Kuldak

My understanding of plate was that it wasn't a multiplicative increase of the user's strength, it just effectively increased their strength to a set point which was several times stronger than a normal person. A weak person in plate would be effectively as strong as a stronger person in plate, this was one of the reasons why Dalinar gave his plate to Renarin, so that his weaker constitution wouldn't hold him back in battle, and why Dalinar was still able to continue to operate at the level he was despite his increasing age.

Just so I'm clear on the parameters of the question, we are assuming two highly skilled spear fighters with the exact same experience/skill, and the only variables are Alomantic Pewter vs Passive Stormlight (healing, speed, etc, but no lashings). No Shards - Would depend on how much stormlight/pewter is allowed, but I would probably side on stormlight. Pewter seems to grant more physical strength than stormlight, but passive stormlight seems to provide similar agility boosts, and similar if not better stamina improvements while they are holding stormlight. If the pewter user can damage them enough while not taking too much damage they could win, but with the skill/agility/stamina being even I see it as mostly a wash in terms of number of strikes getting through on each side, and while pewter does allow them to push through the pain, it does not completely negate the damage the way stormlight does. Shardblade (I'm going to assume this is in spear form since Kaladin is by no means skilled with a sword) but no plate: Stormlight wins, as stormlight can heal a shardblade wound, pewter cannot. Plate but no shardblade: Giving this to stormlight as well. The plate negates most if not all of the benefits of pewter over stormlight, and the stormlight user would have more stormlight to power their plate, so would win in a battle of attrition. With all shards - similar to the With Plate only fight above, the benefits of pewter are largely negated by the plate, and the stormlight user wins through attrition. Plus they would have the ability to heal from shardblade wounds if they still had stormlight at that point. Largely this boils down to the healing provided by passive stormlight allowing them to shrug off blows better than the pewter user and winning through attrition. That being said, there is always a chance in any of these fights that a lucky blow could happen, especially in fights with shardspears, so it is not a 100% to either side, but by and large stormlight healing is too large a gap to overcome.

A couple clarifying questions/concerns. Are we restricting Cosmere magics to what we have seen/can be reliably assumed based on the last written book from each world, or are we giving the Cosmere access to "Theoretically possible" feats, but that we have not actually seen in any book, or is lost knowledge. An example would be lightweavers being able to manipulate radio waves, since as of RoW none of the radiants even know what radio is, much less how to manipulate it. Another example would be advanced uses of Hemalurgy. Currently Scadrial knows a very limited subset of what is possible with Hemalurgy, but in theory, Scadrial would have access to create millions of Steel Inquisitors or even more powerful beings if they had access to the more advanced Hemalurgic techniques. The other issue is in regards to your population increase of magic users perhaps needing rebalancing. For example on Scadrial, by increasing the population to earth numbers (~8 Billion) and the number of metalborn from 0.1% of the population to between 50-75%, that would by extension proportionally increase the number of twinborn and natural compounders to a ridiculous degree. Lets say that Southern Scadrial has about the same population as the basin, ~15 million, for a total population of ~30 million on Scadrial. If we also assume that Miles was the only living gold compounder on Scadrial, and he was statistically proportional (1 out of 30 million). If you then increase the percent of the population of metalborn to 50%, then statistically there should now be around 500 gold compounders. If you then increase the population from 30 million to 8 billion, you are now looking at potentially over 130,000 natural gold compounders. The population issue only gets worse when we expand to other worlds with more powerful individual magic users, the numbers you mention would put it at BILLIONS of Radiants or Elantrians. I know the population change was to try to balance the earth's population/tech level, but this change puts it way too far on the Cosmere side, Earth would stand no chance based purely on numbers.

Clearly you're forgetting about the magical 10 year gap in which the radiants gain hundreds of 4th ideal members, everyone masters their powers beyond even what the old orders could do, and Dalinar and Navani become Bondsmith Santa and Mrs. Claus, delivering free fabrials and unlimited stormlight to all the good little boys and girls of Roshar. On a more serious note, I agree, this conversation is getting pointless, and filling with more and more bad faith arguments (on each side in all fairness). At the end of the day, Roshar can't get stormlight or radiants off world by the TLM (confirmed by WoB). Without them Roshar has no chance at all of beating Scadrial off world, even discounting any and all metalborn. Automatic weapons and artillery would tear through their armies, it would be a massacre. Scadrial on the other hand would struggle just dealing with the environment of Roshar. Hurricane level storms hitting their army and supply lines every 10 or so days on what is essentially an entirely stone landscape, is not something they would really be ready or capable of handling for purposes of an invasion. They would almost certainly retreat before ever even engaging Roshar's armies. There we have it, no side can successfully invade the other, and any fight off-system goes to Scadrial because Roshar has no radiant/fabrial assistance. Glad this is over now.

