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I've been bothered by this for a while; Steelrunners are just too powerful. Even moving with a 20-50% extra boost to physical speed is a sizable edge in combat, but the true upper bound of steel Feruchemy (with no other supporting powers) is something like Mach 5 at sea level. That's 3,836 miles per hour, and since the fastest person who's ever been recorded ran about 27.5 mph (and only briefly at that), you can Tap your steel to become 139.5 times faster than him. . . I don't know about anyone else, but that feels a little OP- I don't care if you even have Atium vision, if your opponent is moving faster than you are able to counter, you are dead. In short, I'm 80% certain that Sanderson will nerf this power, just as with Hemalurgy. It would certainly make for a better story, and it means that it can be utilized more freely without concern for idiotic character choices needing to be made for the sake of plot. But, how would you go about nerfing it?

As I've been working on a Mistborn adaptation for D&d, I've been trying to balance Allomantic iron's and Allomantic steel's abilities. Problem is, I find this very, very hard to do. Any ideas for how Allomantic iron can be better in certain situations?

Steelrunners are a bit wonky in how they deal with physics (like F-iron); they are able to resist the force of the Gs put on their body from moving quickly, but aren't able to endure the extra heat caused by friction or air compression. The thing that I'm confused on right now is that F-steel is somewhat temporal in nature (i.e., they can even Allomantically burn their metals faster), which probably means their interaction with physical objects is similar to that of A-Bendalloy. Does this mean that if a Steelrunner punched an enemy while tapping 3x their normal speed that it still wouldn't hit with any more force than if they hadn't tapped speed, similar to how A-Bendalloy siphons off the extra energy of things that enter and exit it? What if they instead picked up a club and swung it at an enemy at 3x speed? It's not technically effected by their Feruchemy (F-steel being completely internal as opposed to A-Bendalloy), so the extra speed shouldn't be siphoned off no matter how Feruchemical speed works. But if this is the case, would the Steelrunner have to put 3x the strength into swinging it, making it much, much harder to actually use their speed? And if part of a Steelrunner's adaptation of their Spritweb to the use of steel Feruchemy is to enhance their strength to deal with this difficulty with interacting with objects at high speed, would this contribute to a Steelrunner's Feruchemical attribute being overall less efficient than other Feruchemical powers, as more Investiture must be siphoned off to deal with the consequences of using that power?

I was wondering something, I have always found the mecahnics of steel pushing somewhat vauge when I read, so I wanted to ask a couple questions. First, when you are burning steel you can see the blue lines, when you push on these lines does it take more steel? if not, can you just push on a ton of different objects to create a higher total net force out of a small amount of steel? Second, I have heard contradicting things on this, does the weight of the allomancer effect the strength of the push at all? if so does it just make the push stronger for the same amount of steel, or does it allow you to use more steel to push harder? Third, in the books it mentions that larger objects have larger lines pointing to them, and are easier to detect from further away, does this mean you can push harder on these large objects. At a longer range? and if so does this require a greater amount of steel, or does it just become more effeciant? Thank you!

I don't know if this is ever addressed, but can you use allomancy on carbon nanotubes? How about Mercury?

When Marasi uses the Bands of Mourning she literally creates a vacuum as a result of her moving so fast. Can a normal steel feruchemist or twin born, if they store enough power, achieve this affect? Or is it a special thing cause by the incredible amount of power in the metalmind?

So speed is a measurement of distance over time. Take 1 regular person and 1 steel Ferring, put them against each other in a 50 meter dash. Obviously the Steelrunner will win, but why? They won because they got a faster time, not because they traveled more distance. In that scenario the distance is 50 meters for both people. That doesn't change. The only thing that changes is the time it takes them. Steelrunners store personal time. on the flip side, I cannot picture in my head how someone would store distance, but idk I could be convinced. I am guessing there is someone smarter than me that can tell me why I am wrong about this

Atium let’s whoever is burning it see into the future. Steel compounding allows you to move at unimaginable speeds. Let’s say that a steel compounder saves up steel for years, hiding in his home. A Mistborn saves up atium for years. At the end of x amount of years, they both have a seemingly infinite amount of either speed or atium. (Technically a compounder doesn’t need to save up much speed, but for the scenario we will say they do. We are also going to assume that the Mistborn doesn’t have access to any of the other metals, just atium) I think that the steel compounder would beat the atium burner. Even if you can see into the future, that doesn’t matter if your enemy can move faster than you can react. Thoughts?

