Editing Dominions (section)

==The Magic==
There are 8 (technically 9, if you count Holy) paths of magic and 9 schools of magic. Magic rituals are fueled by magic gems (or virgins) and take a monthly action to perform. You get these magic gems mostly by searching the land with your mages for magic sites. Once found, they automatically generate these gems once a month. Most spells cause a mage fatigue, and the most powerful ones use gems.

===The Schools===
====Conjuration====
Summoning magical monsters, mainly. They vary from fire drakes to bane lords to otherworldly abominations. Most notably, the spell Tartarian Gate is in this school, allowing you to summon insane ancient undead gods to fight for you.

====Alteration====
Changing yourself, do alchemy, warp the battlefield, or reality itself to fit your needs. Many buffs and debuffs are located in this school, like Ironskin and Petrify. The absolute gamebreaker spell is Wish, which has a rather wide utility. No, you can't wish to win. But you can wish for girls! On the safe side, you can turn fire and earth gems into cash.

====Construction====
One of the schools that is pretty much mandatory, though getting it up to level 8 is sort of a give or take. It primarily deals in the forging of magical tools, weapons, and armor. There's also your giant golems and mecha dragons, which make pretty decent combatants.

====Enchantment====
Sort of a brother to Conjuration and Alteration, this school is notable for letting you flip the bird to all the other players through the use of global spells like flooding all the coastal provinces or drilling a hole to the earth's core to harvest its riches. Many mass defensive spells are also included from keeping your guys safe from fire, or shielding an entire province from enemy spells. Also, enchanting corpses to give them false life. (As opposed to Conjuration which brings pre-existing undead from their native realm IE ghosts)

====Evocation====
Good old pew pew. The school of zapping, burning, and icing motherfuckas. Start out shooting sparks and end with lighting the entire battlefield on fire. Out of combat spells include making a volcanic eruption, hurricanes, and tidal waves that all wipe out population.

====Thaumaturgy====
The "gimmick" school. A lot of it is based on fucking over or seizing another faction's magical or undead creatures and fucking units with low magic resistance. Most famous for the Communion spells, [[God-Emperor of Mankind|that allow your mages to combine their powers to become one mega mage]], although it is also home to mind control (including a battlefield wide mind control) and Soul Slay, which instantly kills anything that fails its save (and makes it impossible for immortal units to return to life).

====Blood====
Both a school and a path, it deals with mainly the summoning of demons and extremely harmful spells. Demons are nothing to sneeze at and are a LOT harder to banish than undead due to having generally higher health and magic resistance. There are also spells that can completely fuck a nation's production through Rain of Toads or Send Horror. In the fluff this is considered heretical by the most nations and is the only magic you could call objectively evil since it requires human sacrifice - it uses virgins instead of magic gems to fuel its spells. You get virgins by forcibly kidnapping girls, and yes, the province will get unrest, you'll disrupt life and ruin people, reducing the population. Its spells, however, are incredibly powerful, up to the point of poisoning ALL magic in the world or summoning greater demons that run over entire armies. Got hit with a nerfstick FINALLY: when your nation has no initial blood magic, spending virgins to boost your wizards' blood skills hs a very high chance of damnning said spellcaster with a Horror Mark, a debuff that ''doesn't'' go away and has a chance to attract a Horror trying to kill you.

====Divine====
The only school you can't research, as all the spells are researched already. While some nations have their own unique Divine spells, divine spells are generally blessings, banishments, and smites. Blessings are the real thing here, as depending on what your Pretender has for magic, it can either be a minor aid or the focus of your nation. Used only by priests, though some priests can be mages too, and now can cast elemental-hybrid prayers and blast their way to victory. Blessings only affect sacred units, however, the variety and availability of which varies from nation to nation.

In the latest game, Dominions 5, divine spells get even more attention in form of hybrid schools, like water-proficient gods giving their priests power to drown land-based units, stellar-able gods' priests invoking starlight to burn undead and so on.

