Tglassy

I've noticed the Member's Reputation Title for a while now, and how it changes, I assume, from how many likes or posts one has, but I can't find any information on them. And I have looked. I'm particularly interested in what the thresholds are for each title. Anyone have that information or can point me in the right direction?

I always assumed Pewter WAS a multiplier. In fact, Brandon's quote kinda shows it is. It roughtly doubles the strength for each muscle fiber. So if one person could bench press 100 lbs and another could bench press 200 lbs, then if both burned pewter, the first would be benching 200 and the second would be benching 400, and while flaring the first could get to 300 while the second could do 600. A Koloss Blooded, then, would be able to bench that much more while burning pewter. Same with a Pewter Compounder. Increase the muscle mass from feruchemical pewter, then burn pewter and you get double what you're pulling out of the metalmind. It makes it extremely efficient. I really wish Brandon would spend some time conversing about Pewter Compounding and the intricacies, cause there are a lot of little questions I have about it. I assumed Vin was "hitting harder" than Ham because she is smaller, so her force is going into a smaller area. It's the difference between punching a window, and hitting it with a spike. That itty bitty point on the spike is holding all the forcce for the punch, so it shatters the window, while punching it with your fist would require a lot more force to break it. That, and she weighs like 100 lbs soaking wet, but has the strength of a full grown man, so she can launch herself pretty high. And maybe she is also just better at pulling strength from the metal, so she gets a little more than most. I still see it as being a multiplier rather than just a static amount of strength pulled out. If it's just a static amount of strength, then it almost is a diservice to those who are already strong. Anyone with Pewter is already a match for anyone else, even if they bulk up. Why bulk up, then? Why bother? The gains are insignificant next to just burning some pewter.

The limitations regarding storage space is kinda moot, considering we've never seen a Metalmind in the books that has been full. Miles can store enough health in his dozens of gold pins so he never has to stop tapping health. Wax stores up years and years of weight in his Iron Bracers, so much so that he can make himself heavier than a building for a few moments, and he never once talks about "Oh, I filled that bracer, I guess I need another." And don't forget the Medallions. The Southern Scadrians store as much of their weight as possible for weeks or months at a time while flying, and never have to empty out their single iron coin. In fact, they never even mention "Oh, these metalminds are really full". So yeah, if anyone will be able to completely fill a metalmind, it would be a Compounder, but the amount of attribute that can be stored in a single bracer is likely more than we have seen used in the entirey of the series. It is enough to, effectively, grant the Compounder a large enough supply of that attribute that they have no fear of running out no matter how much they draw from it for the forseeable future. Example A: Wayne spent weeks storing up enough health to heal from three bullets. Miles eats bullets. And grenades. That blow up in his hand.

The time bubbles are powers that you'd have to be creative with to get any use out of. In a fight, Bendalloy is better, as you can issolate your enemies and fight them one at a time, or throw up a bubble and appear to almost teleport. Cadmium isn't as immediately useful, but there are cetainly uses for it if you're clever enough.

And with Multiple completely full Metalminds, the amount of attribute you get is insane. Maybe my "Lift a train" idea isn't so far fetched. Edit: I am knee deep in writing the First Part, which is a story of when Hank was a child. I've made his father a Copper Ferring, and his mother's father a Soother. He's a scrawny boy, loves playing sports with the other kids but just isn't that great, and has a strong protective streak, if not much common sense. Imma have his father take him to the village to get tested for Feruchemy, and then a scene or two later as he first learns how to store and tap Strength. I'll mix in some of his siblings in the scenes to see the family life. Then he'll face off against a bully that threw him across the field in the beginning of the story. It'll be short and sweet. Currently at 2,600 words, or roughly 11 pages. Should be roughly double that before this Part is done. Then I'll fast forward a number of years and see what happens then!

