[Scott Hebert]

Hmmm. In fantasy, Vampires are often depicted as secretive creatures, sometimes with a couple servants to wipe the webs that litter their coffins. OTOH, Demon Lords or Princes usually come with a huge retinue of all sorts of minions. Never noticed that?

I've noticed that those minions are normally mindbLasted into submission, which isn't really willing, IMO.

Let me remind you it takes 7 colors to make a rainbow. As long as you aren't close to that number, your comparison is meaningless.

According to Zen, 4 paths at 3 would be the closest thing to 'normal' Raibows you get, and 4 is just as close to 1 as it is to 7.

Fine. If that's your focus (assuming the 'and so on' doesn't cover every magic color), then obviously the rainbow mages aren't for you, and you're better with a more specialized pretender with 3 or 4 strong paths. But it's not due to an intrinsic limitation of the human mages, it's rather a self-imposed restriction due to your playstyle.

And the restriction is shared by many, it seems, since very few people seem to use human Pretenders.

Hrm. FYI a pretender with only 2's can get 5+ in every path through items only. And I'm not talking artifacts here, that's doable at Construction 6.

Well, if you start with 2 in every path... do Rings of Wizardry stack? I assume not, since very few magic items do. Then you'd have a Ring of Wizardry, a Ring of Sorcery, a Staff of Elemental Mastery... that's 4 in everything. You could use that Air/Blood robe, though I doubt many do. Circumstantially, you could have 5. But I guess I'm missing where you could have 5 in everything at Construction 6. Let me renew my familiarity with the MIQR and get back to you.

Oh wait, so Rings are expensive and Acashic isn't?

140 Pearls (the price of the quoted equipment) gets you almost 6 Acashics. Acashic, unlike the equipment, gives you an immediate and permanent gem income back. There's also the fact that the early Acashics make the later Acashics possibly cheaper, through the gem income.

No, the only problem (and that's your problem, not anyone else's) is you want the human mages to compete with the Titans on their ground. Which, of course, is hopeless.

If that's true, why aren't the human pretenders used more often?

It is true that I don't see the point of true Rainbows. If you use them for site-searching, they're very slow, and might not even find sites that your other mages can use. This means that the gems from those sites will either be saved so the Pretender can use them (once he stops searching), or they will be alchemized (at extreme cost) into a gem that can be used by other mages.

You're not going to have a Bless effect, the impact of which varies by nation.

Your superior Research over other Pretenders doesn't matter when it's most important, in the early game, because you're site-searching.

*shrugs* Where is the benefit over, say, a Great Mother with 4N/4E/3S, who can cast Gift of Health after Construction 4, can cast Acashic naturally, and Forge before spending over 100 gems that would have been halved under the Forge?

If you want to talk about site-searching, my Great Mother will find almost any site that I need to find early (before Acashic kicks in). Nature sites for Nature gem income, and a wide variety of possible effects (including Nature mages that I may not have nationally), Earth sites for Earth gems and money, and Astral sites for Astral gems (for Acashic).

I don't see the appeal of Rainbows under such conditions.