I haven't read it, which is my bad on using a hypothetical from it, but that was only a hypothetical example. It really doesn't matter what the spoiler is, it could be a power, or ability, or name, or a place, or literally anything, none of which requires Taln to be around. Non-canon sources should not be used as the primary evidence to prop up theories, full stop. Do I personally think he will be dead by the end of SA5? No, but then again, I personally believe Dalinar is going to lose and that the radiants and possibly a large portion of the non-singer population are going to be refugees by the end of SA5. Trains are a fine example, the whole point was that it wasn't cost effective for regular people, I purposefully chose an example that was wildly cost inefficient to further the point. The whole point was that the existence of an item or service that can be used by "regular folk" for a price does not mean that they can afford to outright own one on their own. A person with the means to outright purchase an item does so, and then supplements that cost by renting out usage of the item to people who can't afford to own one themselves, it's the entire basis of large chunks of our economy. This shouldn't even be something that is being argued. The officers in Dalinar's army are nobles, of course they can afford them. That does nothing to prove that regular people will be able to afford them. To put a reminder of the scope of wealth inequality we are talking about, in WoK, Moash says that ~2 Emerald Broams, was "More money than I've ever seen," and his family were silversmiths in Kholinar, not what you would generally call a poor profession. Kaladin's father had a goblet of 100 diamond broams. It was a "small fortune" by their measure, an amount of money that secured Kaladin's future, and could pay for the travel, living expenses and years of training by world renown surgeons, quite literally a life changing amount of money for a family one step down from the highest caste a darkeyses can obtain. Shallan paid more than that for just 7 books at a random bookshop in Kharbranth. Are you insinuating that Roshar's fabrial technology influenced Scadrial's technological development? Otherwise that has absolutely no baring on the discussion. Roshar has had thousands of years since their last civilization collapse, Scadrial has had a little over 300 years since theirs. The fact that Scadrial is only at best a few years behind Roshar on some discoveries (and decades to centuries if not more ahead in others) is astonishing, and shows why Autonomy is concerned with Scadrials rate of advancement. I strongly doubt Autonomy "did most of it" it is contrary to Autonomy's whole philosophy to do that. What I think is much more likely is Telsin, or whoever was talking to Autonomy, was shown things that are possible, but not the actual mechanisms to do it. While it is by no means nothing, and shaves years off development from going down false paths, saying "you can use controlled explosions to propel objects hundreds of miles" is different than giving the chemical formula for rocket fuel, and blueprints for a rocket. The Set itself were not just Autonomy's puppets, they also had some of the top scientists dedicated to advancing their various projects. They weren't just handed the answers, otherwise why wouldn't they have completed the rockets? Are you saying that Autonomy just handed them aluminum weapons, radio, motion pictures, and hemalurgy, but then just forgot to give them the last chapter of "Rocket Science for Dummies?" Which is why I didn't say "all" my point still stands though 2 of the major nations behind the development of Fabrials are in no state to be furthering the development of fabrials. As for Navani, no she isn't going to give up Fabrials, but she is likely going to have to rethink how they develop fabrials. What if she were to discover that splitting gemstones, like for making spanreeds was literally torture for the spren inside, would that change how she moved forward? The Sibling sees fabrial science as exactly that, the imprisoning and torturing of spren, would Navani just disregard their opinion and continue on the same way she had been? Would the Sibling even remain bonded to her if that was the case? Like it or not, the Sibling's opinion on fabrials is going to have a large effect on the future of fabrial development. I disagree with the semantics of this, but I don't feel it's worth starting yet another tangent on. So instead they use one of probably thousands of combinations of spikes/points that so thoroughly ruin someone's spirit web that it could not be repaired fast enough to keep them alive from the damage. The goal isn't to take a radiant's power to use for their own, the goal is to kill or otherwise disable the radiant. One thing all the hemalurgy explanations agree on, is that if not done correctly, it almost always causes devastating if not outright fatal results. What would happen if a Radiant were spiked into a Koloss, how would that affect their bond. What if their intelligence, strength or senses were spiked out, would that disable them long enough to completely kill them? Yes the wounds, even to their spirit web could potentially be healed to a degree, but it would take a lot of stormlight, and more importantly, time to recover.

