Jump to content

Would you rather be a mistborn, a surgebinder or a full shardbearer?


Zmaray

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Just because a power is very well defined doesn't automatically mean it's easier to defend against. Mistborn and Windrunners can use many objects in their environment, and that versatility makes it harder to defend against even if you know what the power can do. A Basic Lashing is more versatile than Steelpushing/Ironpulling in some respects, and less versatile in others. I'd consider the powers fairly comparable in terms of difficulty to defend against since you can't pull lashed items back to you, but you aren't limited by metal.

I'm not trying to say Surgebinding isn't extremely powerful, possibly more powerful than allomancy.  I also know that there's a lot about surgebinding we don't know about yet.  I just think that the metallic arts feel more scientific in that even though you think you know everything about the system, you really don't.  At the beginning of Mistborn, we thought there were only 10 metals, and only  later realized that there were more metals we didn't know about.  And even after we knew what all the metals did in feruchemy, we're learning about duralumin and nicrosil in BoM.  On Scadrial, it feel like there's been a continual process of discovering how the metallic arts work.  In surgebinding, meanwhile, everything has been discovered already.  Not in the books, but at sometime in Roshars past, the abilities of surgebindging were better known.  Instead of being a continual process of self discovery, there's a cycle involved; everything that the characters learn has probably already been learned before.  We don't know exactly what each Surge does, but once we learn what it does, I feel like there wont be more to discover.  Maybe my impression is wrong because we're so early in the Stormlight Archive series, but I just feel like allomancy and feruchemy is a better parallel to scientific discovery than Surgebinding is, and that's why I prefer the Metallic arts to Rosharan magic.  I don't think I got my point across very well in my last post and hopefully I explained myself better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel that we are in the same place in SA as we were when TWA first came out. We have 2/10 books read, (2.5 with Edgedancer) and there we had 2/9. Think about how much we knew about the metallic arts versus what we know now. We have a very long way to go, and LOTS to figure out about surgebinding.

That said, surgebinding for sure. I really love Elsecaller powers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, ILuvHats said:

Maybe my impression is wrong because we're so early in the Stormlight Archive series, but I just feel like Allomancy and Feruchemy is a better parallel to scientific discovery than Surgebinding is, and that's why I prefer the Metallic arts to Rosharan magic.

I suppose that's a fair comparison. I could throw around Fabrial-Tech as the Rosharan Magic most conducive to the scientific method if you wanted, but that's another discussion.

Although.. Fabrials can replicate all 10 Surges, so that's still kinda Surgebinding. It's just Surgebinding+  :)  But yea, I don't think either of us explained ourselves that well the first time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Full blooded mistborn any day of the week. Flinging sharp metal objects through the air and jumping off sky-scrapers?? The emotional manipulation is also very appealing. 

 

As a shardbearer your weapons and power are immediately visible and a factor in every interaction you have, cool abilities but not exactly subtle. You can't spot a mistborn just by looking at them! And then it's too late! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Chaos locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...