Schism — a Magic-Oriented Faction — faction in Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era

Schism — another magically oriented faction in Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era. Unlike Dungeon, their castle lacks a level 5 Mage Guild, but this is purely for balance purposes. The reason is simple: their tier-7 unit — Abyssal Envoy — inherently has full immunity to magic damage. Thanks to this, like Dungeon, the Schism faction can effectively play through Armageddon .

Magical Start and Faction Laws

The faction laws of Schism actively encourage players toward a magic-focused playstyle from the early stages. At the second tier of faction laws, the following become available:

Additional 2Ice PowerYour heroes gain +1 Spell Power. Spell Power
Or, more importantly, 1Depths of MindYour Schism heroes restore +10% mana each morning. daily mana regeneration +20%

This allows Schism heroes to use magic much more aggressively and makes stats like

intelligence especially valuable.

Faction Ability: Abyssal Communion

The faction ability Basic Abyssal Communion in the current version of the game provides a temporary increase to the Schism faction’s army size during battle: +5% to the base army, with an additional +5% for each victory. This ability cannot be considered weak — on the contrary, in the early stages it helps preserve the army, as Schism’s starting units are relatively vulnerable. However, the very concept of strictly binding heroes to a single faction and actively penalizing the use of non-native heroes makes the system less flexible and limits potential combinations. There is a possibility that this ability will be reworked by the game’s release.

Unique unit mechanic of Schism — Demonology

The key feature of the Schism faction is summoning a permanent army from fallen allies — a kind of evolution of the demonology mechanics from Heroes of Might and Magic III.

Юниты:

Ra'Shoth Summoning Rite: Ra’Shoth Summoning Rite: Ra’ShothOnce per battle, summons a stack of Ra’Shoth in place of a friendly corpse. The summon has 50% HP of the corpse’s original stack and no more than [ current amount of summoners ] units. These creatures are permanent and remain after the battle.
Grand Shoth Summoning Rite: Grand Shoth Summoning Rite: Grand ShothOnce per battle, summons a stack of Grand Shoth in place of a friendly corpse. The summon has 50% HP of the corpse’s original stack and can’t have more than [ current amount of summoners ] units. These creatures are permanent and remain after the battle.
Abyssal Envoy Summoning Rite: Envoy Summoning Rite: EnvoyOnce per battle, summons a stack of Abyssal Envoys in place of a friendly corpse. The summon has 50% HP of the corpse’s original stack and can’t have more than [ current amount of summoners ] units. These creatures are permanent and remain after the battle.

upon the death of a friendly stack, they can summon its copy with 50% of the deceased stack's maximum health — permanently.

This allows:

build up critical mass for one strike stack
Effectively sacrifice less useful native units
Even use units from other factions as “fodder”

Additionally, the new global map object

allows:

convert the entire army of different units into one random type, then use demonology to convert it into tier-1, 4, or 7 native creatures, which can later be upgraded in the castle.

Additional Summon Enhancements

subskill Their Name is Legion:Their Name is LegionFriendly creatures’ abilities summon +30% creatures. (in the Expert Summon Avatar branch) — +50%
artifact Soulcaller Ring — another +50%

In total, this allows summoning a massive number of troops.

Strong Heroes

At the time of beta testing, the strongest hero of the Schism faction is Sister Keiri:. Her specialization allows dealing double damage from the Umbral Grip spell. Combined with high native spell power, this enables killing enemy stacks practically without an army. It's also worth noting that this spell deals damage through resistances of units like Worldwatcher or Abyssal Envoy , making it much easier to capture very difficult objects on days 2–3 of the game. With proper leveling and the right artifacts, the cost of this spell can be made nearly free and cast every time as a second spell using Basic Thaumaturgy .