Some crusaders seem to have less worth than others. Here are my suggestions to make some of them a little less worthless. :D

Jason, Master of Shadows
Give him the following level 50 ability (All other abilities move up 25 levels)
Shadow Strike - Increase the Base DPS of Jason, Master of Shadows by 200% when no enemies are attacking Jason, Master of Shadows.

Thalia, the Thunder King
Change Orbs to something unique like.
Increase the DPS of Thalia, the Thunder King by 10%/25%/50%/100% for each enemy attacking Thalia, the Thunder King

King Reginald IV
Change Crowns to something unique like.
Increase gold found by 2%/5%/10%/15% for each crusader adjacent to King Reginald IV.

If I think of any more I'll let you all know. Also let me know what you all think.

-SadKitchen

Well... Pete is very useful, Frosty isn't. The problem is the presence of crusaders that should be DPS dealers (jason, frosty, witch, reginald, etc), but do absolutely no damage compared to jim, hermit or ww. It doesn't matter how much you buff their DPS, they are still pretty crappy at dealing damage.

There are 4 main categories in gaming - Tank, healer, damage and support. In Crusaders, two main pop out - a singular dps and rest are support. It's easy to progress without a tank or healer idol farming though the healers are helpful during high level bosses in objectives.

Jason, Witch and Frosty seem to be intended as damage/dps but in functionality, only low cost characters can do notable damage for gold. Jason was a wash. Witch and Frosty could have been useful if they'd been designed to share a slot with Emo and Hermit. Jim seems intended to be support but thanks to his affordability is the one true hybrid. In the future, characters intended for damage should probably be put in the first six exchange slots. Not sure anything can be done about the useless damage characters now.

SadKitchen, you make the mistake of only considering damage multipliers through gear and abilities. But you never take into account the BASE damage vs gold factor. For example, I have both WW and Hermit with rare items for DPS increase (2 +100% DPS each), and WW's skills grant him a x60 DPS, compared to x48 of Hermit. Moreover, I have 204 EPs for WW and only 188 for Hermit. So, in theory WW should do more damage than Hermit for a given amount of gold spent on leveling those crusaders (they are not at the same level, of course), but the exact opposite is true (although not by a very high margin). And this is because Hermit's BASE damage is higher, on a dmg-per-gold basis. You could give Nate four +200% DPS abilities (for a whopping x81 damage bonus), two DPS items, and he will still do much less damage than WW of Hermit, or even Jim.

@Teschio: Even though I missed it, yes, even more proof that Nate was not designed with DPS in mind.

@Jason: The reason for this isn't just because nate is "more expensive" If nate had WW starting DPS/Gold ratio his starting DPS would be 2.50E+15 [I am no good with the game letters] verses his actual 6.40E+12. Then if they had similar upgrades/gears at level 2000 WW/1500 Nate; WW would have 3.01E+51 DPS and Nate would have 1.97E+53 DPS. Nate would win that fight hands down.
It is not only that Nate is more expensive. It is that Nate SUCKS at DPS. His Upgrades are poor, His Gear is Poor, and as Teschio pointed out his starting DPS/Gold is poor. Poor nate is stuck being a slightly above average DPS booster.

And second RoboTurkey isn't a DPS Crusader, it is a support Crusader. All of it's numbers come from having others around it. Put him in Lone Descent and watch how much he doesn't work AT ALL. Even though it can end up having the highest DPS in the game, it doesn't count in this discussion on DPS crusaders.

-SadKitchen

There is a fairly simple solution to all this, which is to even out the cost of all champions eventually after level 200. This could be done by reducing the increase in cost for later crusaders until the reach the base cost for the same base DPS (if they are a dps crusader at least). This would not factor in the various ability bonuses, so crusaders with more bonuses like hermit/ww...would still be ahead of crusaders like princess who has more buffs, but the BASE damage per gold would even out across the board...allowing any champion to do comparable damage if they have equal eq/ep and ability boosts (this would make the snowman far more useful.

This still would not work perfectly because the 4x boosts would not all be even, but it would mean that later crusaders (like nate/merci etc) could compete with earlier crusaders on a fairly even bases long term.