Elemental Forums
I know that they are mutually exclusive, but what about the Krax? The Krax sovereign can recruit any champ, so if he himself has Death magic, can he then go ahead and steal the spirit of a Kingdom Champ with Life Magic and get the skill for himself?
No. Kraxis is allied with the Empire, after all. The faction can only get Death magic.
Yes, but the point is that Kraxis can recruit ANY champion, from Kingdoms or Empires. The question is: can a Krax sovereign steal spirit and gain life magic from his Champ?
Interesting idea!
I did a quick test in-game and he can indeed gain Life magic using this method.
Yep. It makes sense, if any one would be capable of both, it's a Krax. Although, I think Karavox doesn't have death either, so he would have to steal both.
Awesome. That means the Krax can make the ultimate spellcaster with ALL schools of magic.
Master of everything is actualy master of nothing 
The only problem is that you'd have 0 Life Shards. Meaning all your life spells are pretty underpowered
I actually had both death and life shards in one game. I don't know how I did it, but after a war and conquering some cities, I had both life and death.
OOooOO looks like its worth making some life death hybrid spells afterall 
Does anyone even use Life spells much? Out of the two of those schools I've only gotten much utility out of Blindness.
Life has growth and shrink, along with heal spells, I use those.
Well from life i used healing spam when my defender champ was tanking dragon its boring but works well.
Death is buged becausse spell damage perks not affect death school in 1.0 and i hate it and cry.
Also death has bad scaling with death shards except lvl 4 mele range damage spell which scales amazingly good and gives sumon upon kill.
Whither good agains mites and other packed low damage monsters, scales with death shards, so if you use corruption and have 15 of them it might be atack killer for stronest of armies.
Blind best spell ever, amazing if stacked with dodge (krax racial, perks with dodge, armor with dodge). Cheap as whore.
Spread plague does not work at all.
Supression very optional and useful only for new cities till bells and halls will be built. Higher version at lvl 3 is avesome if you have city on 3 essences tile.
Curse sometimes useful against heavy armored tanks, works wonders on dragons by the way.
Mass curse usless because it will wear out faster then you will start killing your second target, so better use it as a single curse and concentrate atacks on your victim.
Other skills has loooong cast times, easily caunterspellable, can fail and is not worth of damage/effect. This school also eats most of mana, but has tools to replenish it with sacrifice.
Well at least death can convert ANY shrines to its cause (with death trait of course), while life can only use death ones for converting, so you can boost death a lot if only damage traits will be fixed, while life will stay gimped i think. Maybe its possible to make men race with death shard trait then convert all shards with coruption and on next turn it should reconvert into life (becaus of kingdom race) but never tried this trick.
Any Sovereign of a Betrayers-Faction should be able to do. Bring on the life death-hybrid spells. Great Idea indeed. 
(maybe good enough even to include as an easter egg in a patch-update somewhere along the lines. I'm sure the team whould be able too cook up something nice)
If I'm not utterly wrong somewhere during the beta there where regular kingdom-heroes able to cast death spells (one or 2 Level 7 or nine). I believe they where cut / corrected down the line...
Also: Having death as default and getting life extra is worth much more than the other way around. Even without a single death shard. Growth, Shrink and insta-training are all quite powerful independently of the number of life shards (as is definately mantle of oceans). Death seems much more dependant on the number of shards. So this is actually a pretty powerful tactics for Kraxis and anyone else with this ability...
And i would love to use shrink on my own tanking units, shame its only alowed to cast on enemies.
I find Life to be one of the most powerful schools of magic for a non-caster focused play style. Heal works great in tactical combat for keeping your heroes alive (so they don't get those pesky death traits) and your regular units as well (so they level up and become stronger). It allows you to take on more difficult monsters than you normally could, without suffering any losses. The higher levels (master, archmage) also have some very useful strategic spells, like the one that allows you to instantly finish the training of a unit (once per turn, per hero with the spell), and another that grants a free level up to all the units in the casters army (once every 10 turns). There is also a heal you get at higher levels that is castable in both strategic and tactical, heals for more than the basic heal spell, and heals all units in the army instead of just one - very powerful. It is definitely worth leveling up on a few heroes, even if they are fighters or archers, because you don't need any of the other magic traits to make these spells useful, and you don't have to have a caster focused build or empire.
I think I tried this in a previous beta build (so it might no longer be accurate now), but while you definitely CAN get both life and death, you can't upgrade the path that you can't get naturally (due to Kingdom/Empire alignment). At least I wasn't able to get it to show up after some 30+ levels (it was when leveling was a lot easier). I suppose that might be an issue with randomized choices, but I was able to get to V on all the other magic paths and was running out of stuff to get and was getting a 2nd profession... so it seems pretty hard to not get it once.
One of my favorite play styles is to create a custom faction & sovereign able to recruit all champions for free and then to use those free recruits as bonus spell level ups for my sovereign. If you stress your research for hero recruiting, you can end up (in a long game/large map) with a sovereign that has all six schools at level 4 or 5 by level ~20 or 25. Of course, at that point the game becomes mostly meaningless on all but the highest difficulty levels because your sovereign can solo anything (provided you have a solid mana economy and level as a mage).
Still it's fun to treat the entire world and everything in it as nothing more than a way to gain ultimate power for your sovereign.
Yes, I would agree that Life is quite a powerful school. Haven't investigated death in a long while tho ... (used to love the death school back in the day, wonder if its still the same :p)
Not anymore. Courage is now a champion-only buff and Regeneration has been changed to only work on the strategic map.
Regen being strategy only is fine I suppose. A bit surprised that Courage is now only used on Champions ... but I guess it was needed to bring life on par to death magic in terms of utility.
I recall this being discussed while the game was in beta, and the consensus was that sovereigns who have Life or Death magic from game start could not level up their opposite, even if their champions had that. In fact, if a Life sovereign had a Death champion, the champion couldn't level up Death.
Can anyone confirm this is actually the case in the released game?
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