[Norfleet]

There are several schools of thought to a pretender build: There's the "rainbow" build, which tends to revolve around having a pretender with modest rankings in many magic schools: This enhances his value as a researcher, his value as a site-searcher, and his value in casting a wide variety of spells, particularly if your nation has an otherwise poor selection of magics.

Then there's the "bless" build, in which a magic school is pumped up not for its value in casting anything at all, but for what blessing it provides.

And then there's the oddball build where a pretender's magic paths are chosen for the spells it allows him to cast in combat, and the personal secondary effects granted by those choices. An SC designed in this way can be a formidable warrior.

There are various ways of avoiding afflictions to an SC pretender: Picking an immortal or recuperating chassis will results in being able to recover from the occasionally acquired affliction. A nation with easy access to affliction healing, such as Arco with Priestesses, can also minimize the affliction problem. Later on in the game, SCs may return in force due to the fact that massing large armies generally is the equivalent of tacking a large Flames from the Sky or Murdering Winter bullseye on yourself.

I find that if you want to build a truly monstrous, all-game combat beast, you need to take into account the factors that make for the best fighters:
1. A good encumberance rating: A high-encumberance chassis will ultimately make for a very poor level of endurance in combat, since he will quickly become out of breath, and the amount of reinvigoration needed to keep him kicking solo in the late game can be steep. This can partially be offset by having mages casting Relief....as long as they aren't killed. 0 Encumberance, obviously, is ideal, because then you will never, ever get tired no matter how fast you go and how much you have to kill.

2. Many defensive attributes: Any attribute that comes with your SC chassis, such as Ethereal, Flying, etc, is one more thing you don't need an item or spell to grant you.

3. Many item slots: The more items you can wield, the larger the variety and potency of powers you can gain. Nonhumanoids tend to have a shorter career as a really beastly SC: A dragon, for instance, has only two misc slots and a head slot. Not much room for items.