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The weaknesses were inherently tied to Calamity's corruption(/presence), because when an Epic faces their fear, they also drive back the darkness, which we know was because of Calamity and his contempt for humanity (and fear/startlement of the physical world). Now that Calamity is gone (or in the case of the otherverse already left a long time ago) does that also imply that the Epics no longer have weaknesses? Does that mean Megan literally can't die and David is literally invincible to all physical damage? Is this why Obliteration is still wreaking havoc in the otherverse even though they have an actual Superman expy helping them out, because he can't be killed since he just teleports forever?

So in Firefight, we get inroduced to an Epic named Sourcefield, and her weakness is shown to be when she consumes kool-aid. An Epic's fear is derived from their fear from the pre-Calamity time. With Sourcefield, her weakness is consuming kool-aid, and she gets this fear from when her grandparents poisoned her kool-aid when she was in her youth. However, it wasn't exactly her kool-aid that was poisoned, it was another generic drink similar to it. So is it possible that her weakness is consuming any drink similar to kool-aid or maybe being her consuming any drink that she believes to be kool-aid?

Could we use stuff from other serieses to kill epics? For example, if you were a lightweaver, you could make an illusion of dogs in front of conflux to exploit his weakness or use your lightweaving to manipulate uv light rather than visible light to make nightwielder solid. Similarly, you could soothe someone's fear while someone is burning nicrosil while touching you while they're trying to kill steelheart. Since they aren't afraid of him, they can kill him.You could riot prof's sense of failure. A seer (atium misting) could burn atium to counter fortuity's power, making his power useless, making him become a normal human with heightened dexterity and totally killable.

Since this is going to be a major theme in book 3, I though we might brainstorm about how to defeat Prof. Jonathan Phadreus. For the sake of argument, we are not pursuing his weakness, but actual counters to his Epic profile. His known powers are: 1: Accelerated healing. This is not instant healing, but an increased rate at which the body would heal from. I think. Barring David's bizarre encounter with Obliteration; I'm of the opinion David is now an Epic; we've never seen someone regrow lost limbs, the body simply recovers. Prof's head heals up fine after SteelHeart pummeled it. Scrapes and cuts and broken bones mend. But it all takes time. It also works automatically regardless of the state or consciousness the body is in. 2: Telekinetic barriers. Evidently these arnt relegated to personal defense as we were originally shown. Instead it might as well be true telekinesis. It's interesting to note they disperse heat and smoke. They are also manually activated. 3: Tensors. Metal disintegration. Offensive in use mostly but able to destroy incoming bullets and other weapons. (4): Increased dexterity. I'm not 100% sure on the dexterity, but I believe it's warranted considering the SteelHeart fight. Of course increased reflexes makes everything more difficult to kill him, but he doesn't appear to have a near-prescient ability to dodge. So there is an upper limit to his agility, I just have no idea how to quantify what he might be capable of. Given all of this I'm of the opinion nothing short of complete destruction of his body will stop his healing abilities. At least as far as physical trauma. His shields can funnel what might as well have been an atomic bomb at the end of FireFight. So heat and kinetic energy is a no go. The opposite, cold is likely able to be deflected, if it's a beam like a flamethrower. I'm curious though, if the shields are able to provide a sustainable living environment for extended time such as a blizzard. I'm not certain he would survive dangerously low or high temperatures. Poison might be plausible, but I think it carries the risk that Prof's healing might activate. Asphyxiation seems to me to be a method that might bypass all his powers. Unlike drowning, where the Prof might be able to hold back water, we're instead denying the entry of a crucial element to his body completely. So there's nothing for the shields to stop, but would his healing powers keep him conscious? Alive? Revive him from death completely? I think asphyxiation bears merit, any thoughts?

(Mitosis and Firefight spoilers) From Firefight, we learn that Epics like Mitosis had been flocking to Babylon Restored to seek Regalia and get a power boost. When an Epic is confronted with his/her weakness, their powers simply stop working, and they become human again. However, in Mitosis, we could see how his weakness, his own music, was directly affecting him, "melting" his clones, which we have never seen a weakness actually "killing" an Epic. Basically, my theory is that the more powerful an Epic, or if they get a power supplement, the more vulnerable or affected they will be by their weakness. Laws of equilibrium still apply to even Epics.

Here is a quote from the pretty recent AMA on reddit. "Boy, I do get this one a lot. I'm wary of saying anything until Calamity is out, not because Regalia's weakness is specifically relevant, but because I've found that even the most innocent of things I say can sometimes lead to spoilers. The nature of the weaknesses is a big part of the three book arc of the Reckoners, so I don't want to hurt anything. That said, as I mentioned, Regalia's weakness is not actually relevant. I've just been avoiding the question for reasons stated above. Regalia's weakness was being proven wrong. If you could figure out something she'd done incorrectly, and prove it to her so she couldn't avoid the truth, she'd briefly lose local control of her powers. But I didn't want that book to be about figuring out/using her weakness, in order to distinguish it from books one and three, which use that as the major plot. So I avoided bringing up the idea, or really even using it in the story at all." Pretty interesting, eh? My theory is that Regalia(Edit: who was a judge) would not want to sentence an innocent or pardon a guilty person, and thus she was extremely scared of being wrong. But I think that isn't all. Sourcefield wasn't just scared or Kool-Aid, they almost died because of it. Perhaps Regalia helped free a serial killer?

