armageddon's Blade and Shadow of Death expansions introduced Adrienne, Dracon, Gelu and Sir Mullich, who have specialties that cannot be categorized into any of the four above mentioned. Adrienne's specialty is secondary skill Fire Magic, which however does not work similarly to other secondary skill specialties, as it only allows her to start with expert Fire Magic. Dracon has Enchanters and Gelu has Sharpshooters as a specialty. The exception for these two is that Dracon can upgrade Magi and Arch Magi as well as Monks and Zealots into Enchanters, and Gelu can upgrade Archers and Marksmen as well as Wood Elves and Grand Elves into Sharpshooters. Sir Mullich has speed as a specialty, which increases combat speed for all creatures under his command by +2 (Sir Mullich is disabled in Horn of the Abyss by default).

Secondary skill specialties

All secondary skill specialties (e.g. Kyrre with Logistics, Crag Hack with Offense or Neela with Armorer) work in a similar way. They all increase the secondary skill by 5% per level. The formula for the calculation is as follows:

FORMULA: A x (0,05 x B + 1) = BONUS where A = Secondary skill's effect percentage B = Level of the hero EXAMPLE: A = 30% B = 20 30% x (0,05 x 20 + 1) = 30% x (1 + 1) = 60%

From the example above we can see, that a level 20 hero who has 30% ability due their secondary skill (e.g. Crag Hack with expert Offense) would actually gain +60% in total.

List of Secondary skill specialty Heroes

Skill	Hero
???

Spell specialties

All heroes who specialize in a spell start with it.

Bless

 Bless is the specialty of Adela. It causes bless to be cast with increased effect, based on hero level compared to the level of the target unit (the bonus is greater when used on weaker units). Adela's bless specialty increases the damage of a unit using the following equation:

• base damage * 0.03 * hero level / unit level

This extra damage is in addition to the bless spell. For example, at level 18 Adela will provide a 54% damage bonus to halberdiers, 27% to marksmen, 18% to royal griffins, 13.5% to crusaders, 10.8% to zealots, 9% to champions, and 7.1% to archangels.

Haste, Prayer, Precision, Stone Skin, Bloodlust & Weakness

Spell specialties work differently for the spells  Haste,  Prayer,  Precision,  Stone Skin,  Bloodlust and  Weakness. For those spells, the specialty adds a 3 points to the effect for 1-2 level creatures, 2 points for 3-4 level creatures and 1 point for 5-6 level creatures, regardless of their level.

Fortune

Daremyth's and Melodia's specialty in the  Fortune spell makes it always give +3 luck, regardless of the Air Magic expertise or their level.

Magic Arrow

Ciele's  Magic Arrow specialty increases the damage of the spell by 50%, regardless of her level.

Firewall

Luna's  Fire Wall specialty doubles the damage of the spell (increases it by 25% in Horn of the Abyss ), regardless of her level.

Disrupting Ray

Aenain increases the effectiveness of  Disrupting Ray by 2, regardless of his level.

Clone

The first time Eovacius casts  Clone in a given battle, an extra clone appears on the battlefield.

Slayer

Coronius's  Slayer specialty adds 4 extra attack to level 1 creatures, 3 extra attack to level 2 creatures, 2 extra attack to level 3 creatures and 1 extra attack to level 4 creatures, regardless of his level.

Other spells

Specialists in all other spells increase the efficiency of their spell (after spell power and base spell effect is calculated) by 3% per level, divided by target creature's level. It can be visualised with the following formula: C*(1+0.03 * L / n) , where n is the creature's level, L is the hero's level and C is the base effect of the spell (including spell power and the appropriate magic skill's effects).

List of Other spell specialty Heroes

Hero	Spell
???	(NOTE: Maybe combine all spell specialties into one table with a notes column for if it differs from the standard formula.)

Creature specialties

 Devils,  Behemoths, and Dragons, as well as every creature from level 1 to 6 in every town, except  Gremlins,  Centaurs,  Pikeman,  Pixies,  Air Elementals and  Medusas has a hero who specializes in them (Note: Galthran, the only  Skeleton specialist, is banned by default in Horn of the Abyss and so is Tark , the  Nix specialist, Xeron , the  Devil specialist, Kilgor , the  Behemoth specialist and Mutare  and Mutare Drake , Dragon specialists). Creature specialties apply to both upgraded and unupgraded units, as long as the hero specializes in the unupgraded version of the unit. In Shadow of Death, Catherine specializes in  Crusaders, and therefore  Swordsman do not receive any bonuses. No heroes specialize in any of the neutral creatures, except Gelu   and Dracon , who specialize in  Sharpshooters and  Enchanters, respectively, although they have creature-upgrade specialties. No heroes specialize in upgraded creatures only, except for Catherine (only in Shadow of Death , fixed in Horn of the Abyss ) and Bidley , but his specialty is a creature-upgrade one.