I believe the agreement between Dalinar and Odium was that even if Dalinar wins, Odium would only retreat to territories he currently controlled, giving up Alethkar and Herdaz, and telling the singers to stop further expansion/aggression. Depending on how Taravangian wants to interpret that, with his forces holding the perpendicularity and the areas around it, he may consider that territory he controls, and thus, win or lose, he would control Cultivation's perpendicularity. As far as the oathgates go, even if the Radiants are allowing relatively open travel from Shadesmar through them, each trip would have to be facilitated by a Radiant, and the Ghostbloods may not like having to effectively go through customs if they want to enter Roshar that way, especially since last we heard Shallan was planning on hunting them down.

You have no reference to what the spoiler is. It's quite possible that what is spoilery is seeing a PoV on Braize, and you don't need a living Taln to have flashbacks to his time on Braize. Using Prime to confirm your theory is like using a RAFO answer to confirm it, "He RAFO'd that means that something is there, so clearly this is true" Common soldiers being able to afford to send messages is in no way indicative at all of the relative availability of spanreeds to the general population, and likely works in conjunction with standard message delivery. I can afford to ride a train, it does not mean I can afford to own a train, or that there is a train stop at every home. The same goes for most of those fabrials, I can't remember any examples of a "common" person owning a fabrial who wasn't either wealthy themselves, or in the direct employ of someone or some group with significant wealth. Scadrial also has a technological equivalent to pretty much all of those with the exception of Teleportation, which you can't even credit to modern Roshar, as nobody knows how to recreate them. And by and large are more available to the common people than their fabrial equivalent. Most of which was done without any involvement from Autonomy. On a side note has it been established how much or little knowledge Autonomy provided, I had the impression that Autonomy was big on, "Do it on your own without help", and providing meaningful instruction on inventions seems contradictory to that. Back to Fabrials, half of those you listed were also devised by one person (or by their think tank), and that person is now in a major ethical conflict, as the sibling REALLY does not like modern fabrials, and considers them imprisoning of "living" beings. You don't think that is going to affect her thought process and cause her to rethink her previous methodology? Also the major centers of Fabrial development were in Alethkar and Jah Keved, both of which are currently in the hands of the singers, who have a much different relationship with spren, and would also likely have moral objections to trapping them in gems. You wouldn't need to specifically steal the Nahel bond to disable radiants, Aluminum spikes remove ALL powers. While the spren could re-initiate the bond soon after, if this was happening in a fight, the sudden loss of power would likely result in the radiant's death. Not saying it would be easy, especially on some of the orders, but if you have someone like a steel ferring, it could in fact be a viable way to deal with some radiants. "When in doubt, jam an aluminum spike in it" would not necessarily be a bad policy when fighting opponents with magical powers, known or otherwise, so long as they are willing to cross the moral line and put hemalurgic warfare is on the table. On a separate note, I am curious what the effects of a leecher grenade would have on a spren. Leecher grenades drain investiture in an area, Spren are pure investiture, would that potentially harm or even kill a spren directly?

Between Scadrial and Roshar, Roshar is MUCH, MUCH less likely to unify. In fact we KNOW that Roshar wouldn't unify when faced with a massive invasion threatening to wipe them out, because exactly that happened, and the only nations to unify were Alethkar, Herdaz (Both of which are currently occupied nations ruling in name only from remote location), Thaylenah, Azir, Jah Kaved and Kharbranth (both of which went in with the express purpose of betraying the alliance). The existence of a some groups wealthy enough to afford a spanreed (in a warcamp more populated that most cities on Roshar, containing a large portion of the nation's wealth and nobility) willing to use it to make money off common soldiers is hardly indicative of their availability to regular people. Common people on earth could pay to have a photograph taken of them in 1850, but actual widespread ownership of cameras didn't happen until well into the 1900s. Prime is still not canon, and should not be used as evidence to confirm a theory. No, even if they knew exactly where it was (which they most definitely do not) the pressure and temperature in the depths would quickly drain any stormlight (or voidlight) they brought. Without direct shardic intervention, WoB, or direct canonization, Nergaoul should be considered inaccessible. Nergaoul showing up is even less likely than a fully charged Bands of Mourning showing up on Scadrial's side. I am willing to bet, based on percent of population, that more people have risen from the lowest classes to the high classes in the last 300 years on Scadrial than on Roshar. As in they themselves moved up, not their family through generations of work. Knowing one (or several) hemalugic bindpoints that have been documented and thoroughly tested by others, is not the same as not only discovering, but mastering an entirely new way to use a power that only you have, when you are not even that familiar with it in the first place. Dalinar is not omniscient, nor does he know everything (in truth he knows almost nothing) about Bondsmith powers and how they interact with powers and beings he does not even know exist.

