Dominions 5 is full of units with a multitude of "Unit abilities" - abilities and characteristics that govern how a particular unit performs on the battlefield and the map. This page will aim to collect a short description of all unit abilities with links to those abilities that require further explanation. Please keep the list in alphabetic order.

This ability causes anyone striking the unit to take armor piercing acid damage equal to the ability value, which is then reduced by 3 multiplied by the length of the striking weapon. In practice, because the Gelatinous Cube is the only unit in the game to possess this ability and has a value of 12, a weapon length of 4 or higher completely negates the acid splash.

An adept researcher is a commander with a flat bonus to their research ability over what would be calculated from their paths alone.

Similarly, inept researcher has a penalty to their calculated research total.

An adept sacrificer can use more blood slaves per turn for blood sacrifice. The value of this ability is added to the commander's Holy path level for determining the number of slaves they may sacrifice each turn.

This ability reduces a unit's susceptibility to afflictions. This ability gives a chance to negate any afflictions gained by 1/(1+value). For example, a unit with affliction resistance 1 would have half the chance of recieving afflictions, whereas a unit with affliction resistance 99 would have only a 1/100 chance to recieve an affliction when it would normally do so.

The Air Shield ability gives the unit a percent chance to ignore non-area of effect projectile attacks that would otherwise hit it. As well as bow and crossbow projectiles, this also affects projectiles created by spells such as Blade Wind and Iron Blizzard. Projectiles with a described area of greater than "one person" are unaffected, as are those that ignore shields.

There are three sources of Air Shield: Unit tags, spells, and magic items. The unit ability applies Air Shield to the unit who has the tag. The Air Shield spell applies this effect to the caster, while the Arrow Fend spell grants it to all allied units on the entire battlefield. The Amulet of Missile Protection, Robe of Missile Protection, Shield of Valor and Silver Hauberk all grant the wearer an Air Shield that will be in effect at the beginning of any battle.

The alchemist ability provides a percentage increase to gold obtained from the alchemy spells (but has no bonus when alchemising gems to and from astral pearls). Specifically, this ability affects the following spells:

• Distill Gold
• Alchemical Transmutation
• Transmute Fire
• Earth Gem Alchemy

The ambidextrous ability reduces the penalty from wielding multiple weapons by its value. Ordinarily, this penalty reduces the attack skill of the unit by the sum of its weapons' lengths.

An amphibious unit may enter underwater provinces without penalty.

This tag indicates that a unit is an animal, and is therefore subject to certain spells and effects which specifically affect animals only.

Spells that affect animals only include:

• Rage of the Cornered Rat
• Charm Animal
• Wildness
• Beast Mastery
• Gift of the Moon

An aquatic unit cannot leave underwater provinces without an item such as an Amulet of the Fish which enables it to breathe air. If forced onto dry land by any means, it will suffocate and die.

Armor-negating (AN) damage ignores enemy Protection (both natural protection and from armor). It does not ignore elemental resistances or physical resistance.

Shock and poison damage tend to be AN, along with many "psychic" damage effects like Mind Burn.

Armor-piercing damage ignores half of a target's Protection. This stacks multiplicatively with the 20% reduction from piercing damage, so things like crossbows that inflict piercing damage and are AP ignore 60% of protection.

Notably, many sources of fire damage are armor piercing.

A unit which falls asleep has a 10% chance each combat round to wake up, or immediately upon taking non-poison damage. This effect is applied using spells such as Sleep Cloud.

A commander with the assassin ability may attempt to assassinate a random enemy non-hidden commander in the same province. Assassination attempts occur before many other events in the turn order, such as movement. If the assassin is in a province where there is a hostile fort under siege, they must have the Scale Walls ability to be able to assassinate a commander inside.

There is a 50% chance that an assassination will occur at night, which has potential to incur some darkness penalties. Commanders that are assassinated are considered to be surprised and will disregard any scripted orders they are given, including conservative gem usage. The assassin however will carry out their script as normal.

A potential assassination victim can have bodyguards, which are units under their command with the Guard Commander order. Each bodyguard has a base 50% chance to be present in the assassination, which is increased by the Bodyguard ability.

Similarly, the value listed on the assassin ability is the patience score, which reduces the odds of any bodyguards being present at an assassination attempt.