Hold the phone. Medallions. They..um...they kind of break this. I've been trying to figure out a maximum amount of attribute that could go into a metal...but I don't think it exists. Let me explain. When the Southern Scadrians fly in their ships, they use their Medallions to grant Iron Feruchemy. They are also, then, storing weight in the Iron coins. And they never stop. They just keep doing it, all day and every day, and can even trade coins. But no one ever mentions them pulling the weight OUT. Just putting it in. That suggests that...well...it suggests a couple things. One, it could be suggesting that the coins are essentially holding an infinite amount of weight. If that were the case, then there really IS no top level of Attribute that Hank could store. All he would need is a couple Pewter Bracers, and he could store as much as he wanted. A near infiinte amount. However, the second option is that it isn't really giving Iron Feruchemy, but allowing you to store your weight like Copper does. In other words, you put your weight into the medallion, then later you pull your weight out when you remove it. It doesn't store up weight as much as lets you go without it for a while. Kind of like the way the Medallions grant the power, but only while touching it. Either way, from what it appears, I was really, really underballing the amount of attribute a specific item can hold. And if you can compound, you can completely fill the metalmind, whereas anyone else would have a hard time doing that. I don't know if it's really worth determining exact amounts, to be honest. I doubt seriously Sazed fully filled those rings during that three day period. And I doubt he had fully filled his Pewterminds, even after a lifetime of storing Strength here and there. Who knows what the upper limit actually is. I mean, Miles tapped Health constantly. He had a good thirty or so gold nails embeded in his body, but each one probably wasn't that big. But he had enough to go for days, or maybe weeks, without recharging them, tapping health at a steady rate. He wasn't even afraid of blowing himself up. That probably didn't even dip his reserves. And we know by Wayne that even being shot a few times can drain a Goldmind quickly. So...I may just go on that assumption. That there really isn't a limit to how much attribute a particular item can store. And if there is, then bracers, or a breastplate as I was considering, can store so much as to, for all intents and purposes, be more than will ever be needed in any situation, including lifting a train and setting it on the tracks.

When talking about experimenting with Hemalurgy, I'm much less inclined. You can't help but cause pain, and while we know the soul reverts back to normal after death (as Koloss do), it's still horribly painful and disfiguring. Really, that area of hemalurgy has the oportunity to do some really horrific things in the Cosmere, particularly because...well...anyone could do it! If you know how to use a single spike to turn someone into an unthinking mindless dog thing, then you could do it to ANYONE. That's terrifying. So experimentation might need to be highly specialized. Of course, if the information on Hemalurgy gets you, every mad scientist in the basin will be working on it. That goes beyond simply stealing powers and giving them to other people.

I know, double posting, but this is a brainstorm thread. The math below might be confusing, but it makes sense to me. I did that wrong in the previous post. The DND math isn't right. So I made a graph on a spreadsheet to help me keep this straight. I was way off. So, DND stats aren't a 1-1 Ratio. Each point higher is an orderr of magnitude stronger. The difference between an 11 and 12 is musch lower than the differrence between an 18 and 19. So basically, it would cost one Unit to increase from 10 to 11, 11 to 12, and 12 to 13. But it would cost 2 Units to go from a 13 to 14 or 14 to 15. It would take 3 Units to go from 15 to 16, or 16 to 17, four for each of the next two, and finally 5 units to go from 19 to 20. That more accurately represents the increase each one gives. It's basically like this: What that means is that it would take 26 Units to go from a 10 in Strength to a 20 for an hour. it would cost 57 Units to go to a 25, like I believe Sazed was at. Which means, if the Bracers each hold 100 Units, and he went that high, he'd only be able to do it for a couple hours. it still kinda works, but it's a much, MUCH lower amount of time and takes a LOT longer to fill. And the Rings would grant 10 Units. Those 10 Units become 20 for half an hour, or 40 for fifteen minutes, so Sazed would get about ten minutes out of each Ring to keep his Strength at a 25, which was what would be needed fighting Koloss. K. Moving on. Recharging. I was contemplating someone with double Pewter, and how that would work. Yes, I know compounding is awesome. But it's more than that. So much more. Because he can Burn Allomantic Pewter at the same time you're tapping Feruchemical Pewter. Ok, so the more muscle someone has, the more strength they get from burning Pewter, right? It roughly doubles your strength, maybe triples. So what happens when you're also Tapping Pewter? So, there is a cap to how much Pewter you can carry on you. As before, when Hank gets his breastplate and all the Pewter bracers and rings, he can hold roughly 1,700 Units of Strength. But what happens when he taps all that Strength...and then Burns Pewter? It should double it, right? And even if he can't figure out how to separate Allomantic Strength from Normal Strength, to keep his Muscle Mass from getting too big, he should be able to...I don't know, filter it. So, if you get 10 times as many Units by burning a Pewtermind as what was put in, what happens if you burn that Pewtermind...while burning regular Pewter? You get the strength from the Pewtermind, but that strength is doubled by burning regular Pewter. So pour that into another Pewtermind, right? And do it again. Only this time, that Pewtermind has half the muscle mass associated with it. Do it again, and the next metalmind will have a quarter of the muscle mass increase. Do it enough, eventually, you've basically filtered out the Muscle Mass increase from the strength. Moving on. Hank will be able to hold roughly 1700 Units of Strength, and should always have Pewter burning in his system, which doubles that 1700's effectiveness, giving him 3400 Units of Strength. By the new math, the highest Hank can bring himself for an hour would be...roughly a Strength score of 126, for an hour, compared to a base 10. Now, he could pull more out at once, so that 1700 becomes 3400 for half an hour, 6800 for a quarter hour, 13,600 for fifteen minutes, 27,200 for seven and a half minuttes, 54,400 for three minutes and fifteen seconds, and finally 108,800 for about a minute and a half. Then doubled from burning Allomantic Pewter, to a total of 217,602. With that many points, that puts his max strength, no decay, at 934, compared the a normal person of 10. That gives him a lifting capacity of 28,000 lbs. Which is not enough for a Train Car. Boo. In order to lift a Train car, he would need over 8,000 Strength. To get that for one and a half minutes, he would need to have access to half a million full Units which he could pull out all at once for a total of 16 million points, with no Feruchemical decay and no muscle mass increase. The laws of diminishing returns is dead set against this happening. The math just doen't support my very cool scene. I may write it anyway. Sanderson's 0th Law. Go with what's cool.