It doesn't "take over" people, from all descriptions it is a mindless force that does what is effectively a widespread riot of bloodlust, which I agree would normally have the potential to take over koloss/kandra/sufficiently spiked people, however it is a mindless force, it doesn't have a real will to direct them, it would just have them do what they were doing anyway, which is rage filled brutal combat. However it is currently sunk to the bottom of the ocean trapped in a perfect gemstone inside an aluminum box by the same group of people that is now fighting this hypothetical war. If you are saying that it is now free and able to contribute you are not arguing in good faith. Fabrials are by no means common outside of the wealthy, and things like soulcasters are on a similar level of rarity of shardblades. There is a massive gap between the POV characters and the "common people." Almost all of the POV characters live in close proximity to or are themselves highborn nobles. Most common people live very, very different lives. While I don't agree that they are all living in abject poverty awaiting the dream of freedom from some invading army that some seem to be suggesting, neither are they well off or educated. Lighteyes and higher Nahn darkeyes, sure, I would doubt that this covered a majority of the Alethi population though. The impression I get from Lirin's statement that him being second Nahn, and having the right of inquest, was that the other darkeyes in the town, being of lower Nahn, did not have this right. I could be wrong, but I haven't been able to find anything saying at which Nahn which rights were granted. Please stop assuming that Dalinar or any bondsmith will have mastery of every power or ability that has any connection component whatsoever. You have to know that is approaching the levels of absurdity of Wax replicating his splitting of harmonium, and mass producing lerasium mistborn. I think in this instance what they are saying is that rich and powerful people will often find ways to exploit the laws regardless of the system, nation, or even world. The fact that one nobleman exploited the legal system through bribes/favors, does not mean that nobles can run around killing anyone they like with impunity.

One thing about this discussion that I really never liked is giving Roshar 10 years of speculative advancement without giving similar speculative advancement to Scadrial. I know they are ~10 years apart in the cosmere timeline, but this is already a hypothetical "what if" scenario, far outside the scope of possibility, so pausing/advancing time for one side and making it an "end of RoW vs end of TLM" type encounter is hardly impossible. Speculating what Roshar MAY have discovered in 10 years (which in this discussion I have often seen drift towards 10 years to specifically prep for fighting Scadrial off world), leads to a lot of "we have WoB that this is theoretically possible (if you ignore the context of WoB), so of course they have not only discovered it but mastered it in 10 years." We already know that one of the major advancements many were assuming earlier in the thread (before the WoB on it) is false, Radiants have not discovered a way off system while keeping their powers by the time of TLM. The simple fact is that nobody but Brandon and his inner circle have any way of telling what happens in 10 years time on Roshar, and any theoretical future state, is simply a fan fiction version of Roshar. This makes it hard to have a real discussion as 20 different fan fiction versions of Roshar are all being argued for simultaneously, ranging from somewhat likely to preposterous in what they are claiming Roshar knows or has access to. I know the whole point of these discussions is speculation and theorizing, but I feel that having both "Roshar's military vs Scadrial's military" and "What do you think Roshar will look like in 10 years" discussions at the same time is muddying the waters a bit. I also feel that if you absolutely must have a decade of speculative advancement, only giving it to one side in this theoretical war is quite one sided, and makes it hard to debate the merits of one side vs the other when one side is effectively restricted to canon, and the other is often wild speculation.

