Why can't my character fight?
 

I just got this game after reading a lot of good reviews. But so far one of the my biggest issue with the game is that my character doesn't actively fight in battles. It lead to feelings of detachment and I find it ridiculous that my knight is some sort of cowardly warlord who doesn't like to get his hands dirty. There need to be a hero unit or something.

Personally, it doesn't bother me. I've gotten used to it through HoMM series, earlier King's Bounty game etc. Hope you can get over that fact and enjoy the game anyway.

Actually in strategy games the leaders/generals very rarely fight...
when speaking about HOMM series - only the HOMM IV had heroes actively participating in battlefield, and Homm IV scores very bad in polls of success/ likness.
Games like panzer/fantasy general do not have the main character on battlefield as well, some other games do (like Warlords battlercry series, but the WARLORDS series does not...)

you can still attach yourself to the game by having special race army (I mostly have UNDEAD army only... it gives me much of personification with my own army and style)

Oh that's right, in HoMM IV the leader involves in the fights! Forgot about that one... never really liked the newest one compared to the older ones.

I think Disciples had a good way for using the leaders in fights. Altough the battle system is very different in that serie.

Not to mention that in Disciples, if you lost you best hero + all his/her troops, no resurrection, no "flee battle" option... he/she were just total goners... so you had secondary hero with some levels you was lucky, if not, you had to pay 500 (max money in D was 9999, average was 200 ) to buy new one - level 1 newbie bastard...!!! GOSH!

Hahah, true! It is quite painful to realize in Disciples that you are facing far more superior force, which you just don't seem to be able to win and to face the fact that... you just saved your game and the next save would be from the start of the scenario. :) Bye bye my most powerful leader.

Back to the subject... I don't think it would work very well in this type of games. In King's Bounty you have large numbers of creatures in stacks. How would the leader be then? Mage/Warrior/Paladin 1. What would he's stats be? How he could go against hordes of dragons? In my opinion, it didn't really work out so good in HoMM IV and it would not work out very well in KB. If anyone has an idea, how to actually get the leader to involve in to the battle and make it work well, I'm all ears. :)

I think Heroes V lets the hero attack as well IIRC.

I believe so as well, but he cannot be attacked back. I've always thought that kinda dumb in this kind of game, just realistically speaking. If the hero is present to direct all his troops in battle - a single, small human (or whatever) - why doesn't a black dragon go and EAT him?

I know why they don't let that happen, but it is kinda unrealistic, don't ya think?

There is something terribly WRONG about not having the hero character represented in the battle screen, its as if I'm suddenly playing a different game instead of something organic to the main game. Throughout the adventure the NPCs refer to your character and deeds by name, then all the sudden in battle mode I find myself commanding an army of snakes and spiders, but the toon that I carefully nurtured is no where to be found....WTF?

The disconnect is rather jarring. I'm playing a paladin and one would think that a paladin (or a warrior) for that matter would lead his troop into battle personally. Maybe I should be able pick a unit stack and attach it to the main character, and should that stack be knocked out my main character would be incapacitated while the rest of the army fight on or whatever. There are many ways where this could be done, and IMHO its important to the structure of the game. I just don't feel vested in the battle screen at all without the main character engaged in mortal combat.

well, this is the point of strategy games
You are referring towards rare strategy-RPG games, but you would even more fun find in true RPG games - role playing games... not strategy ones...