Invested objects resist other investiture. A big example of this is Feruchemical metalminds resisting being pushed. But Intent changes how things work. What if an allomancer wielded Nightblood, and communicated with him. Nightblood agreed to letting himself be pushed, so the allomancer tried. This is the conundrum. An invested object resists being pushed, but has given its consent and its Intent it to be pushed. What would happen?

Well, here I am again. Really hope this isn't annoying for any of you. So, I was looking around to see if anyone asked if an Allomacer can push or pull a Shardblade, and of course, I could not find a thread, and the Coppermind doesn't mention it as far as I'm aware. So I was about to assume that they can't be pulled or pushed similarly to metalminds. They have a hard time pushing or pulling something that's invested, and surly the blades count, being god metals of Honor, Cultivation, or a mixture of both. Then, I remembered that Atium is a god metal and there are plenty of examples of them being pulled or pushed. So it doesn't seem like being a god metal immediately disqualifies from being able to be pulled or pushed. So would Allomancers be able to push on Shardblades? And a little bonus question I thought while typing this, are god metals considered invested? Because the reason metalminds are hard to push is because of the investiture stored in them, and Atium does not appear to be resistant to pulls or pushes. So are god metals not technically invested? EDIT: Okay, so the answer for the above questions by Brandon Sanderson himself is no, it's very difficult to push or pull god metals and they are basically pure Investure (read threads below). HOWEVER, this brought up a different question/theory about the nature of Atium, which is a God metal that can be pushed and pulled with relative ease, which contradicts what Bradon Sanderson said about Godmetals. My first reaction was that it was made fairly early on and Brandon Sanderson didn't have certain things figured out, so we should ignore Atium/ consider it an outlier when figuring out the properties of god metals. But then I remembered that Atium was Brandon Sanderson's way of introducing Fortune to the Cosmere, and that in the Feruchemy table, Investure and Fortune are considered separate, so rather than being pure Investure, is Atium pure Fortune and that's why it's properties don't follow with other god metals? (Another note, if it is Fortune, it may have been a purposeful play by Preservation to limit Ruin's foresight, which may be a big factor in his plan, as Ruin's foresight has been accepted as not as good as other Shards like Cultivation, Preservation, and maybe Endowment.)

I don't know if this has been answered before but. We've never actively seen a feruchemist warrior nor have we seen what a terris army would look like. So my question is how could the powers of feruchemy best be used in training/battle scenarios? Also what is possible while storing. I always thought if a feruchemist soldier wanted to really train themselves to be effective they'd train their bodies to a certain point that they're confidently stronger and more fit than the common man. Then constantly store 10% of their attribute say lhysical strength. Then theyd go and train while storing. I'm using pewter as a placeholder since it's the easiest. But say a youre storing in pewter and then you start training physically while in that stored state. Does your base strength go up as you get used to training and working out in that state to the point where you're just as efficient in that state as your normal state? Because if that was the case then a feruchemical soldier would be extremely potent. Being in a constant storing state but having trained themselves to be just as effective as they are normally. Then when they need to win just tap a little bit of the attribute they need and they're instantly out of anyone's league that they're fighting. Anyways just a little thought that I had.

Feruchemic steel can store speed, everyone knows that. And speed affects many aspects of body, because body of feruchemist automaticly gain ability to withstand stress during taping metalmind. So taping Steelmind increases speed of mouvment, but also perception, thinking and reflexes. I remember also that increased metabolism has negative effect - they need eat more (like Flash - but i cant find WoB). So my question is - Is F-Steel increasing also regeneration speed? Not like "normal" Investiture healing, but more physical, by increasing speed of cells growth? Is Steel Compounder able to heal faster, not of course on Gold level, but more like A-Pewter level?

