[Doo]

Here's my answer:

You want HP. HP is affected by Dominion in a province with higher base HP pretenders gaining comparatively more HP's, and higher base Dominion leads to a quicker rate of Dominion expansion, thus a high Dominion pretender helps. Also Dominion 9 and 10 pretenders gain the Awe effect which helps.

Magic paths have two effect, the first is that each extra level usually gives some bonus to the mage, and secondly they allow spells to be cast. The best for passive effects are Earth for +1 to Protection per level and Water for +1 to Defense per level. When using this strategy it helps to max either stat, so start with something with a high base Protection or Defense and make it sky-high with magic bonuses. Nature is great if you have Regeneration as more Nature magic gives more regeneration.

When thinking of spells to cast, basically any spell of worth needs SOME research and so your awake pretender won't get any initial benefit until research is done. However with research in Alt you get with Earth: Stoneskin (Alt-2) or Ironskin (Alt-3), with Air: Mistform (Alt-3), Mirror Image (Alt-2) and Air Shield (actually at Alt-0, possibly niche use), with Astral: Personal Luck (Alt-1) and Body Ethereal (Alt-3), with Water: Quicken Self (Alt-2, note discussion on Fatigue below) and with Nature: Barkskin (Alt-1). Of other note is Ench-2 with Personal Regeneration for Nature mages.

Special traits also help, such as the Wyrm's regeneration, Prince of Deaths fear and so on.

The idea, especially with indies, is to stack layers of effects such that each chance to do lasting damage has a low probability. For example a surrounded SC is melee attacked. Firstly it has Awe so a moral roll is required to even try to hit it, but also the SC has Fear so its harder to beat the Awe check due to Fear lowering moral. Then the Defense is high (each attack in a round lowers the effective Defense for the next attack by two, thus Defense is good but not great) so the SC is harder to hit. The hit lands but on a Mirror Image, no damage done. Or it hits the SC but the SC has a Protection of 20 so the damage done is low and the SC regenerates +20 HP per round. Lastly its Fear effect causes the indies to rout and the battle to be done.

This is a simple example, imagine adding in Personal Luck (50% of the time ANY damage occurs it is ignored as if it didn't occur), Body Ethereal (75% of melee attacks by non-magical weapons pass through the body causing no damage even though a hit occurred) and Mistform (complicated but basically all damage is reduced to 1 HP, Mistform is cancelled by big hits).

So think about it in those terms and judge for yourself. You want a SC that will survive without gaining Afflictions, unless it has the Recuperation trait. This is why I didn't list Fire magic levels as useful compared with Earth or Water, sure you hit more often but you may also be getting hit and I think with an awake pretender surviving without Afflictions is of most importance, getting Mute or Feeblemind is probably the worst for the average magic using SC for example. Lastly, don't ignore Encumbrance and thus Fatigue.

The reason why I won't name good SC pretenders is because you will pick one and it will get stomped and you will think I'm stupid, when in reality even with a good spread sometimes crazy things happen.