If David gets Rended in Calamity, (or if his rending actually took permanent effect in Firefight), what powers/weaknesses would he have? Would he have water powers, with a fear of sharks? (As in Firefight) Would his weakness be a fear of murdering innocents? (His thoughts of killing Sourcefield after she turns normal) Will he have a cliché of not wanting his frends to die? Or will it involve his incredibly bad metaphors? Post your ideas about his powers/weaknesses below.

I have 2 theories about the weakness. 1. His fear is a world completely destroyed by epics. If this is true, to stop Prof the epics have to completely destroy everything. 2. His fear is Tia dying and/or becoming an epic. I have lots of evidence for this. a. In Firefight he only changes the frequency/password to Tia's and his own mobile, because he is "paranoid". b. His friends all became epics. He might be scared that Tia will as well (or has she already?) c. They were dating, people. 'Nuff said. d. He gives Tia the job of staying back and not getting into danger. If this theory is true, Tia has to die or become an epic for the Reckoners to bring back/kill Prof. For more info, check out my Tia theory on the introduce yourself! forum.

Being involved with the Reckoner’s RP I did a lot of thinking about weaknesses, both for my own Epics and to a lesser extend for those of others. I always wondered if a weakness fits with what we’ve seen from the books. In those musings I noticed some trends, some of which can be spread across all weakness and with some it’s just that none of them go against it, even if they are closely related to the topic at hand. Naturally, the small sample size means a lot of this in conjecture but given that we now know there’s some order to weakness there might be even more. On to the list! The root trauma: This one is a given, the books downright tell us that these roots exist. I just want to take the chance to point out that in my opinion the term “fear” as used in the books isn’t ideal and if anything oversimplifies the matter. Looking at the known origin of weaknesses we know they always come from something in the Epics past that left a scar on them and not just something they just happen to be afraid of like spiders. Even more looking at Mitosis, the Epic who’s reason for being written was mostly to hint towards the fact that weaknesses are connected to their past, his weakness didn’t really come from fear. He hated his situation in life and it ate him up from the inside but I wouldn’t exactly call that fear. Just wanted to get it out of my system that I like the term (psychological) trauma more in this context. Generalization: Pretty much what it say on the tin. Weaknesses are connected to an event but can be triggered without all the details matching up. E.g. Megan reacts to fire not burning houses, Newton doesn’t need to be complimented by her parents, Steelheart didn’t have to be confronted by that one specific guy etc. A part of this is also that weaknesses can’t really disappear, the brand that Sourcefield was poinsioned with as a child may be out of business but that doesn’t mean similar drinks can’t be created. Lack of intent: From what we have seen it doesn’t matter what someone is thinking while doing something or why they do it. Only what they do seems important to triggering weaknesses. E.g. Steelheart had no clue what he actually did, when he pulled the trigger but the explosion still counted as his attack and could harm him. The compliment David gave Newton was obviously insincere, yet it still allowed him to kill her. External/lack of control: This is admittedly one point I’m less sure about and it might simply come from the lack of data points, but no weakness we have seen requires the Epic to think something or do anything specific, it’s always just something around them, be it an object, people with certain qualities etc. Always something they have no control over, which also plays into the lack of intent. Repeat: This one is impossible to prove and more something that seems logical. I simply think that if an Epic is in the situation that his weakness originates from, then his weakness should trigger, which puts a limit on how abstract a weakness can be in relation to the event in question. These are the patterns I noticed and I while again there is little hard proof but no Epic breaks these rules and they make sense with the theme of trauma/fear that weaknesses are connected with.

I recently noticed that all of Epic's weaknesses had to do with something in their past life, not just their greatest fears. For example, someone's greatest fear could be something like spiders, but they've never had any bad events in their life relating to spiders. Could the process of becoming an Epic somewhat like "snapping" in Mistborn, where a bad event would trigger acquiring superpowers?

I made a list! Of Epics! Their names, powers (if known), weaknesses, whether they had prime invincibility, whether they were able to Gift, and any possibly significant notes. I'm not completely done yet--Went through Steelheart, and partway through Firefight. I forgot to look through Mitosis, so I'll do that after Firefight. Work in progress, please point out mistakes! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o7757LlkTY0abA4zOqjy62rcJhTHFihIareANxa1YPo/edit?usp=sharing Edit: Please read these two points. They are VERY IMPORTANT. 1. Please make sure that you can receive emails at whatever email address you request access from. For example, I get a LOT of requests from a .k12 address. Those addresses do not allow responses from addresses outside of their domain, so I can't do anything with the request. 2. The coppermind has a better and more updated list, so that would be a better place to go anyway, at this point. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Category:Epics Thanks!

So, we know from Firefight that your worst nightmare (or greatest fear) becomes your weakness. Heres the question: If you became an epic, would you be able to overcome your own personal weakness to rid yourself of the destructive effects of your epic powers? My answer: I do not think that I would be able to overcome my fear. I have a very rational fear of spiders. It is a rational fear because I have a reasoning for why I fear them. My reason was, when I was in the 5th grade, my grade went on a field trip to a summer camp for three days. While we were there, this guy kept chasing me holding spiders, which caused me to panic (he also attempted to put them on me and a girl in my cabin claimed to have put a spider in my bed. I never found out the validity of the latter). Ever since, I have been absolutely terrified of spiders. I have tried many times and numerous methods to get over my fear, and nothing has worked.

Did anybody else notice the suspicious little blurb about Prof's dislike of contests? Before Calamity, he even refused to put a quarter in a slot machine. I wonder if this could be a clue...