===The Paths===
====Fire====
What does it sound like? Mainly oriented around flinging hot stuff at enemies, it's one of the premier paths for battlemages. Heat nations like Abysia benefit from the battlefield wide spells like Heat from Hell and Fire Storm which fucks everyone without fire resistance. It is usually considered the worst path, since it isn't very flexible unless mixed with other paths. However, it has nice synergy with archer-focused nations at higher research levels, it turns even crappiest casters into living artillery platform, and it absolutely decimates even the largest human armies. If your enemy is Abysia though, well...fuck it.

Every level makes the wielder more powerful in leadership and fire resistance but also reduces the wielder's lifespan by a few years.

====Water====
Water is flexibility oriented rather than being straight up magic [[Dakka]]. Often called the weakest path due to the fact that many of its spells are only effective underwater or are completely uncastable unless beneath the waves. It does offer some pretty good ice based battle spells. When taken on your pretender god, it provides great buffs for sacreds, and make its wielder more able to block melee attacks. If you're playing a cold nation, then spells like Murdering Winter, Niefel Flames, and Living Water (water elementals become ice elementals in colder environments) can trash unprepared armies pretty well. You can also UNLEASH THE KRAKEN, or summon a Troll King and his bodyguards who can swim in oceans, which in turn can summon more Troll Kings, resulting in a swarm of amphibian coral spear wielding, regenerating trolls ''who don't need food'' that can take every oceanic territory and can pop up out of nowhere, so good luck landfags.

====Air====
Air focuses on zapping fools with lightning and breaking minds with illusions, resisting lightning and flying around like a jet. Air battle magic is extremely powerful largely do to 3 spells, storm, storm power, and thunder strike. Storm completely ruins projectile accuracy and allows the casting of storm power, a self-buff that boosts air magic by 1, allowing air 2 mages to spam the otherwise hard to cast air 3 thunder strike. Call of the Winds is an incredibly annoying spell that sends a flock of giant birds to harass provinces. Spamming it in an enemy empire's tender, undefended provinces can [[Troll|snag his entire lands in a single turn.]]

====Earth====
Flying boulders and sharp blades when it comes to battle. Most notably known for having the best when it comes to forging and construction. You can also summon tons of trolls, just like the Troll King of Water Path. It is a premier battle magic path with amazing buffs and is powerful when mixed with fire since they have devastating magma spells. Each level makes the wielder's skin tougher by one damage resistance, which is extra nice on XBOXHUEG pretender gods that can just stand there looking at enemy troops squirming around, trying to find a gap in the armour (and RNGesus tells us it will happen, because exploding dice and Magic Duel shenanigans). Also home for the most of armour increasing and decreasing spells out there, so if you want to see enemy army get naked, covered in rust, you go earth.

====Nature====
Revolves mainly around summoning big dudes (or many little dudes) that can take tons of damage, and then berserking and buffing the mofos. You can also summon tarrasques, and if you really want, [[Emprahsque|you can make them tarrasque wizards with magic items on their bodies]]. Best part is every level of nature magic makes your caster feed 10 human sized units by sheer existence. Moreover, forging magical limitless wineskins, soup cauldrons and magical food swords make you support entire armies without draining territory supplies, fuck logistics and march through lifeless deserts to fuck your enemy's territories who thought they were safe. A crowning achievment of trolling is The Kindly Ones, who are three supercombatant women from Greek Mythology. Anyone who sacrificed a girl or is a blood mage will have to roll for [[Anal Circumference]] per month until someone kills them in nightly duels or dispels the spell. For even more trolling, cast Wild Hunt, a spell that causes the master of the fucking Wild Hunt (ie. the Horned God) and his minions to appear out of thin air and start assasinating enemy priests world wide!

