As a player preferring to play RBs from personal taste, I'm more and more reluctant to use them, because their so-called "advantages" end up being very much ineffective...
The high RP is an initial advantage, but doesn't compete with the initial advantages of SC in conquering indies;
The site search is slow and a 6+ path RBs hasn't a so big advantage over a 2 or 3 paths pretender + a couple national mages (except for Ulm, granted
)
The "rainbowness" isn't that useful in casting or forging, because you have a *weak* level in all paths, and for the non-national paths you've to have the RB forges himself boosting items... For the other you are not (and often less ...) powerful than the national mages so they can do the work themselves !
On the downside, having 10 hp makes a pretender very fragile, be it to seeking arrow, early disease (never caught that on the initial search runs on turn 10 ?
), assassins etc...
I don't even think the human mages can be made to compete with VQ, Moloch etc : they should have "useful" and colourful/unique abilities, to make them fun to play.
But mainly, gameplay-wise, they should be meant to allow players to have a CHEAP pretender and spend points on dominion, scales and castle.
So they need to be significantly cheaper : somthing like 0-20 points, dominion 2, and starting with either 2 or 3 level-1 or 2 paths, plus a nice ability for each "chassis".
In the end you'll have more or less the same guys, but costing some 80 points less, enough for 2 scales tips or a nice castle (Wiz Tower being appropriate
)