Heroes & skills
Hire heroes from ruins, level them through battle, and turn a war on one champion.
Heroes are Bannerfall's difference-makers: they gain XP from battle, level up for a growing army-wide command bonus, choose from six level-up perks, carry found artifacts and wield spells. A single well-built champion can decide a campaign.
How heroes grow
Heroes are the pieces that break a stalemate — their command bonus lifts the entire army, and it scales straight off the engine's own formulas.
- Heroes gain XP from battles and level up (need level × 12 XP). Strength = 5 + (level − 1).
- Command bonus by level: L1–3 → +1, L4–5 → +2, L6+ → +3 to the whole army.
- Heroes regain 2 mana at the start of your turn (plus any mana-regenerating item carried), up to their maximum.
- Mana grows with level (base max = 3 + level × 2, so a level 3 hero holds 9 before bonuses) — the Arcane hero skill and mana-boosting artifacts raise this further.
- Spells cost mana and require a minimum hero level.
- Spell Learning is on: a hero only knows the spells it's learned (one per school at level 1, more from level-up picks) — not the whole roster.
- An army (stack) can never hold more than 8 units at once.
- Heroes can carry found items, whose bonuses stack on top of everything above.
- If a hero carrying items dies, the items pass to another hero in the same fight or stack. With no hero left to bear them, they're sold for 80 gold each rather than lost.
Hero skills
Every time a hero levels up, it's offered a choice of three of these perks. Effects below are read straight from the engine, so they can never drift from what a level-up card shows.
Might
+1 strengthRaw combat power for a hero who leads from the front — always useful, never situational.
Warlord
+1 army commandOnly the single strongest hero in a stack contributes army command, so stack repeat picks on your primary war-leader rather than spreading them across several heroes.
Toughness
+1 hit pointsMore survivability for a hero who takes hits directly, especially one built to duel rather than hang back.
Captain
+1 leadershipWorth it only if it beats your stack's best non-hero Leadership — check the roster before taking Captain over a flat strength pick.
Arcane
+2 max manaMore mana means casting bigger spells more often — pairs best with a hero built around magic.
Pathfinder
+2 movementExtra reach lets a hero's stack cover more ground each turn — strong for a scout or a rapid-response army.
- Army command: The hero's own bonus, added to the WHOLE stack's combat strength. It grows automatically with hero level and is raised further by Warlord — but only the single strongest hero in a stack contributes; it never stacks between heroes.
- Leadership: A non-hero unit trait (Elite +2, Heavy +1) — only the single highest Leadership among a stack's non-hero units applies. Captain gives the HERO its own Leadership bonus instead, folded into that same non-stacking side bonus (still just the best of the two).
- Strength: A unit's personal combat power. Might raises the hero's own Strength directly — unlike army command or Leadership, Strength always adds in full and is never capped to a single best contributor.
Keep exploring
Magic & spells
Scry, bolt, ward and gate — mana-costed spells that bend a battle or a whole map.
Artifacts & items
Plunder ruins for blades, crowns and boots — effects stack on the hero who carries them.
The combat system
Stacks, strength, leadership, favored terrain and siege — combat you can actually reason about.
The full compendium
Every unit, ally, artifact, spell and location with complete stats.