Math Time! Ok, I want to work this out, and make sure I have things straight. I've started writing, and eventually I'm going to get to where he's experimenting with Pewter and what he can do as a Twinborn. In order to determine how much strength a single piece of pewter can hold, we need a unit. But a Unit isn't just an amount of strength, it's an amount per length of time. So i'm going to say Units Per Hour are the standard. I'm going to use DND rules here, so Average Man's Strength is 10, and the maximum Potential of a normal Human is a 20. One Unit of Strength is equal to 1 point of Strength per hour. So, if you store One Unit in a metalmind, you can increase your strength to 11 for an hour, or to 12 for half an hour, etc. I believe a Pewter Ring should be able to hold roughly 10 Units. So, when it is full, you could increase your Strength to 11 for 10 hours. Or to 20 for 1 hour. Or higher for even less time. It's at that point that you start losing movbility. Yes, yes, I know there's decay, but I'm not including Decay in my math right now. And to be honest, it might be a lot more than this. But I have to start somewhere. I'm going to assume that one Unit of Strength is equal, regardless of who donates it. A Unit of Strength from Ham is the same as Unit of Strength from Vin. However, it is much easier for Ham to store a Unit of Strength than for Vin to, because he has more muscle to work with to begin with. Ham's Strength was probably more like a 15, while Vin's would be closer to a 10. She was in no way a body builder. So if they were feruchemists, Ham could fill a metalmind a WHOLE lot faster than Vin could. This also means that a Ring can store the same amount of strength regardless of who is filling it, or how it is filled. The ring can store 10 Units. That's it. If you have a natural 20 in Strength, you could fill the whole thing in an hour by storing 10 Units for an entire hour. Note: Sazed takes two Pewter Bracers and fends off an army of Koloss for HOURS. This means that Bracers can hold many times what a Ring can. I mean, obviously, but still. I would say Sazed grew his Strength to at least 25 while fighting Koloss, becaus he was obviously stronger than any man ever would. No ordinary man could cave in a Koloss' head with a single punch. It just doesn't work like that. But Sazed did, which meanst he was pushing his body past what would normally be possible. And he did that for hours. And yes, he'd been storing up over a lifetime, but he'd been storing up over a lifetime in THE SAME TWO BRACERS. I'm going to assume that Bracers can store 100 Units. With 100 Units, one could add 15 points of Strength, going from a 10 to a 25, for 6.6 hours. If you include decay, that roughly fits with what happens in the books. I'm going to say one bracer can hold 100 Units, and Sazed had 2, but they weren't full. Remember, Sazed didn't have a lot of strength to begin with, so he wouldn't be able to store up much at any given time. When he did store, he probably wasn't storing even a single unit over the course of an hour. But this gives me a nice, round number to play with. Ok, so Rings are 10 Units, and Bracers 100. There will also be a Breastplate at some point that holds 1000 Units, but that's later. What this means is that with four Pewter Bracers (Two on arms, two on legs) and ten rings, a Pewter Feruchemist is limited to a maximum of 500 units of Strength. If he did Forarms and upper arms, he could get up to 700 Units. Addd in a Breastplate and it could get as high as 1,700. Which means, if there were no decay or loss of power and he didn't grow too big, he'd be able to increase his Strength up to 1,700 for an hour. By DND standards, that means he could lift 25,000 lbs for one hour. Or 50,000 for half an hour. 100,000 for fifteen minutes. 200,000 for seven and a half minutes. Or 300,000 for three minutes and fifteen seconds. That's how he lifts his train. And yes, I get decay, I get all that, I'm just doing some math. He'd only be able to do this once he learns how to store strength without muscle mass, anyway. But this, at least, gives me a baseline. With just the bracers and 500 Units of Strength, he could keep himself at a 20 strength (adding 10 points) for 50 hours without needing a recharge. That's max normal human potential sustained for two whole days, without needing a recharge. I'll talk about recharging on the next post. This one got a little long.

