I think my problems with Red Mage begin with that it's mostly based on the Magus if the important features were put in bad places and had some extra annoyances tacked on. I think the location of armored casting, Spellstrike, and Spell Combat are bad. It pretty much forces the Red Mage to choose between being a knock off frontliner or a knock off mage for the first two levels(or only one if you burn Quick Learner to get Mage Armor just to be able to fight on the front lines) because they can't cast in armor. The next best option, Protect, isn't even worth the MP cost due to its next to no duration. I also want to point out that Spell Combat is practically worthless at a -4 making the first Red Magery more of a tax than anything else if you want to actually do the thing you're features are geared for. It's kind of crazy to me that the Magus features are purposefully placed to make early casting and cutting as annoying as possible. Other than that, it just seems like a cut of Magus with extra stuff sprinkled in. A couple of note though are that they really should treat a hand holding a shield as free for the purpose of somantic components- otherwise only unarmed or natural weapon Red Mages can use shields properly with casting.And they should be able to use light shields while casting too.) One last thing that sticks out to me is that it's kind of odd that their signature feature, Dualcast is only usable twice per day at most.