There are four types of creature specialties: Fixed stats creature specialities, creature upgrade specialties, Dragons specialty and the standard creature specialties.

Heroes who specialize in level 1-2 creatures (as well as Tark , Gelu  , Dracon  and Frederick ) have their entire starting army consisting of 3 stacks of the creatures they specialize in. Thus, Shakti may be hired with up to three groups of 30 to 40  Troglodytes, and Valeska with up to three groups of 4 to 7  Archers.

Heroes who specialize in level 3 creatures, as well as Bron, Illor  and Todd , instead of the 2nd level creatures, have their specialized creature stack in their starting army.

Despite their specialty in different creatures, Xeron  starts with a starting army identical to Fiona, the  Hell Hound specialist, and Pasis and Monere start  Air Elementals instead of  Water Elementals.

Fixed stat creature specialties

These specialties are only present in banned-by-default campaign heroes and Planeswalkers. Fixed-stats creature specialties can provide a fixed attack, defense, damage, hp or speed (or multiple of these) bonuses to a creature, regardless of hero level. No hero increases creature HP.

List of Fixed stat creature specialty Heroes

Hero	Creature	Attack	Defense	Damage	Speed
Xeron	Devil and Arch Devil	+4	+2		+1
Kilgor	Behemoth and Ancient Behemoth	+5	+5	+10
Haart Lich	Black Knight and Dread Knight	+5	+5	+10
Lacus Kalt	Water Elemental and Ice Elemental	+2
Ignissa Fiur	Fire Elemental and Energy Elemental	+1	+2	+2
Thunar Erdamon	Earth Elemental and Magma Elemental	+2	+1	+5
Pasis Monere	Psychic Elemental and Magic Elemental	+3	+3

Creature-upgrade specialties

These specialties are only present in banned-by-default campaign heroes. Creature-upgrade specialties allow the hero to upgrade specific creatures into the creature they specialize in, as long as they are placed in their army. The cost is equal to the difference in costs between the owned creature and the "upgrade".

List of Creature-upgrade specialty Heroes

Hero	Base Creature(s)	Upgrade Creature
Gelu Tarnum (Ranger)	Archer and Marksman   Wood Elf and Grand Elf	Sharpshooter
Dracon Tarnum (Wizard)	Monk and Zealot   Mage and Arch Mage	Enchanter
Bidley	Pirate and Corsair	Sea Dog

Dragons specialty

This specialties is only present in the banned-by-default campaign heroes: Mutare, Mutare Drake and Tarnum (Overlord). It provides 5 Attack and 5 Defense to all Dragons, including both their upgraded and unupgraded forms.

Standard creature specialties

Standard creature specialties, regardless of hero level, provide +1 speed to the creatures they specialize in. This bonus applies outside of combat and can therefore increase hero's Movement. They also apply +5% Attack and +5% Defense bonuses every n levels obtained after nth level, where n is the level of the creature they specialize in.

Thus heroes who specialize in level 1 creatures double their Attack and Defense at level 21; heroes who specialize in level 2 creature at level 42, those who specialize in level 3 creatures at level 63, etc.

List of Standard creature specialty Heroes

Hero	Creature
???	(NOTE: Maybe arrange these in a [Town] x [Creature Level] grid?)

Production specialties

Some heroes' specialties increase a kingdom's daily income of gold or magical resources. No hero produces the resource needed to recruit the level 7 creature of their native town. These specialties do not improve with the hero's level, and thus their usefulness may decrease over the course of the game as the impact of other specialties becomes greater.

This effect remains in place even when the hero in question is garrisoned in a town and no longer counts towards the limit of 8 adventuring heroes. As hiring a hero only costs 2500 gold, this way of collecting magical resources may, depending on the situation, be preferable to building resource silos for the cost of 5000 gold and 5 ore.

List of Production specialty Heroes

Bonus	Hero
+1	Rissa
+1	Calid
+1	Sephinroth Andal
+1	Saurug
+350	Aine Caitlin Clavius Damacon Gelare Grindan Jenova Nagash Octavia Bertram  Leena

NOTE: For a comparison between Lord Haart's Estates specialty and the +350 specialty, see Lord Haart#Specialty.

Unique specialties

Sir Mullich (replaced by default by Lord Haart in Armageddon's Blade, Shadow of Death and Horn of the Abyss) increases combat speed of all creatures under his command by 2.

Frederick  increases the damage dealt by  Automaton's Detonation at death ability by 5% per level.

Adrienne starts with Expert Fire Magic and Wisdom.

See also

• List of hero specialties
• List of hero specialties (HotA)