History YMMV / LordsOfMagic

* GameBreaker: Almost every Faith has a tactic which makes them nearly unstoppable. However the most extreme example is giving Dragonscale Armor to a Fire Warrior. This allows him to do Fire magic damage passively to any enemy that strikes him. Set the Warrior to Defend and everything besides Fire-immune creatures will get killed without your Warrior needing to take a single swing. Meanwhile your Defending Warrior will be invincible to everything except Magic damage, which the Armor also gives Resist against.
* LowTierLetdown: Chaos is widely considered the least effective Faith by veteran players. Chaos barracks units are fragile, expensive, and a bit slow. Chaos Guild units have mediocre damage output and awful short Range. Chaos magic creatures are either fragile, difficult to use effectively, or arguably both. Chaos spells can be very powerful but many are influenced by random chance in a major departure from the near total reliability of other Faiths' magic. Even when Chaos magic works it is frequently over reliant on gimmick tactics or exploiting ArtificialStupidity. It certainly doesn't help that without patching the game Chaos is liable to die immediately due to a [[GameBreakingBug bug that spawns hostile Level 8 Pegasus Riders in the low level dungeons around Chaos' city.]]

* AllThereInTheManual: While a player can get some details by reading spell and unit descriptions the majority of the game's backstory is confined to its lengthy manual.
* BanditMook: The AI Faiths often send stealthy thieves roving around the map, either solo or accompanied by a small group of archers. These thieves will try to steal from your parties if they're controlled by an unfriendly Faith. Normally they'll steal a paltry amount of gold, crystal, or ale but an unlucky or careless player might be robbed of his artifacts. On the upside would-be stealers have a chance to fail, giving your party the opportunity to capture or kill the enemy thief.
* BeginWithAFinisher: Once a player using the Fire Faith learns Fire's ultimate attack spell, 'Inferno', he'll most likely start every fight with it. Inferno does 2 times the spellcaster's Level Fire [[SymmetricEffect damage to EVERY unit on the combat map.]] A Level 6 or higher mage can kill just about anything besides warrior champions in 2 casts of Inferno. Sure the mage [[SuicideAttack will die with the second cast]] but you'll usually kill far more than their value in enemy units. Plus Fire has the benefit of relatively cheap Sorceresses [[ExploitedImmunity and magic creatures that have 100% Fire Resist.]]
* CoversAlwaysLie: Despite Golgoth, the God of Death, being the EvilOverlooker depicted on the game's cover art the player [[TheUnfought never fights or even faces Him.]]
* CrutchCharacter: Magic Creatures available from the Mage Tower start off at their maximum Level and don't require a Follower to create. This typically makes them more powerful and easier to use than conventional units early in a game. However, once you start leveling up your other units they usually outclass creatures, or at least become more cost-effective. The exception are most Legendary Creatures which are instead a TacticalSuperweaponUnit available near the end of a game.
* DiscOneNuke: Choosing a Custom start allows the player to start with any artifact in the game provided he spends enough Barter Points to get it. Some artifacts are definitely a GameBreaker when given to the right Lord, or can quickly become one as the Lord increases his Level.
* DungeonBypass: A player's party can ignore the enemies on the first floor of a multi-floor dungeon if all his units go straight into the entrance for the next floor. This is normally only possible with a party of thieves using Stealth but may also be possible if the player's units are so much more powerful than the enemies they take little or no damage from their hits, allowing his units to just ignore the opponents while walking past them.