There's been a fair amount of discussion about steel compounding on these forums as one of the most exciting forms of Twinborn. The general consensus (with support from Word of Brandon: wob.coppermind.net/events/93-odysseycon-2016/#e2695 ) is that a steel compounder could feasibly run at incredible speeds while being magically protected from many of the consequences for an extended period of time. So I decided to do the math on what it would look like for a steel compounder running at 10x normal speed (well within what Bleeder does in Shadows of Self, I think). Here's what I found: Imagine our Steelborn throwing a ball. Now, an ordinary person throwing a ball has their arm swing through a distance (call it 1 m) in a certain time and releases with a certain final velocity (call it 25 m/s for fairly ordinary humans - thats ~50 mph). Now, our Steelborn is moving 10x as fast, which I take to mean he takes 1/10 the time from start of throw to release. That implies he has 10x the release velocity (also what we expected). But he accelerated a ball to 10x the speed in 1/10 of the time of an ordinary human and acceleration = velocity/time (for constant acceleration of an object from rest, a decent approximation here), which means the Steelborn's ball has 100x the acceleration. F = ma, so either the ball had 1/100th of the mass, or our Steelborn applied 100x the force. Option 1: Changing strength Let's assume the ball's mass didn't change for now. Our Steelborn needs to apply 100x the force, which means our Steelborn needs to be 100x as strong as normal. It gets better. Our Steelborn has 100x the strength of an ordinary man and can run 10x as fast. Power = Force x Velocity, which means our Steelborn has 1000x the power output. If an ordinary human can output 300 Watts, our Steelborn can output 300 kW, or 400 horsepower. Of course, with 100x the strength, our Steelborn will need his tendons, ligaments, bones, etc. reinforced by 100x to avoid his enhanced strength tearing himself apart (see WoB above). Human skin normally has about 20MPa tensile strength, so a 100x increase puts us close to Kevlar's 3000 MPa tensile strength. His maneuverability with A-steel remains unaffected, though. There's no reason to assume his Steelpushes have enhanced strength, so he can't Push a coin any faster or Push himself off a skyscraper any quicker. (F = ma.) But the truth is, he hardly needs this. With 10x throwing speed, an ordinary 25 m/s pitch turns into a 250 m/s projectile (9mm pistol rounds travel at ~300 m/s, or ~1000 fps). With 20 bullets a throw and assuming he can get off 5 throws/sec, that means he is putting out the equivalent of 100 pistol rounds/second. (World War II machine guns fired ~10 rounds/sec.) He'd have to be aware of the recoil, though: he's not any heavier to absorb it! It's not all upside, though. Even with 10x the top speed and 100x the strength, our Steelborn is limited by the friction between his feet and the ground, which hasn't changed. Unless he can push off of something, he can't accelerate (or turn) at anything more than about 10 m/s^2. If he's moving at 10x an ordinary run speed of 4 m/s, and remembering that turning radius = velocity^2/acceleration on turns, we have turning radius = (40 m/s)^2/10 m/s^2 = 16 m. No hurtling around tables for him. Actually, I don't think he would run at all. With 100x the strength, each footfall would propel our Steelborn high into the air. I suspect he would move like astronauts walking on the moon instead. Option 2: Changing mass + gravity But all that doesn't match up with what Bleeder does in Shadows of Self. So instead of assuming that our Steelborn gets stronger, let's assume that our Steelborn's mass decreases to 1/100th of normal instead. 50 kg -> 0.5 kg. Additionally, the acceleration due to gravity must increase by 100x to leave the total force due to gravity unchanged to prevent him from bouncing high into the air with each step. Now, our Steelborn has the same strength and the same amount of traction (since he has the same weight as before) but 1/100th of the mass. F = ma, so that gives him 100x the acceleration. Hairpin turns are no problem: running at 40 m/s he has the same turning radius as an ordinary human running at 4 m/s (since turning radius = velocity^2/acceleration = 4^2/10 = (4x10)^2/(10x100)). Jumping is fine too: our Steelborn has 10x the takeoff velocity but 100x the downward acceleration. Jumping height = v^2/2g, so the effects cancel, leaving him able to **jump the same height as an ordinary human**. However, air time = 2*v/g, so he has 1/10th the air time, which is again what we expect. His maneuverability with A-steel is enhanced too. There's no reason to assume his Pushes have changed strength, so F = ma says with 1/100th the mass, his Pushes give him 100x the acceleration. The increased gravitational acceleration won't cause problems because the total gravitational force is unchanged. Additionally, he no longer needs Kevlar skin, as he hasn't gotten any stronger. Since his body has so little mass, his insane accelerations will result in the same forces on him as usual. He won't black out either. Clearly, the mass reduction and gravity enhancement must extend to the Steelborn's clothes, guns, coins, etc. Otherwise, carrying a 1 kg pistol when he himself has a mass of only 0.5 kg would reduce his maneuverability to 1/3 of expected, but we see Bleeder think nothing of Steelrunning with pistols. The problems begin, however, when we consider him throwing something. What happens when coins leave his hands and return to normal mass? I see three scenarios: 1. Coins return to normal mass but velocity unchanged. They increase in both momentum (p = m*v) and energy (KE = 1/2m*v^2). This gives him tremendous firepower: he can throw coins at 10x ordinary speed and 10x the rate, exactly as described above. His pistol rounds travel at 10x speed too: muzzle velocity = sqrt(2*d*a), so since 1/100th the mass -> 100x the acceleration by F = ma, bullets have 10x the muzzle velocity. To top it off, he's immune to bullets: incoming bullets are reduced to 1/100th of their mass upon hitting him. 2. Coins are reduced to 1/100th speed. This satisfies Conservation of Momentum: p = m*v, so if mass increases by 100x to return to normal, velocity decreases to 1/100th. Since KE = 1/2m*v^2, their energy decreases to 1/100th (losing energy is more permissible than gaining it at least!). His coins are reduced from 250 m/s on leaving his hand to 2.5 m/s - 1/10th of an ordinary throw speed. This affects bullets too: they have 10x the muzzle velocity initially, but as soon as they stop touching him, they are reduced to 1/100th of the speed. The net effect is to reduce a 300 m/s pistol bullet to a 30 m/s one. Our Steelborn's problems get even worse when we consider bullets striking him: they are suddenly accelerated to 100x their velocity, satisfying Conservation of Momentum, but resulting in a 100x increase in bullet energy since KE = 1/2m*v^2. 3. Coins are reduced to 1/10th speed. This satisfies Conservation of Energy: KE = 1/2m*v^2, so a 100x increase in mass is balanced by 1/10 velocity, but doesn't satisfy Conservation of Momentum. His throwing speed is unaffected, since coins leave his hands 10x faster than normal, but then are reduced to 1/10 speed, or normal throwing velocity. The same applies to pistol bullets. Bullets striking him are reduced to 1/100th mass but have 10x the velocity, leaving their energy again unchanged. Of all the options, I think 3 fits the best. Our Steelborn cannot throw or shoot at crazy speeds with F-steel - though he can still put out huge numbers of bullets and Push them to deadly speeds with the help of A-steel. Now that we have established how he (roughly) interacts with objects, much of his power depends on how far this field extends. Does it affect a bike he rides? A car he drives? A train? I suspect the explanation invokes his Connection to an object and the object's own Identity, but I see no evidence for how. The TL;DR The best match with Shadows of Self is that you can't change your strength with F-steel: you obtain crazy speeds by reducing mass and increasing gravity while permitting your muscles to operate at higher speeds. (This pairs well with F-Iron: both manipulate mass.) Anything you throw is reduced in speed and increased in mass when it leaves your hands. This gives enhanced maneuverability and speed without crazy firepower. Thoughts?