The entire premise of Vin’s life before Kelsior was that personal survival trumped all. Everyone will betray you, so don’t trust anyone. Make yourself look like a boy so no one will notice you. Hoard food and money. Don’t open yourself up. Survive. Living another moment is more important than anything, or anyone. So in the end, the fact that she was willing to give it up, to die, means she had finally thrown off that old yoke. Elend was her anchor. He was the first person she ever learned to trust, even before she trusted Kelsior. He was the antithesis of her brother. The one who would be kind to her regardless, who encouraged her to be herself and to live. So he became her focus instead of herself. It was all for him. That’s book 2. Until she learned to let him go at the end. A huge step for her. In book 3, She kept going because every minute she spent with him was a blessing. She kept working because his dreams had become her dreams. She wanted to squeeze out every moment of life they could have because she’d already given it up, and been at peace about it, so every extra moment was that much sweeter. And so, when he died, it was ok. He was gone. It isn’t that she’s a love sick person crying “He was the only reason I had left to live”. Those are the words she used, but not the context. She was saying there’s nothing holding her back from doing what was necessary. As long as Elend was alive, she would want to squeeze out every moment she could get with him. She would never have been able to kill Ruin, because she wouldn’t want to miss a moment with Elend. But once he was gone…that didn’t matter anymore. She could go, and it would be ok. Like letting down a burden. She could take the gloves off, save the world, and that would be that. She technically could have done that at any time before the end. As soon as she ascended, she could have killed Ruin and avoided all of that. Why didn’t she? Because of Elend. Elend had to die to free Vin to do what she needed to. Leras was an a-hole.

As Breeze has constantly stated, Soothing isn't mind control. You can't make someone do something they wouldn't already be willing to do. You just make it more likely that they'll do it by removing other conflicting feelings. The desire to sign away Allomancy must have already been there for it to work out that way.

I'm a big proponent of free information. I also believe that if there is a big weapon that can do lots of damage, it's safer to give it to everyone than to just a few. Because if you give it to just a few, then it will be abused and there's nothing anyone else could do to stop it. If you give it to everyone, then everyone can protect themselves from those who would abuse it. So make it public knowledge. All of it. Bind points, types of metals, everything. Then make laws on its use. Certain crimes would warrant the death penalty, and the penalty is death by Hemalurgy. If you're a metalborn, great, if not, they can at least take some kind of attribute. It might be possible to make a Hemalurgic farm utilizing a Medallion granting Gold Feruchemy, since Gold Feruchemy CAN repair the spirit web Hemalurgy steals. It is likely NOT a fun process, but if you have a valuable Metalborn ability, you could be paid to undergo the procedure. Heck, a Metalborn might be able to make a living making one Spike a week. After a number of years of this, you'd wind up with Hemalurgic Spikes aplenty. Anyone can have one, if they pay enough. Everyone would wind up with Metalborn abilities. Yes, Medallions are strictly better, but even six years after their discovery, we haven't seen any medallions that do anything other than Weight, Connection and Heat. We assume there are Medallions that do others, but we haven't seen them. But Imagine. You're turning 16, your family is solidly middle class, and instead of going and buying your first car, they take you to the Hemalurgist to pick out your first spike. What power do you want? Take your pick! It'll likely be with you for the rest of your life. Oh, you like Steel? Well, we've got the Spike of Bart Slade, the notorious bank robber from ten years ago. The last person with this spike ran out of steel in mid flight. It wasn't pretty. Come on back and I'll install it for you. It'll only take a second. Do you want anesthesia? You don't really need it, but lots of people say the instalation process is...uncomfortable.

