early fightin' pretender spells

[Cainehill]

A lot of the good spells require two paths. Air and Fire gives a nice early Sulphur Haze; fire/earth gives magma bolts. High level example in evocation is Nether Darts, and frankly - artillery mages / pretenders are often underrated.

Other spells you neglect : Shadow Bolt, which can be pretty effective on a high-death pretender (because of reduced likelihood of successful MR rolls).

Mostly though, like Truper says - don't think in terms of single path pretenders. Unless what you _really_ want is a powerful bless effect, a single high level path generally isn't nearly as good as 2 or 3 medium high paths, and if you want a soloing pretender, most want more like 4 low level paths.