Hi all, I'm a huge fan of Brandon's work, and I've been reading the Mistborn books, so I thought I'd make a bit of fan-art. Enjoy

My question for you all is, are there advance skills in steel pushing and Iron pulling that we haven't seen yet. I have a few ideas on abilities that steel and iron allomancy should be able to do. Create steel and iron lines not from one center of gravity. Allomancers can see non metallic objects due to the trace metals in those objects. This is due probably to a change in perception (as we know that perception can limit or expand on a magic users abilities). So if the Allomancer is able to trick him/her self into thinking say their hand is their center of gravity, then I see no reason that the can't the blue line come form there. Bend or twist the blue lines. Again this will hinge on whether perception can interfere in an allomancers ability with there metal. If an Allomancer perceives that the blue don't have to all ways be straight then they should be able to make them bend or twist. This will mean that then can push or pull on an angle. what other abilities that you think allomancers should be able to accomplish but are can't because they are putting artificial limits on themselves.

So, completely unrelated to Cosmere work, I was doing some research into the nature of metallurgy, specifically carbon structures in steel, and came up with a problem that I haven't seen answered before. It has been well established that allomantic alloys must have precise percentages in order to be effective. For true metallic alloys such as bronze, pewter, and brass, this is not a problem, as the alloy process involves combining the elements involved by heating the components to liquid form. But steel is a problem. Carbon does not liquefy, and often neither does the iron (depending on furnace technology) during the steel forging process. As such, carbon is not evenly distributed through the steel. In larger products, this is mostly irrelevant, as the distribution of the carbon crystal structures in the iron is even enough function. However, this idea falls apart when considering something as small as the metal flakes consumed by allomancers. Because steel is not fully liquefied like other alloys, these flakes cannot possibly have even distribution of carbon in them, and thus will not match the perfect ratio necessary for allomantic efficacy, or even safety as it is strongly implied and in some places stated outright that a bad alloy can kill an allomancer when they burn it. Has this issue been addressed before and I just missed it? What are your thoughts on it? It seems a pretty large hole in one of the key rules of allomancy to have gone completely unnoticed, and I was quite surprised to not find anything on the topic.

I've been playing around with ideas as to how to overcome atium, and I've thought that perhaps a feruchemist tapping steel would be able to exploit the fact that atium still relies on your reactions. An allomancer burning atium would see your atium shadow, but if a feruchemist were tapping enough steel then perhaps they would be able to move too fast for even the enhanced mind that atium provides to comprehend. I got this idea when I was reading Sazed's fight with Marsh. There was a point where he was moving too fast for Marsh to react, so perhaps if he were to use that same technique, but tapping more steel, on someone burning atium then perhaps it would work. I welcome your thoughts.