There is no logical way for the windrunner to win. The Fullborn can heal from Shardblade wounds. And we know it's possible to heal even from a Living Shardblade to the chest, because Szeth was brought back by Regrowth after being dead. So just do the Miles Hundredlives thing, and you'll always be tapping health. There is quite literally nothing a Windrunner could do to kill the Fullborn, except stab them and hold it in, but if they're close enough to stab them, the the Fullborn is close enough to move twice as fast, think four times as fast, move around the slice and pull their arms off. Sure, Windrunners can go pretty fast by manipulating atomspheric pressure, but there's no way for them to be able to think fast enough to USE that. And going that fast, they'd have to go in a straight line. If they even tried to turn, the G-Forces would tear them apart. And all the Fullborn would have to do is go into a house. Or a cave. Or anywhere where there isn't a very long straight line across land to build up speed and hope it hits. Conversations regarding the cap of how much of an attribute a Fullborn could store are disengenuous, because Merasi, when she grabbed the Bands, was essnetially a Fullborn, and if she really wanted to take Kal's head off, even after he swears the 5th ideal, she could have. No contest. She could see people's souls. She could see the trace metals in everything, and she could essentially fly. Oh, ok, a Windrunner could fly higher. Great. The only thing a Windrunner can do is run away. But even then, the Fullborn could just pull on their Plate. Yeah yeah, plate is invested, whatever, so were TLR's bands and Vin pushed them even when they were inside his body. A Fullborn could bring that kind of power to bare. Seriously, why is this even a competition? It doesn't take long to win a fight. There would be enough attributes to accomplish it. There is literally nothing a Windrunner could do to win this fight.

I am working on a fan fiction set in the 2nd era of Mistborn, and I had the idea to have a scene when he's a kid, playing ball with the other kids. And of course, in my head I'm thinking Baseball, because in a silmilar time period on Earth, that's what they would have been playing. And I'm one of the few people who still like baseball. But it occured to me that they wouldn't be playing baseball...because...well...it's not earth, lol. So that got me thinking of Allomantic/Feruchemic sports. So I thought maybe it would be fun to create a sport for Metalborn! Era 2 Mistborn, so Mistings, Ferrings and Twinborn. I'd prefer to use Baseball as a chasis, but am open to other types. Football might be a good base for this. I'd imagine that there would be different positions, and different abilities could help with accomplishing the goal. it should have room for Tanks, like Pewterarms and Pewter or Iron Ferrings, as well as options for Coinshots and Lurchers. Soothers and Rioters should be allowed, to amp up allies and demorolize the enemy. Strategic Emotional Manipulation. Copper Clouds would be useful, in that they couldn't be manipulated. Copper Cloud First Base Coach, lol. I want to bring it up to the hive mind before diving too deep into it, see what y'all think. The game should be playable by those who don't have abilities, but those who do would provide an edge. The Professional League would have mostly Metalborn of one kind or another, with a few normal people who are exceptional in their own way, while kids on the streets would mostly be normal people with the occasional metalborn. And of course, later, when Medallions begin to become a thing, Normal people would have a chance to play as well, breaking the monopoly of Metalborn on the sporting arena. Anyway, what do y'all think? What kind of ball game could be made with Metalborn?

1. Hmm. All ten honorblades or the Bands. The honorblades require Stormlight. The Bondsmith blade could supposedly open perpendicularities to fill gemstones, so at least you'd have a way to do that...but shouldn't it cost Stormlight to do that in the first place? Regardless, it's a lot of power. But then, so is the Bands, assuming you can recharge it. With the blades, you only need 5 of them to get all the powers. So you have five lucky friends. But...can you even bond with more than one honorblade? Or would you have to, like, just do one at a time? I know you can bond more than one dead blade, and be bonded to a dead blade and living blade at the same time. But since Honorblades GRANT powers, I'd assume it would be kind of like holding on to too many medallions...they interfere with each other. Too many unknowns there. I'd go with the Bands. One item, granting 32 powers, of which I can compound to fill. Just be a Fullborn. And someone mentioned healing, but you can always just let someone else touch the bands so they can heal. Or use the Bands to create a medallion granting Gold Feruchemy. So yeah. Bands. 2. This is another difficult one. In everyday life, Feruchemy is much more useful. So much of my time is wasted, anyway. But...steelpushing...and Pewter...I'm surprising myself, but I think I'd rather do Mistborn. All 16 metals? I'd almost pick Mistborn just for Steel and Pewter. Being able to enhance my own attributes at will is great, but Mistborn can just do cool things. 3. I...don't see how this is an equal choice, but...um...Elantrian, I guess? I'm not sure I'd trust myself with godlike power, not that Elantrians don't have godlike power. 4. Awakener. Yes, being a Windrunner would be awesome, but perfect pitch, perfect color vision, and immortality? Never being sick, all that stuff. That's just great. Hey, if an Awakener stores health in a Metalmind, would they actually get sick? They basically have infinite Health. As far as being immortal, Awakeners can easily stop being immortal. So that isn't really an issue. Decide you can't stand it? Just give it to someone else and live out the rest of your days. Easy peasy.