It is clearly quite possible to move around in Scadrial's CR given the amount of trade and travelers we see to and from Scadrial. You have the exact same issue you do on Roshar in that the solid/liquid areas are inverted, and you have to have some sort of boat to travel the mists/beads. They would almost certainly be using similar methods that all other CR travelers use to create their boats. In fact, given that feruchemists can directly invest metal objects, it would probably be pretty simple to make boats buoyant enough to transport others. Given what we know about modern Scadrial's CR (as astoundingly little as that is), as well as the Ghostbloods being functional on a cosmere spanning level, this seems like it is a largely solved issue by the time of TLM.

In fairness, what evidence do we have, for or against, the level of infrastructure in Scadrial's CR by the end of LM? The Ghostbloods seem to be based on Scadrial, and they are arguably one of the farthest reaching Cosmere wide organizations we've seen, they must have some form of infrastructure in place. We've seen evidence of trade, and possible small population relocations to Scadrial (Iriali like people mentioned in the broadsheets). Thus far Secret History is the only real experience we've seen of Scadrial's CR, and that was 300+ years ago, at a time when Kelsier had destroyed access to the only viable perpendicularity (which according to Hoid "Upended an entire mercantile ecosystem"), and a crazed shard was doing it's best to destroy the planet. I will admit that it is almost certainly not as robust as what you would find on Roshar, as there is to my knowledge no native CR population on Scadrial like Rosharan spren. At the same time, if we aren't considering a unified Roshar/Scadrial, one could argue that the larger spren cities/infrastructure would not be counted as Rosharan assets for purposes of this discussion, as the vast majority of the spren population at the end of RoW is not on the coalition's side, and some are activly hostile to them. Any developments post RoW is just as much speculation as the status of Scadrial's CR by the end of LM. We even have some evidence that by LM Roshar's CR may be less than hospitable, given the statement that Roshar is inaccessible to the Ghostbloods (there are plenty of other viable reasons why the GB may not have easy access to Roshar, this is just one branch of speculation).

I believe that we may have to purposefully ignore the WoB on this for the purposes of this discussion. The discussion started before that WoB, and if you remove the ability for Radiants to take their powers off-system, then Roshar is in for a bad time. Radiants are really the only thing keeping the army with machine guns from completely massacring the army with spears and (mostly) leather armor. In a similar way, it seems that most agree Scadrial invading Roshar wouldn't go well for them due to the logistical issues with highstorms on an invading army and the ability to resupply stormlight to Radiants so easily. In order for the discussion to really continue, one of those issues needs to be disregarded. Of the 2, handwaving radiants being able to leave the Rosharan system seems to have less complications than having to handwave all the logistical issues caused by highstorms to an army not used to them or what they would do to a "traditional" supply line. In all honesty I personally think the conflict should be over a theoretical, uninhabited world, contested by both sides for resource/relocation purposes, rather than an invasion of Scadrial or Roshar directly. That would put both worlds on even footing of having to maintain an off-world supply chain. It would also bypass the potential issues with the Radiant Oaths conflicting with yet another invasion of an inhabited planet and it's civilian population, this time as aggressors, rather than refugees. However the discussion seems to currently be set on a Rosharan invasion of Scadrial.

Wasn't Stormseat (The Shattered Planes) destroyed during Aharietiam, or possibly earlier, thousands of years before the Recreance? I don't see how, after thousands of years without problems, that destruction would suddenly start causing the connection issues we see after the Recreance. Sel is somewhat unique in how location based it's investiture is. Because the investiture is coming from the Cognative Realm, which has direct parallels to locations in the physical, rather than the Spiritual Realm (as on Roshar), which does not.

Stealing identity is Duralumin. Aluminum in Hemalurgy removes all powers, note this is different from stealing powers. I would assume that means that when spiked with aluminum (ie with intent), it will either suppress all investiture related powers while it is still in place, or just flat out permanently remove the powers. Removing someone's identity wouldn't give you access to someone's powers, and would likely have severe consequences if you started trying to spike someone else's identity onto yourself. Hemalurgy is currently a largely unknown black box of Cosmere Mad Science when dealing with anything beyond the very basic aspects of it. However I think that in the realm of this discussion we should assume no Hemalurgy, either in the possession of usable spikes, or ability to create spikes for either side. If you don't, you start getting just stupid levels of powers interacting in ways they aren't designed to, and can draw no real fair comparisons.