====Death====
[[Zombie]]s, [[skeleton]]s, disease, rot, spooky scary faggotry. Pretty much what you think [[necromancer]]s are, sans the obligatory evil flavor. Some of the wielders are actually "good" like C'tis necromancers or enchantments that drain all the pain in the world, make everyone happy and give you free death gems, or practical like Late Age Agartha's necromancers which use them for domestic labor. It sees most use in hands of middle age Ermor and late age Lemuria, who use it omnicidally against the living. Spells mainly revolve around summoning undead creatures, manipulating the "corpse" resources in a territory, and if you feel evil, making the living die in mass numbers or draining life out of enemies... Is probably the second most powerful path after blood, especially in the late game, due to its ability to summon immortal Not!Ringwraiths and liches, and as endgame units, *bugfuck insane* imprisoned Titans that will make enemies bite the pillow. 

For every level in Death Magic for a commander, chances to get sickness and afflictions in old age is reduced, making the character a wizened old man who still looks spry and maliciously strong. Pass level 5 and the wielder scares approaching enemies into running away.

Speaking of neutral morality regarding death magic, it has a mundane spell to handle the dead like sending crows to eat dead bodies, turning the crows into death gems when fattened and keeping the territory plague free. Nifty, huh?

====Astral====
The "first" magic, and where you get all the smart technical spells like communions and luck, and artifacts that simply make specific actions more efficient. Mainly based around mind control and debuffs/buffs. Astral magic most often directly attacks the enemies magic resistance, ignoring armor entirely. Spells like Soul Slay and Magic Duel can be instant death to a single target. The true power comes from the super strong rituals like Wish, Acashic Knowledge (reveals all magic sites in a province), Gateway (mass teleport) Arcane Nexus (you get a fraction of all gems used to cast all spells), and Mind Hunt (assassination spell) are the big game changers. Best part is, however that Astral masters can easily forge magic crowns and sticks to supplement leadership and inspiration value of commanders, turning your shy, asocial platoon leader into a reincarnation of [[Creed]] that can lead magical beings by sheer force of will. Or forge a sacred linen that grants the wearer blessings of your god's powers even if he wasn't sacred to begin with. Yes, it works on giants, have fun speeding up ettins. While astral is reasonably powerful on its own, where it really shines is when combined with another path, since even one level of astral enables the mage to use the Communion spell to combine their power. Even a weak earth/astral mage, for example, when backed up by a large enough communion, can start dropping comets from the sky on enemy armies mid-battle.

====Blood====
Unusual as you don't require gems, but rather female virgins. Virgins can be found anywhere (more above 5000 population territories) as long as you got guys hunting for them. Since your people don't really see eye to eye with their daughters getting rounded up and sacrificed to infernal forces, you have to know how to juggle unrest and hunting, so your income doesn't go down the drain. Blood spells are all in the Blood school, so you don't have to split up your research for it, which is useful considering it's a massive investment. Blood can do a bit of everything. It can heal and it can hurt. But its speciality is summoning demons, which are pretty beefy and cheap. Rain of Toads is also a good spell to completely fuck someone's income and recruitment in their most productive provinces. Claws of Kokytos/Infernal Prison will send someone straight to hell, where they have a 99% chance of not surviving. And that's without mentioning you can poison the arcana with horrors from [[Shadowrun|Earthdawn]] setting, or summon gigantic demon lords that can [[Khorne|steamroll entire armies]], [[Slaanesh|seduce people to give their virgin daughters for free]], [[Tzeentch|cast unspeakable spells from a flail]] or [[Nurgle|kill thousands per night with diseases]]. Widely agreed to be the most powerful path in the game, especially in the late game, thanks to the fact that you can gather blood slaves everywhere with good population while other paths rely on non-growing specific areas on the map. When combined with death, it gets especially powerful, thanks to the ability to summon endlessly respawning vampire lords. An attempt at balance is made: artificially increasing blood magic skill, a gimmick known as "blood bootstrapping" now damns your spell casters who go through sacrificial girls like popcorn and will very likely attract Horrors every turn. This "feature" is not mentioned in game, so [[FAIL|if you empower your God with virgin blood...]]