* GameplayRandomization: On the default map the locations of dungeons and the encounters that wait within are slightly randomized, with the exception of unique dungeons like the Dragon's Lair and Lich Castle. The artifacts and other rewards from higher level dungeons are also somewhat random. Whether the AI Faiths have a warrior, thief, or mage as their Lord is also randomly determined for each Faith except Death.
** Many Chaos spells are influenced by the RandomNumberGod in ways other Faith's magic isn't. For example, Polymorph Other will most likely turn an enemy into a harmless chicken but there's a small chance the target will instead [[CriticalFailure become a mighty dragon]].
** The exact damage done by normal melee and missile hits can vary slightly from the attacker's Attack stat and this is influenced by the direction of the attacker relative to his target. [[BackStab Attacks to the target's back will do more damage, on average.]]
* IceMagicIsWater: 'Ice Bolt' is the Water Faith's only direct damage spell, for practical purposes, and 'Freeze' is their ultimate attack spell. Although Air also gets the spells 'Cone of Cold' and 'Ice' so this could be considered a DownplayedTrope.
* InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: In most dungeons impassable terrain is represented with slightly different colored ground and there's no obvious reasons why only flying units can move over it.
** [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] for combat that takes place on the world map. Any units can move over any terrain except ocean without any penalty besides being slowed down, [[ConvectionSchmonvection including pools of lava!]]
* LightningFireJuxtaposition: The Storm Giants and Fire Giants start each game with unfriendly relations and generally have a RedOniBlueOni type relationship. The Storm Giants' magic makes extensive use of lightning while the Fire Giants' magic is themed exclusively around elemental fire.
* LowTierLetdown: Chaos is widely considered the least effective Faith by veteran players. Chaos barracks units are fragile, expensive, and a bit slow. Chaos Guild units have mediocre damage output and awful short Range. Chaos magic creatures are either fragile, difficult to use effectively, or arguably both. Chaos spells can be very powerful but many are influenced by random chance in a major departure from the near total reliability of other Faiths' magic. Even when Chaos magic works it is frequently over reliant on gimmick tactics or exploiting ArtificialStupidity. It certainly doesn't help that without patching the game Chaos is liable to die immediately due to a [[GameBreakingBug bug that spawns hostile Level 8 Pegasus Riders in the low level dungeons around Chaos' city.]]
* LuckBasedMission: Pretty much every one of a thief's non-combat special abilities are subject to random chance. While a thief's Level and Stealth Factor influences his chance of success for spying, interrogation, and stealing he'll always have some chance of failing. The only guarantee a player can get is guaranteed failure when sending a thief to spy on a party that's using 'Detect Thief' or [[DeathByMaterialism steal more resources than the enemy actually has.]]
* LuckStat: Champions have a 'Luck' stat and luck is occasionally referenced in the descriptions of artifacts, such as the 'Luckstone', but it doesn't actually have any gameplay impact; likely due to the stat being DummiedOut.
* MagikarpPower: Mage Lords can sometimes start out with decent support abilities but tend to have terrible damage output and very restrictive {{Mana}} capacity. They also die in a few hits from even the weakest enemy archers and can't confer experience to barracks or thieves guilds which leaves your military units behind the level curve. If you do manage to get your Mage Lord leveled up and learn your Faith's best spells he can usually annihilate a max size enemy party with just a few halfway decent units or creatures on his side.
** The Life Elven Warrior Lord starts out as a FragileSpeedster that can be shot down by enemies as weak as goblin archers, even while he's using the 'Defend' command. At max Level he'll have the highest Defense possible for a Lord, 17, and he can use artifacts that will reduce enemies' Attack, heal him at both the start and end of combat while also providing gradual RegeneratingHealth during the battle, and do massive damage to Death creatures. With weapon artifacts his Attack can exceed a dragon's; with armor artifacts he can gain Resist against all magic and Defense that rivals the toughest Legendary Creature. Meanwhile he'll still have the fastest combat Speed and most Move points of any warrior, making him an undeniable example of a LightningBruiser. The icing on the cake is that the Elven Warlord reaches his max Level with much fewer Experience points than Balkoth and most other warrior Lords.
* OddFriendship: The Air Faith is comprised of both small, nimble, mischievous faeries and the tall, strong, solemn Storm Giants. The description of the Air spell 'Headwind', which slows a victim's speed, claims it was developed to hinder nuisance faeries. Nonetheless the two races cooperate effectively and have in-game stats that complement each other.
* OurMonstersAreDifferent: Special Edition adds a monster named Grendel inspired by the creature of that name from the legend of Beowulf. Grendels in-game look like giant gray versions of the CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon,[[CthulHumanoid have tendrils or small tentacles hanging over their mouth,]] have [[GlowingEyesOfDoom glowing yellow eyes]] and generally look like a humanoid SwampMonster. Grendel, rather than being the name of a specific individual, is used as the common name for these monsters and they show up multiple times semi-frequently in high-level dungeons.
