[Cainehill]

Hmm. That'd work for hags/crones, imo - give one incredibly flimsy pretender with 0 pathcost, for those who care to try it. In my opinion, it'd be iffy, but playable - even as a combat mage. One hell of an artillerist, with high skill in certain areas, and various spells reduce or eliminate the risk of dying and losing paths in a battle.

Also - getting owned by artillery spells? Unless / until the AI is changed, flyers might take out a judiciously setup pretender, but artillery won't, not before battlefield-affecting spells are researched.

Mind - I like the added HPs for the humans. But the one human pretender that is supposed to be fragile and weak could be left ... fragile and weak, but cheap and/or beefed up magically.

After all - if magic paths cost 0, it can afford 1 death and still be at least equal to any other human pretender in paths, depending on how it is set up. ( 8 1-point paths on a normal 10 point human is 80 points - 8 2 point paths on a 0 point human is 64? )