Thank you all for the discussion! Because of the ambiguity on Feruchemical Savanthood, I think I'll steer clear of that. I'm already going to be delving into lots of theorycraft where Double Pewter is involved, I don't want to further complicate it by adding in a Savanthood that may or may not be a thing.

You know, I was considering the Allomancers and Feruchemists in cannon, and there are multiple times when close family members wind up with Allomancy. Vin's father was the Lord Prelan, and a Mistborn, if I'm not mistaken. I could be wrong there, but I feel like he wouldn't have gotten as high as he did without being a Mistborn. Kelsior and Marsh both wound up being Allomancers, and Spook and his Uncle were both ska mistings, which likely means that Clubs' parent or grandparent was a Noble. So having more than one Metalborn in the family is certainly doable. I know that the genetics have been diluted somewhat by Era 2, but it should still be viable. So, perhaps, having a father who is a Copper Ferring and a grandfather on his mother's side who is a Soother wouldn't be too outside of plausibility. It might be a bit much to have a sibling who is a Misting or Ferring, but maybe not, especially if it's a useless or under used metal. I also really like the idea of a Duralumin/Zinc Twinborn being a serial killer who discovered the secrets of Hemalurgy. That's just scary stuff. Kind of like if Lex Luthor and Syler from Heroes had a love child. Super intelligent power stealing sereal killer. Though, I don't know if I'll do the whole "my sibling is a bad guy" thing, since that's kinda close to Wax's story and I want this to be different.

No, I was agreeing with you. Or I meant to. Sazed says he's not omnipotent, but that parts of him COULD be. If Ruin was Omnipotent, he could just blink and destroy the planet...but he COULD have done that if he'd had his body. Odium can't just destroy people he doesn't like. They all have limits within their intent, and therefore don't fit the "Omnipotent" bill. However, if all sixteen shards were united, all the intents put together into one, then it's possible the resulting creature COULD be omnipotent. Which is why I wouldn't call them "Gods", by my definition. Just uberly powerful beings that, when compared to someon without a Shard, could be considered one since they don't have the frame of reference ot know what they're looking at.

