I am open to the fact that the thought that I'm about to share could be completely stupid, but I thought it could spice the game up possibly.
We have fighting, we have forging. Those are the 2 main things you can do in this game. But there's nothing in between. However, what about the idea of something in between? Allow me to dream...
What if someone wanted to get one minion significantly stronger, as you felt that if it could just get a bit stronger, it could greatly help your strat? My idea is this: Have someone called a trainer/mentor/sensai/whatever, where someone can use their ba to take on someone's minion and give it special training, all while the person who lent the minion can still fight with the remaining minions. To simplify, it's sort of like "minion forging". This allows for one to get extra exp trained on that minion while at the same time still having the other minions fighting, thus not losing clan points. It does, however, force one to adapt their fightlist appropriately.
Another thing would be that this wouldn't be able to be too cheap, as a high roller could have 3 minions trained by 3 separate people while getting huge rewards for the one minion they have left.
I know it's raw, I just wanted to get some feedback. Perhaps I'm just crazy :). Flame away!