* ProjectileSpell: The basic damage spell for every Faith besides Chaos creates a homing projectile that doesn't deal damage until it strikes the target. However it is [[AlwaysAccurateAttack impossible for the target to avoid these projectiles by doing anything short of leaving the combat area entirely.]] Unusually, the Water spell 'Gift of Life' functions the same way despite healing the target. This can be annoying when your teammate is struck dead before the spell reaches him. More conventional examples of projectile spells are Fire's 'Fury Fire' and Chaos' 'Blades of Fury' and 'Vortex'. Those spells create persistent projectiles that fly straight from the caster to an area of the combat field and then circle that spot rapidly, damaging anything that gets in their way. These projectiles can get slower victims trapped in a CycleOfHurting as they get hit repeatedly everytime the projectile touches them and can be used for area denial, but are usually easy to avoid.
* ReplayValue: The player's choice of Lord has a major impact on how each game begins and progresses. With 7 Faiths and 3 Lord types you get 21 different starting options for a standard game, and 3 options for a GottaKillThemAll campaign using Death. Then there's countless possibilities with Custom Starts and Custom Maps.
* SquareRaceRoundClass: Any player who has used the Earth Faith should know that dwarves have the worst speed and stealth around. Predictably, Fire's dwarven thief is the worst thief for any actions requiring stealth or espionage.
* TheUnfought: In addition to Balkoth, the Death Faith also has more typical options for warrior, thief, and mage Lords that appear on the Lord selection screen at the beginning of the game. Should you select one of these Lords you can play the Death GottaKillThemAll campaign with him. The Dark Warrior Lord can actually attain higher Attack and Defense than Balkoth can! However, you'll never be able to face these Death Lords as enemies in a normal game since Balkoth always fills the role for Lord of Death.
** The player's units will never fight or even encounter [[NonActionBigBad Golgoth, God of Death.]]
* UnusableEnemyEquipment: Very few artifacts can be used by both champions of opposite Faiths. For example Earth warriors and Air warriors can't use the same artifacts, with the exception of the most generic ones, like 'Ring of Protection', which can be used by any champion. The player will gain any artifacts enemies had when he destroys them in combat, which is where this trope comes into effect. You'll often kill the Lord or champions of a rival Faith and be 'rewarded' with the artifacts they were using, which your units can't equip. However if you completely conquer your rival Faith you'll be able to make their champions, who can then use such equipment.
** In a Custom start even the cheapest units, spells, and artifacts will be impossibly expensive if they're associated with the opposite Faith. This can lead to things like a Seagull being priced at 9999 Barter Points if you choose a Fire Lord. A bit disappointing since Water's seagull is a much better scout unit that Fire's imp.
* UselessUsefulSpell: Earth's spell 'Turn to Stone' takes a lot of turns to research, is near the end of its spell book, has a high {{Mana}} cost, targets a single enemy, and also requires the spellcaster to have a higher level than his target. Slow reduces a target's Attack Rate and combat Speed and Entangle stops it's movement entirely, neither have a caster Level requirement, both are much quicker to research than Turn to Stone, and they can both be cast on the same target for less combined Mana cost than Turn to Stone. Sands of Sleep is another advanced Earth spell that disables the victims' movement and actions and it hits every enemy in a wide area while having no caster Level requirement. The only downside for Sands of Sleep compared to Turn to Stone is that once a victim gets hit by anything the Sleep ends. The only time Turn to Stone would hypothetically be the best choice is when you're facing an extremely powerful unit that's formidable with both melee and ranged attacks... which pretty much means only Dragons and Drakes. Problem is those creatures are Level 10, making it impossible for a generic spellcaster to be higher Level than them! To add insult to injury the Water spell Freeze also disables the target's movement and actions but doesn't have any level requirement to work. The only downside of Freeze compared to Turn to Stone is that it makes the target impervious to normal hits while in effect. This is mostly irrelevant when Freeze is cast on an enemy since the player's party can kill all the other enemies then swarm and overwhelm the one remaining enemy when Freeze ends. This odd attribute of Freeze can actually be a strategic asset by letting the player Freeze one of his own units to save it from imminent death.
* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: A player that routinely razes villages he captures will quickly have AI Faiths develop hostile attitudes towards his Faith.
* VideoGameDelegationPenalty: Choosing to Auto-Calculate a battle can result in the player taking damage and losses he could avoid with basic tactics if he'd played combat manually. This is because Auto Calc results seem to be based almost entirely on the relative 'barter value' of the opposing parties' units. If your party is much more valuable than your opponents Auto Calc will typically turn out reliable results of you annihilating them with little damage taken. But, if the enemy has expensive units you could take some big damage with Auto Calc. This discounts every PlayerExclusiveMechanic, instance of ArtificialStupidity, and GameBreaker tactic a player can easily exploit in combat. On the other hand, Auto Calc can occasionally let you win battles that would be impossible manually, such as letting an Earth Magician with practically no damage-dealing ability kill a small enemy group solo. Auto Calc is also useful for wiping out other Faiths' parties completely, as in combat AI units tend to flee when the battle turns against them.
* WideOpenSandbox: The player is strongly encouraged to conquer his Faith's Great Temple ASAP but nothing forces him to. Want to take over a friendly Faith's Great Temple to gain their city while totally [[DoomedHometown ignoring your own starting city]]? It can be done. Want to take your StartingUnits straight into Death's homeland to fight the FinalBoss? You can, although you'll probably need to exploit a GameBreaker Custom start to survive, much less win! Want to take a ship to the Dragon's Lair and win a [[DiscOneNuke Greater Artifact]] before you conquer the NoobCave? If you can afford to hire a ship and find a way to kill the dragons within, you sure can!