So I was wondering I were a Mistborn and there was a long iron girder in front of me when I burn steel would I see a single Allomantic line leading to this beam or would there be lines along its length. Would I be able to push the beam at a single end or would I only be able to push on its centre of mass? Random question but I just wondered

Well, here goes nothing. So, there has been quite a bit of discussion about how steel feruchemy works, and I am going to try and put together a bit on how I think it might work, why, the problems with it working in this manner, etc. I know this has been discussed before; I am trying to put it all in one place, I don't want to necro, and I want people to start talking about this again. To start, steel feruchemy stores physical speed, supposedly. When you store it, you go slower, and it has been described as feeling like 'moving through molasses'. When you tap, you go at much higher speeds than normally possible, including feats such as running faster than late 20th century automobiles, shooting several people in one room, from different angles, in a small enough space of time that it sounds like only one shot was fired, and dodging bullets. How I propose to suggest it works is thus; when you store speed, you are storing a percentage of the speed at which you do things. Not muscular speed, or the speed at which your metabolism works. At least not technically. The second is close, but only to the effect that your body has more speed, not that it is going faster. Speed is a function of Distance/Time. To go slower/faster, you must either increase/decrease distance, or decrease/increase time. I propose we decrease/increase time. This would fit most of the usual parameters of feruchemy. You store a percentage of something for a set amount of time; you get back the same percentage for the same amount of time. The quicker you burn, the faster you go, for the shorter period of time. This would solve most of the problems with friction with the ground, running into things, etc. Because you are technically moving at the same speed you normally would, only with more time to run in, running into things should effect you normally, while the things you hit would be hit by something moving in twice the amount of time they are(twice the speed?), which would mean that they are being hit by something moving twice as fast, while you are being hit by something in half the time as you are (half the speed?). This would also explain the problems with storing it, especially if you have a lot to do, as Sazed did.If you are literally storing time, it's going to take a while to store anything meaningful. And it would never be worth it to store speed to go faster later, unless you have some empty days before packed days. Other than that, it will always be end-neutral. It would also solve most of the problems with cornering, and stopping, aside from some possible road/rug/floorburn. It even loves the problem with continuing with speed while jumping, as your momentum would carry with you. This would work because you are still moving twice as fast, because S= D/T, so when you jump, you will retain the same S, to some extent. It would be very interesting to see someone fall while tapping F!Steel though, as they would experience it more slowly, while falling at the same speed. Also, there are very few WoB's about F!Steel, which makes this all based on speculation. Also, I am not a physics major, so this is all based on whatever I have left in my head from years of liking this kind of thing. The problems... This does not explain things like not having to eat while you are using it, as I am pretty sure Sazed did in the HoA. Air friction might still be a problem, but not until you hit extremely high speeds, at which point it would be a problem anyway. There are still a few problems with friction, heat, etc. There are also a bunch of places where this has already been discussed, most of which I have read. I will provide them for context: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/48947-steelrunning-secondary-powers-what-kind-of-imbalanced-broken-power-is-that/#comment-354409 http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/53664-sazeds-waste-of-steel/#comment-423200 http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/53168-why-is-it-difficult-to-store-speed/?page=3#comment-408019 http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/54107-bleeder-using-feruchemical-steel/#comment-434023 http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/49981-feruchemical-steel-suspended-animation/#comment-363373 http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/23414-what-specifically-is-the-deal-with-feruchemical-steel/#comment-231088 http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/3459-feruchemical-steel-physical-or-temporal/#comment-55569 If you can think of more links, I will edit them in, and if there are holes, I will be very happy to discuss them. I know there are problems with this theory, and I don't mind them being pointed out.

So, basically, I was just wondering if there is a definite answer to this question; How does Steel Feruchemy work? The title really says it all. I've looked around, but have not found a definite answer, and was wondering if anyone knew. If not, I have an idea, but I'd like to make sure that there is not another, correct answer, before I make a fool of myself in the Cosmere Theories section.

Say you had a big iron statue, could a mistborn go and push on the head of the statue while pulling only the legs? Can an allomancer pull/push on only one part of a metal object while leaving the rest alone? I'm thinking that with practice, they could. I feel like it would be similar to using a piercing as an allomantic reserve (Which I'm pretty sure we have a WoB on) Thoughts? Opinions?

So at the end of Calamity, David's dad says the steel transfersion powers were a lot more usable than David thought. Any thoughts how?