Totalliy did not read all of that. Here's a few thoughts from what I did read. I think it's completely logical that there would be athiests in all of the worlds of the Cosmere. Why? Because not all of the people have one on one conversations with gods. I mean think about it. The characters we see are the important ones. On Scadrial, Sazed doesn't DO anything. He doesn't show up to people or do miracles. He works subtly if he works at all. Kel isn't going around saving people, and Survivorism doesn't claim he does. As for Sliverism, very few people see Marsh. It's perfectly logical that someone would say that they're all just worshiping things so they have something to worship and a club to go to on sunday morning (so to speak). On Roshar, there are tons of religions. Most revere the Heralds, but what if someone said "Meh, I don't believe the Desolations actually happened and the Heralds are jusat myths. Nothing exists but what I can touch." That's an athiest. Or close to it. And I wouldn't consider the Shards to be Gods, any more than I'd consider the Returned to be Gods, or the Kandra, or Kel. They're just beings with a lot of power. Sazed even says he is not Omnipotent, though parts of him COULD be. The Shards are PART of God. 16 aspects of God's personality and power broken off and seperated. But what is 1/16 of infinity? Infinity. So each Shard is infinite...but has it's own purpose. Being ABLE to do anything is not the same as DECIDING to do anything. God can be Omnipotent, holding the power to do anything, but DECIDING what to do and what not to do. It's not a matter of "God cannot Sin", as much as He decides what Sin is. It's like saying I cannot exhale by breathing in. The definitions don't work. It's an oxymoron, and using it as an example of "Well God can't do this so he's not omnipotent" is just disengenuous. If I have literally all the power, which is what Omnipotent means, then I decide to give that power form and restrict myself, then that's not the same thing as saying I no longer have all the power. Omniscient is all knowing. It's knowing everything there is to know, from the thoughts and hearts of every person and creature to the movement and formation of every atom and electron, all at the same time, and being able to quantify all of that information. Technically, being Omniscient also encompases the future, so one who is Omniscient would know the future and the past with the same exactness. There would be no "blank spots" to one who is truely omniscient. The Shards are NOT Omniscient, because of the way Future Sight works in the Cosmere. Anyone who can see the future will block someone else who can, including Shards. Ruin cannot read people's thoughts. He doesn't know what people are thinking. Therefore, not Omniscient. But Preservation can, so if all the shards were combined, then perhaps the resultant being, Adonalsium, WOULD be Omniscient. Maybe. Omnipresent is everywhere at once. It is being there, in person, beside every single person during their entire lives. It is also being beside every grain of sand, watching every atom and electron move. The Shards are not Omnipresent, or at least their vessel aren't. They come and go. It is possible to hide things from them. or to do things while their attention is elsewhere. A true Omnipresent person who is also Omniscient is everywhere and their attention is everywhere equally at all times and is capable of comprehending all of it at a one time. Most people don't quite grasp the vasntess of these words. A God who is all these things knows and feels everything every person does at all times, and is able to give their full attention to every single person living at all times from the beginning of time until the heat death of the universe. A God of this magnitude would know you, your deepest heart and desires, the circomstances of your birth and every single one of your choices, all the way through your entire liffe until you die, and what happens after, and He would know this from the moment the Universe was created until it died. And he would be that intimately familiar with every single person who ever lived. That is the vastness of what we are talking about here. And the Shards don't match that.

1. Windrunners will not be lashing missiles. You have to touch something to lash it. Missiles explode once they're touched. Goodness, why does everyone assume a Windrunner can just lash every moving thing that's moving at faster than sound speeds? Lashing a jet? Are you serious? Windrunners can't break the sound barrier, and even if they could, the jet is much more maneuverable, and can lock on to the Windrunning and shoot the missiles the Windrunner will not be able to lash. And if a Windrunner were getting close enough to a jet to touch it, which isn't going to happen, they aren't going to use a Lashing, they're going to use a Shardblade. 2. We have no idea how Division works, so we can't say ANYTHING about how that would help in any kind of fight. 3. Soulcasting from the CR would require finding the thing in the CR. On Roshar, the bead may not even be anywhere NEAR the actual object in the CR. And I'm not convinced they'd even be able to do it. 4. It would likely depend on the bullet. I'm pretty sure a .50 cal bullet would put a dent in any shardplate. A single bullet can miss you by ten inches and still rip a hole in you just by the wake of the bullet.

My wife actually knows Christopher Paulini. So that's cool. I give Eragon a lot of leeway, because let's face it, he wasn't even 18 when the first book was published, which means he wasn't even 16 when he was first writing it. I've written a large fantasy book clocking in at about 560 pages, and it is NOT an easy task. And I never got it to a publishable state. This kid did before graduating high school. That's a huge accomplishment. And of COURSE it's going to be cliched. He's 15. He wrote what he was interested in. He was inspired by all these other writers and thought what he was doing was the coolest thing sinced sliced bread. I remember being 15. I was writing Megaman X fanfiction and didn't even know what fanfiction was at the time (2002, my family barely had internet). This guy built a whole world. Kudos to him. It got more mature as he got older, but he also started focusing on things that he was greatly interested in...that nobody else was. He spent so long in Brisingr talking about forging and the process of forging that a lot of people just lost interest, but he thought it was interesting so he included it. And to be honest, there's something to be said about just writing what you're interested in. I read the last one. A lot of people skipped out on it because it took so long between it and the one before it. He even felt the need to put a recap chapter that summed up the first three books, which was totally not necessary. But again, a lot of slack. This kid got a movie deal based on a book he wrote before graduating high school. Have YOU gotten a movie deal based on anything you've written ever? Has Brandon? That's as big accompishment, regardless of the quality of the movie. If he's a bad writer, I wish I was that bad. As to how I actually felt about the books, they were fine. I liked the magic system, I loved the idea of bonding with dragons to gain power, and the story was good enough. The end was...not the best. Kind of a let down, actually. It's the reason I've never gone back to it. But I respect the guy for completing it. As for the rest of you, holy crap, you're reading Sanderson at 10?!!?!?!?! I didn't discover Sanderson until I was in my 30's. My daughter is 10, and while I've let her listen to some of the opening for Way of Kings (I have the audiobooks), she doesn't understand half of it, and there are stuff that happens that I would be hesitant to let her listen to. Same with Mistborn. Actually, probably more so for Mistborn. I can see maybe reading it at 13, but 10? Or 8??? Holy crap. Sanderson is a lot cleaner than many authors out there, but there are still some mature themes in some of his books.

