or regeneration could be under life magic ... and nature magic could have things like Tree-skin, or water-breathing, or poison drenched (and poison immune as well). possibly an "earth burrowing" feature, where you can either move through the dirt like a sandworm, or wait hidden in the earth until the enemy arrive like a hydralisk. ... you could have both as two different types of burrowing, although movable burrowing "sand worm variety" would probably be the cooler of the two, even if it has a chance of being spotted, you can move + your protected from damage. Hydralisk (static burrowing) you would be completely invisible, undetectable, immune from all non-earth based damage in your area (or possible immune to all damage) but you cannot move or attack as long as you are burrowed.

Age of Wonders:Shadow Magic  also allowed players to forge their own items!

I kinda think heroes should have relative Attk/Def values similar to their contemporary units (if slightly better and so-on) obviously changeable by specialty/ legendary equipment, ect.

Just a basic guide-line for heroes, I would like at least, is to have massive health, and massive morale, (while basic Att/Def), with the ability to gain the best perks/skills on levels or at military academies, and perhaps with the possibility to lead an army if they have enough leadership/prestige (and if they have enough loyalty where its cost-effective to place them at the head of your army)

Just thinking... I'd love to craft "cursed" onto an item. An invisible attribute that allows you to choose another say 4 slots that only apply to the item if it transfers ownership. They'd be invisible and have an activation. or passive feature. Imagine looting the one ring, equip it and get 'cursed' and 'passive wraith transformation'. And now you have to decide, it gives +++atack, ++health, ++def etc but you have to gamble with it... you already know that after 'n' turns it'll turn units into wraiths, so can't be equiped forever safely. You could find out the other features of it through a few battles. Say you find out 1 of the cursed attributes after 1, 2, 4 then 8 battles. Really you'd have a choice: keep it for later, destroy the item (and not gain any mana from it), use lots of magic to identify it... then use magic to cleanse it, or use real battle experience or time to identify it for free (it may be a very mild curse) but risk one of the attributes being activated (by healing the unit for example). Imagine a 'healing disabled' and 'poison' curse kick in only when you try to heal your One ring wearing and otherwise amazingly powerful Gandalf mid war.

What about some of these cursed items being given as gifts. Give an ally a ring that passively drains mana from that empire to you. They would obviously destroy the item unless it was powerful enough to be worth it... or pass it on, or lose it, or cleanse it. Perhaps they could use it against you or perhaps it's beyond their ability to forge. Maybe you expect them to cleanse it and plan for that (use is to occupy them magically) or know they can't because the curse is too strong. I hate 'can't unequip' curses... or 'drains health' I'd much rather have them make you really think. Maybe a race could choose as a perk to gain a default curse, it would make those really nasty cursed items that much harder to spot against a sea of -1 attack curses.

Edit: I know this isn't really about heroes as such and it's more revisiting items. But still, knowing that some of the artifact and equipment attributes could be quite strange and interesting is important to making it fun. I'd like to be able to find and make sets as well. Say you can enhance an attribute up to x, if you add anything more than that it'll only be activated when another element in the set is present. So a pair, ring and helmet of [stone]... would have +x defence alone, and +y when together. or even have an extra ability +y per additional item with "set of [stone]" attribute. Maybe have stronger item attributes require another 1,2,3... items to activate. Something to make item sets and artifacts different. Maybe if artifacts could have the powerful spells in and all those spells could only be reached by having a set of 5 otherwise. So you could have the one ring as an artifact and a set of invisibility requiring 5 [air]/[darkness]/[evil] items... not sure how to work it, what sets groups there would be and which spells would fit in each set.

That's only true if you were a score-whore first. I almost never picked Artificer and I always loved forging fabulous items.

It also seems like a red herring gripe when it comes to Elemental, at least by how I've read the loose dev talk so far. They seem near-definitely intent on making some magic items equippable for regular units, and I've missed it if any of them openly called forging Major Artifacts (champion-level items) out of the question.