The devs appreciate Master of Magic, and item creation there was a big part of building up your champions.

My guess is that we'll have two 'levels' of enchanted gear, one for regular troops and one for champions. I'd be a bit disappointed if the game didn't include some basic choices about whether to 'mass' produce gear with basic enchantments or to forge singular items that effectively grant limited spell-casting power.

I'm a bit more interested in what abilities individual units might have without fancy equipment. Could you cast a fireball without a sword? Are you blessed with good health and rapid healing? Is your skin as tough as steel? Can you jump, fly, or even teleport? Are you well trained in the use of two-weapon fighting? If I give a sword, any sword like a rusty one, could you shoot lightning from it?

Although I have nothing against magic items, I just don't want them to be the only source of magical power for my units, or super units. I would like it if my units could be a bit more than the sum of their equipment and basic training. I want there to be a good reason why my champions are my champions. I would be disapointing if my champions where selected because they drew lucky in the lottery, or someone thought they had a pretty face.

You have a point there, but I'm not quite sure how having other magic would work... Arn't only channellers supposed to have independant magical powers? If so, then how exactly would you convince an enemy channeller to join you?

lol... I hadn't even thought of that... having your own weapons turned on you would suck hugely...

me, because my ring is evil and will totally mess you up.  I'll be finally free of its weight.

Depends on your definition of "god". Channelers are powerful, but they have limitations. I see a god as being totally omnipotent.

Bears are not god. Bears are large, fairly stuipd animals that live in forests and tundras. And I can't bow. I'm sitting down right now.

That really only applies in monothesitic models. Most pantheons tend to have an alpha deity, but they are not omnipotent. Take Zeus as an example--he's king of Olympus, but he can't do something like dry up the River Styx. Heck, he couldn't even count on keeping his lovers safe from his wife's anger.

Well, I still think you're not getting the fact that omnipotence is a monotheism thing. And in mythological discussions, a demi-god has a pretty stable definition: the offspring of a god and a mortal, e.g. Heracles.

But to try staggering back to being on-topic, I really hope that if starting essence is not all the essence you'll ever have, some channelers might be able to raise up a late-game champion who would have put up a good fight with a channeler on Turn 1.

And I'd like to be able to choose between imbuing that power directly in champions as inherent abilities or in artifact-level items that grant serious abilities. Also, I hope for some way (e.g. a Champion Thief) that a magic item can be lost without losing the champion who held it--some sort of analog to the Ovious, Accessible Focus limitation in the Hero System. Basically getting more bang-for-the-buck out of a Hammer of Doom because it can be lost to an enemy.

I got pushed back on pretty hard about any "essence-recouping" in my half-rant essence thread.

I'm still interested in the notion of at least *some* ways to 'divest' from an existing essence investment, probably because I'm still hung up on the idea of a meaningful connection between a channeler and imbued lands and champions. However, I think the more common opionion around here is that essence spent is essence gone, but starting essence should not be all the essence you can ever have.

That was what I was referring to in my "conservation of essence" idea in the essence thread.... which opens the idea of an essence vistory in which you control a certain % of the game's total essence.