Secondary skill

"Besides the four basic hero statistics, a hero can learn and advance in secondary skills. These skills give the hero abilities like farther movement over land or sea, learning high level spells, or improving his skill with the catapult in castle sieges."
—Heroes II manual

Secondary skills are special abilities available to the heroes in the Heroes of Might and Magic series. Every time a hero levels up, they get to choose between two, three, or four skills that provide the hero with a bonus of some sort. It's also possible to get new skills from adventure map structures. Each skill starts at the basic level, but the hero can also take the same skill again to improve the bonus.

All heroes start with a few secondary skills, depending on their class. In some of the games, different heroes of the same class may also start with different secondary skills. Secondary skills were first available in Heroes II.

Heroes II

For the Heroes II skills, see Category:Heroes II skills.

In Heroes II, there are 14 secondary skills, and each hero can learn up to 8. Three skill levels are available: basic, advanced, and expert.

Heroes III

For the Heroes III skills, see Category:Heroes III skills.

In Heroes III, there are 28 secondary skills, and each hero can learn up to 8. Three skill levels are available: basic, advanced, and expert.

Heroes IV

For the Heroes IV skills, see Category:Heroes IV skills.

In Heroes IV, there are 9 major secondary skills, and each hero can learn up to 5. In addition, each of the major skills have three subskills, and a hero can learn all three of them. Most of the major skills requires that the hero takes a few levels in specific subskills to reach grandmaster level.

Both major and subskills have five skill levels: basic, advanced, expert, master, and grandmaster.

Heroes V

For the Heroes V skills, see Category:Heroes V skills.

In Heroes V, there are 12 major secondary skills, and each hero can learn up to 5. There's also a class-specific skill, available to all members of that class, that doesn't use up one of the hero's skill spaces. Also, the barbarians can't learn many of the major skills available to the other heroes, but they have their own skills as replacements. For example, instead of light magic, they can learn Shatter Light, and instead of sorcery, they can learn shout.

Major skills have three skill levels: basic, advanced, and expert. Each of the major skills have several subskills, and a hero can learn three, one for each skill level in that major skill. A hero with advanced sorcery can learn two subskills, while a hero with expert sorcery can learn three. Subskills don't have skill levels.

Heroes VI

For the Heroes VI skills, see Category:Heroes VI Hero Abilities.

In Heroes VI, heroes can choose between ALL skills that exist, and are not asked to choose between a few selected ones. Some skills have others as prerequisites, and some are only available to a particular class, but other than that, they are free to choose as they please. They can still only select one secondary skill per level.