New Magic School idea: Transmutation

[Shovah32]

Hmm, lets give my f9w9 helhirdlings extra defence and health

[mivayan]

With the current interface I'd hate to buff 5 soldiers per turn with such spells.

[Shovah32]

Then make it very expensive and have it affect 20+ troops/a single commander.

[Zebion]

Why bother? It can make some troops even more unbalanced and rigged. Or make new things rigged, it would only cause more balancing trouble then needed

[Frostmourne27]

If we left things out because we had to balance them, Dominions wouldn't be much of a game. Granted, this is harder to balance than many other things, but it's a neat idea, and I think it might well be worth the hassle. The most obvious solution (IMHO) is to simply make it so that commanders cannot benifit from anything more powerful that stat boosts. That still leaves Vanir or doom, but I'm sure that something could be worked out. Limits to the number of bonuses allowed on the same unit maybe. We should discard things because they're stupid, or conceptually flawed or whatever, not because they're difficult.

[Ewierl]

This school isn't a good idea, I think, because it breaks some things that already balance the game. "Leaving things out because they need balancing" is very different from "leaving things out because they will unbalance things." The number and location of item slots is a definite balancing factor for determining the value of various heroes and pretenders; allowing universal buffs that circumvent item-slot limits will dislodge that pre-existing balance mechanism. Even stat boosts can make a big difference, especially for things like MR.

[Sheap]

I concur, right now the only means to upgrade non-commanders permanently is through blesses (which aren't technically permanent but might as well be) or very expensive means (Gift of Reason + items/empowerment/etc). One of the core ideas behind Dominions, for better or for worse, is that your recruitable troops stay the same for the entire length of the game. Changing that would throw off the basic design of the game.

There's also the problem that balancing one or two effects is not too hard, but balancing an unlimited number of them is very hard. That's why items are so expensive, slots are limited, and finding items that do all the right stuff in the right slots for what you want is so hard.

Or think of it this way: Alteration is already one of the strongest magic paths. Does it need to be made stronger by allowing the effects to be made permanent? Look how strong blesses are, and this seems like it would be even stronger than that.