Shattered Kingdoms

Scouts are an easy fix, add rifles, problem solved.

Scouts are somewhat easy to fix.

Retreat (or limited version that only allows the scout and their pets to retreat)

Rapid Fire gives a dmg bonus to arrows.

No. This is not needed. Not even a little bit.

Back on partial topic:

Maybe give hellion a target skill that is similar to fear called visage. The Hellion would turn their full gaze towards one victim, pouring the dark energy of their deity to enhance their features into scary proportions. A full save would do nothing. A partial save would lower the accuracy of the victim for a short time, due to the victim shaking from the force of such an image. An unsuccessful save would make the person flee from the room, unable to return like the fear spell would, and lower accuracy. Give this a 5-10 minute cool down so that it would force the Hellion to make a strategic choice of who would be best to face later.

I agree. And they have invisibility to allow them to try their surprise attack. They don't also need sneak and hide. It seems both thematically inappropriate and mechanically weird to have heavy armor guys sneaking and hiding. By the way, I extend this to any heavy armor class that is sneaking or hiding. I don't see why a halfling or elf in plate mail should be able to sneak around. If you want to hide and sneak, wear light armor. It's not like halflings and elves/delves are hurting and would be crushed by this change, either. Those are some of the best races.

Sensible as this is, it would represent a decrease in hellion capability (only marginally) and should be offset by something. Fear is obviously much better, which is why I had suggested they also lose plague. Even still, sneak + hide + plague < fear, so that's probably not entirely balanced.

By the way, you could make paladins immune to fear if you added this to hellions. Why not? That's one of the traditional features of a paladin anyway.

Not immune. Give a skill called Bravery, perhaps. A passive skill that checks to save versus fear/wimpy. A paladin shouldn't have wimpy set, but, it could happen. Only the command flee, or a retreat, will make a paladin move from combat.

We have something for this already. Wearing heavy armor decreases your skills for hide and sneak. It's probably not enough, but I'm just saying -- this is already accounted for in the mechanics.

If they need something at all, im a big fan of just altering intimidate. Make it more useful in the middle of battle. Perhaps put it on the fast effects system but let it fire anytime not just pre combat. Could possibly add an interdiction like effect to it. A lot could be done really. The fact that it sucks concentration but becomes pretty useless after combat just kinda sucks for a lack of better words to use.