u/Informal-Rent-3573

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I thought about adding this one to the many "Dominions 7 wishlists" I see online, but after thinking about it, I'm not sure how badly it would affect the game and wanted another opinion.

There are some mechanics in the game that are done through Rituals, but I think they should otherwise have their own windows/interface. One such example is Gift of Reason/Divine Name.
It's a pretty cool mechanic that expands the chassis available to a player. However, it's one of those things that newer players have little chance to discover on their own, and even more experienced player forget every now and then because it's buried in the spell list of the research screen.

So I thought about Alchemy.
The "burn gems for cash" kind. You have a couple of Rituals to do it more effectively, but everyone can do it without taking a mage turn at a lower yield. More importantly: it's a mechanic that ANYONE can acess and has an easily accessible menu option that is immediately visible. So even a new player will click it out of a curiosity and learn about, while a veteran has a constant, non-intrusive reminder that the option is always there.

Gift of Reason is only acessible to Nature, and requires a lot of research, Divine name is only acessible to HIGH astral and requires even more research. Yes, anyone can eventually gain acess to it with indies/summons, but it's gameplay friction that doesn't add to the game. The research requirement on the other hand is there for a very good reason. GoR/DN let you take a powerful chassis and add ITEMS to it.
If DN was a command like Alchemy is, you could focus on Construction, and by the early mid-game, arm a powerful chassis with Greater Magic items. Essentially, forging the equivalent of a late-game summon, but 30 or 40 turns earlier.

So I thought about Construction.
It's quite peculiar compared to other mechanics, because you unlock "Tiers" with research. Construction also has it's own spell list, but the main draw of researching it is the unlock of those tiers. So what if upgrading, say, thaumaturgy, also unlocked an equivalent of GoR/DN for all factions? And the unlocked tier of Thaumaturgy limited what you could effectively GoR/DN.
Maybe the limit is on size, maybe it's HP. Maybe you can only GoR/DN mages/creatures with magic paths at tier3. Maybe we use the "leadership" stat as a limit. There's many ways of doing this, and on that I'm not sure what would be the best.

I think you could start with a simple "Promote" command. Any commander can do it, you select a soldier following him and that makes him into a commander. You can only do so on commanders, so no mages. This is a cool alternative to wasting fort turns to recruit commanders: waste commander turns instead! Limited to units that, when promoted, have 0 ledership, and their size has to be lower than the commander promoting it.
At Thaumaturgy 3 you can promote better commanders. Units that, when promoted, have leadership. So you can improvise a commander that will take some troops back while you march ahead.
At Thaumaturgy 5 you can promote Mages. These are the units that when summoned/recruited, have magic paths but don't show it (because they're not commanders). They can now be promoted into effective mages.
At Thaumaturgy 7 you can promote Undead & Demons. These are usually the more "powerfull" chassis, the ones that really cause problem. It's also why Divine Name (that works on mindless) requires Thaum 7.
At Thaumturgy 9 you can promote things that have Awe. Angels and other fantastic creatures.

Something like this would put this sortof things more "on the map" for players, open up more viable strategies and... generally be a mess to balance I'm sure. I'm also sure I'm forgetting other groups (like animals, when do you promote those? Or maybe it's ritual only?) so I made this post for everyone to add to it.

While were at it: add the same treatment for Alchemy. Stick it in the Alteration Tree, and let each tier let you alchemize more things. Maybe resources, maybe Gems into other gems. Or simply more money.

I think some people need to hear this: the PORTABLE refiner is, as the name indicates, PORTABLE.
You don't need to build a base to use it. Just place it on the ground, and refine.
No, you do not need to put down a base computer, build an ugly cube around it and place the PORTABLE refiner inside. Yes that's correct, when you built that base and left, you've blocked off other people from placing down their PORTABLE refiner. And because you're going to ask, yes, if you placed down your PORTABLE refiner you wouldn't block other people because it's not a base.

For everyone else: please back my suggestion to Hello Games: when someone puts down a PORTABLE refiner, anyone can open, use and take it. I honestly don't need it past the 5 minute mark into the expedition, but I want to go around collecting abandoned PORTABLE refiners and chucking them into a Waste Treatment plant. Thank you for your time.

PS: also let us place refiners in other people's bases. If people start spamming them, the owner can still remove them as per the previous sugestion.

Recently I thought about Skills. Some OSR games have them, some not. For people coming from D&D, this is something they find to be "missing". My group comes from WFRP and that game makes heavy use of a skill list.
But when we actually sit down to play, we don't really miss a Skill Table. It never came up during actual play, only as shower thoughts later.

So this morning I was thinking about something unrelated: How neat is that modifiers cap at +4. It means a difficult check (DC15) works out 50% of the time. Meaning, even if you're good at something, wether you can or can't do it comes out like a coin toss and is entirely up to luck.
Then I got to thinking how the chances of suceeding at something look like for other modifiers and came up with this:

https://preview.redd.it/cqnrhw4je92h1.png?width=523&format=png&auto=webp&s=710b9ab1716d6cdc84b44595e5f9d4d598d856e1

On an initial observation, a character who rolled +1 or +2 in something comes out as quite competent in those areas with good odds. On the other hand, characters should REALLY avoid tasks where they have -1 or -2.

Now the best part about this table is how advantage interacts with it. Players who rolled +1 or +2 now have really good chances of doing something. If you're in the +3 or +4, it's almost guaranteed you'll suceed at everything but the hardest tasks. And even characters who aren't suited for something (-1 or -2) have a decent chance to just wing it.

And when I said this out loud I remembered that classes, backgrounds and ancestries give you advantage on certain checks. And it clicked: you don't need a Skill table, because Modifiers and advantage already cover it perfectly and non intrusively. You don't need to level up skills, because when you level up and pick "add 2 to attribute" you're efectively throwing another 10% on a skill you're not trained with, but 20-30% on a skill you ARE trained with. And if the GM allows you to train into new skills, a simple line: "You're trained in Chicanery and Buffonery, gain advantage on checks related to it" is all that is required.
It's so simple and elegant.

And then, because Shadowdark is even more awsome the more you look at it, I noticed that the disadvantage table creates a very interesting interaction with the Darkness.
If you're at a disavtange, Easy tasks get a bit harder, but still very much possible.
Normal tasks get a lot harder, and create an incentive for the player to NOT be in that position/try to change something before attempting the check.
And anything Hard/Impossible becomes so unlikely it will take 100 pounds of rock-hard Luck tokens to pull it off.

And that's my favourite part of DM'ing Shadowdark. I don't need 300 rules and modifiers to convey dsomething to the players. "Okay, but you're rolling at disavantage" is enough for them to understand it's a bad idea. "If you do that, you'll get to roll at an advantage" is enough for them to search for different ways to accomplisht the same task.

It's something so simple and, for me, the best part of Shadowdark.