** The exact damage done by normal melee and missile hits can vary slightly from the attacker's Attack stat and this is influenced by the direction of the attacker relative to his target. Attacks to the target's back will do more damage, on average.

* LuckBasedMission: Pretty much every one of a thief's non-combat special abilities are subject to random chance. While a thief's Level and Stealth Factor influences his chance of success for spying, interrogation, and stealing he'll always have some chance of failing. The only guarantee a player can get is guaranteed failure when sending a thief to spy on a party that's using 'Detect Thief' or [[DeathByMaterialisn steal more resources than the enemy actually has.]]

* LuckBasedMission: Pretty much every one of a thief's non-combat special abilities are subject to random chance. While a thief's Level and Stealth Factor influences his chance of success for spying, interrogation, and stealing he'll always have some chance of failing. On the other hand the player can guarantee failure by trying to spy on a party that's using 'Detect Thief' or by ordering his thief to [[steal more resources than the enemy has.]]
* LuckStat: Champions have a 'Luck' stat and luck is occasionally referenced in the descriptions of artifacts, such as the 'Luckstone', but it doesn't actually have any gameplay impact; likely due to the stat being DummiedOut.

* ProjectileSpell: The basic damage spell for every Faith besides Chaos creates a homing projectile that doesn't deal damage until it strikes the target. However it is [[AlwaysAccurateAttack impossible for the target to avoid these projectiles by doing anything short of leaving the combat area entirely.]] Unusually, the Water spell 'Gift of Life' functions the same way despite healing the target. This can be annoying when your teammate is struck dead before the spell reaches him. More conventional examples of projectile spells are Fire's 'Fury Fire's and Chaos' 'Blades of Fury' and 'Vortex'. Those spells create persistent projectiles that fly straight from the caster to an area of the combat field and then circle that spot rapidly, damaging anything that gets in their way. These projectiles can get slower victims trapped in a CycleOfHurting as they get hit repeatedly everytime the projectile touches them and can be used for area denial, but are usually easy to avoid.

* IceMagicIsWater: 'Ice Bolt' is the Water Faith's only direct damage spell, for practical purposes. Although Air also gets the spells 'Cone of Cold' and 'Ice' so this could be considered a DownplayedTrope.

* BeginWithAFinisher: Once a player using the Fire Faith learns Fire's ultimate attack spell, 'Inferno', he'll most likely start every fight with it. Inferno does 2 times the spellcaster's Level Fire [[SymmetricEffect damage to EVERY unit on the combat map.]] A Level 6 or higher mage can kill just about anything besides warrior champions in 2 casts of Inferno. Sure the mage [[SuicideAttack will die with the second cast]] but you'll usually kill far more than their value in enemy units. Plus Fire has the benefit of relatively cheap Sorceresses and magic creatures that have 100% Fire Resist.

* BeginWithAFinisher: Once a player using the Fire Faith learns Fire's ultimate attack spell, 'Inferno', he'll most likely start every fight with it. Inferno does 2 times the spellcaster's Level Fire damage to EVERY unit on the combat map. A Level 6 or higher mage can kill just about anything besides warrior champions in 2 casts of Inferno. Sure the mage [[SuicideAttack will die with the second cast]] but you'll usually kill far more than their value in enemy units. Plus Fire has the benefit of relatively cheap Sorceresses and magic creatures that have 100% Fire Resist.