It’s not that it can’t heal from electrical surges from a taser. It’s that the taser is causing all your muscles to Bunche up RIGHT NOW. It’s introducing electricity to force the muscles to clench. Once it stops, any electrical damage would be healed. In fact, it would heal any electrical damage as it’s happening. But what causes the paralysis is not damage. It’s just making your muscles clench. There’s nothing to heal. Also, this settled the whole “what would happen if x planet invaded earth” debate. None of the healing abilities matter once it’s known that you can just taze them. Living Plate would help a bit, I imagine, but maybe not. If you can somehow stick the probes on the armor and shunt thousands of bolts into it, it might do something. Plate is metal and metal does conduct electricity, though I know the plate can protect the user from lightning. that said, it also grants a huge benefit to Scadrial in these hypotheticals, as they have electricity. I suppose Painriels would do something similar, but either way it means the all powerful Knights Radiant, who are always held up as this unstoppable force, aren’t all that unstoppable unless they’ve hit the fourth ideal, of which very few do. I know this isn’t the conversation for that, but it still bares thought. It’s a simple, mundane counter to “Oh, BuT tHeY cAn HeAl.”

So what you're saying is, a modern military would even be able to fight off Fullborn because we can mass produce Tazers. Would that also, then, apply to Radiants and their healing?

Brandon has stated it is possible to store just the strength from A-Pewter in an Pewtermind, thus bypassing the usual muscle growth and just gaining the strength. Compound that, and you can completely fill a metalmind with oodles and oodles of Strength with no side effects of larger muscles. That said, my thought, too, was that Reverse Compounding was using Ferchemy to increase Allomancy. I suppose that storing Allomantic Strength in a Pewtermind, then tapping that strength, could cound, since you could store an entire nugget of Pewter into a metalmind, then pull it all out at once instead of being limited by your burning speed, but that doesn't seem quite right. Personally, I think it has to do with tapping Investiture. What is that, Nicrosil? The medallions aren't just metalminds, they're something else. If they were just metalminds, then you would acutally be able to use the Medallions to TAKE powers and GIVE them to people. You'd store your power in the metalmind, then someone else would tap it, taking it out. Like memories. Then the second person would just have the power, and not need the metalmind. Instead, they give powers when you touch them, like Honorblades. Which means they are doing something different. I think that, if it stores the ability to use Investiture rather than just Investiture, then you could use Nicrosilminds to increase Allomancy. Your powers are weaker while storing, and stronger when tapping. If that's the case, it would explain TLR's power, because he could just compound his Allomantic Strength to have a near infinite pool of Allomantic Strength to pull on, thus allowing him to soothe the emotions of dang near an entire city even through copper clouds.

Hmm. Maybe I’m not following. If he fills his pewter mind constantly, never letting himself get any bigger, you’re saying that if he were to stop he could wind up with muscles that are too big? Or are you saying that he could wind up having permanent half strength, like his muscles get stuck in fill mode? My original thought was that when he finally does stop filling, his natural state is actually decently muscled. I guess it depends on how working out would work when storing Strength. If you’re storing strength while working out, would you get better returns, or worse? Getting stronger while working out has to do with micro tears on your muscles as you work out, which heal stronger than they were before. You need to lift heavier and heavier weights to continue to get the increases because the lower weights no longer damage the muscle, allowing for that growth. So it could be argued that working out while storing Strength could help the workouts become more potent, because you can always use those weaker weights to tear the muscles. So lift the weight until exhausted, then stop storing Strength, and the muscles should still feel sore, and may repair itself stronger. But I suppose it could also stunt your gains, since you aren’t actually lifting anything. Heavier. Hmm. That’s hard to determine. Also, can you become a Feruchemical savant?