* WideOpenSandbox: The player is strongly encouraged to conquer his Faith's Great Temple ASAP but nothing forces him to. Want to take over a friendly Faith's Great Temple to gain their city while totally ignoring your own starting city? It can be done. Want to take your StartingUnits straight into Death's homeland to fight the FinalBoss? You can, although you'll probably need to exploit a GameBreaker Custom start to survive, much less win! Want to take a ship to the Dragon's Lair and win a Greater Artifact before you conquer the NoobCave? If you can afford to hire a ship and find a way to kill the dragons within, you sure can!

* VideoGameDelegationPenalty: Choosing to Auto-Calculate a battle can result in the player taking damage and losses he could avoid with basic tactics if he'd played combat manually. This is because Auto Calc results seem to be based almost entirely on the relative 'barter value' of the opposing parties' units. If your party is much more valuable than your opponents Auto Calc will typically turn out reliable results of you annihilating them with little damage taken. But, if the enemy has expensive units you could take some big damage with AutoCalc. This discounts every PlayerExclusiveMechanic, instance of ArtificialStupidity, and GameBreaker tactic a player can easily exploit in combat. On the other hand, AutoCalc can occasionally let you win battles that would be impossible manually, such as letting an Earth Magician with practically no damage-dealing ability kill a small enemy group solo. AutoCalc is also useful for wiping out other Faiths' parties completely, as in combat AI units tend to flee when the battle turns against them.

* VideoGameDelegationPenalty: Choosing to Auto-Calculate a battle can result in the player taking damage and losses he could avoid with basic tactics if he'd played combat manually. This is because AutoCalc results seem to be based almost entirely on the relative 'barter value' of the opposing parties' units. If your party is much more valuable than your opponents AutoCalc will typically turn out reliable results of you annihilating them with little damage taken. But, if the enemy has expensive units you could take some big damage with AutoCalc. This discounts the PlayerExclusiveMechanics, ArtificialStupidity, and GameBreaker tactics a player can easily exploit in combat. On the other hand, AutoCalc can occasionally let you win battles that would be impossible manually, such as letting an Earth Magician with practically no damage-dealing ability kill a small enemy group solo. AutoCalc is also useful for wiping out other Faiths' parties completely, as in combat AI units tend to flee when the battle turns against them.

* OurMonstersAreDifferent: Special Edition adds a monster named Grendel inspired by the creature of that name from the legend of Beowulf. Grendels in-game look like giant gray versions of the CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon,[[Cthulhumanoid have tendrils or small tentacles hanging over their mouth,]] have [[GlowingEyesOfDoom glowing yellow eyes]] and generally look like a humanoid SwampMonster. Grendel, rather than being the name of a specific individual, is used as the common name for these monsters and they show up multiple times semi-frequently in high-level dungeons.

* OurMonstersAreDifferent: Special Edition adds a monster named Grendel inspired by the creature of that name from the legend of Beowulf. Grendels in-game look like giant gray versions of the CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon, have tendrils or small tentacles hanging over their mouth, have glowing yellow eyes and generally look like a humanoid SwampMonster. Grendel, rather than being the name of a specific individual, is used as the common name for these monsters and they show up multiple times semi-frequently in high-level dungeons.

* WideOpenSandbox: The player is strongly encouraged to conquer his Faith's Great Temple ASAP but nothing forces him too. Want to take over a friendly Faith's Great Temple to gain their city while totally ignoring your own starting city? It can be done. Want to take your StartingUnits straight into Death's homeland to fight the FinalBoss? You can, although you'll probably need to exploit a GameBreaker Custom start to survive, much less win! Want to take a ship to the Dragon's Lair and win a Greater Artifact before you conquer the NoobCave? If you can afford to hire a ship and find a way to kill the dragons within, you sure can!

* OurMonstersAreDifferent: Special Edition adds a monster named Grendel inspired by the creature of that name from the legend of Beowulf. Grendels in-game look like giant gray versions of TheCreatureFromTheBlackLagoon, have tendrils or small tentacles hanging over their mouth, have glowing yellow eyes and generally look like a humanoid SwampMonster. Grendel, rather than being the name of a specific individual, is used as the common name for these monsters and they show up multiple times semi-frequently in high-level dungeons.

** [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] for combat that takes place on the world map. Any units can move over any terrain except ocean without any penalty besides being slowed down, including pools of lava!