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steelrunning secondary powers: what kind of imbalanced broken power is that?


king of nowhere

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You know what Hoid says, what humans value most is timeliness. For good reason too.

So logically being able to do everything faster is the most broken thing ever. Untouchable, unstoppable, everything done away with in the blink of an eye. That's steelrunning.

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Just thought of another horrible/awesome weapon for a Steelrunner even in pre-AoL times. Metal darts. You couldn't use a bow without snapping it but throwing a dart at super-high speeds should be well within their capabilities. And it would even greatly enhance the force of thr thrown dart to the point it could probably penetrate Armour pretty easily.
Although honestly if a Steelrunner really got some speed going they could basically do away with a gun entirely and just throw bullets at people.

So I'm retracting my opinion that they did have limitations before guns. Steelrunners are just OP.

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But only a compounding stealrunner.  Sazed admits in TFE that it's very hard to store steel, and he only had 2-3 hours worth stored for running at the same speed as a pewter dragger.  If he tried to go as fast as Paalm did in SoS, he would have run out very quickly and it would have taken a long time to restore it.  It's really only the compounder that is THAT OP, since a regular steelrunner would have to work for weeks, months, or maybe even years to get enough speed stored up to do what was being done.

 

Seems to me that a steel compounder (apart from hemalurgy) is a pretty rare thing that may not even have actually been born yet.

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But only a compounding stealrunner.  Sazed admits in TFE that it's very hard to store steel, and he only had 2-3 hours worth stored for running at the same speed as a pewter dragger.

 

We don't know if Paalm was Compounding or not. Idashwy at the start of the book also apparently pulls off high-speed hijinks.

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Plus, Paalm/Idaashwy used it in relatively short (but powerful) bursts, while Sazed was running as fast as he dared nonstop.

It's not like you have to be the Flash throughout a fight, only when it matters.

I've always wondered about the difficulty of storing it though. Does actually being in significant motion improve the rate as opposed to just sitting there making the odd twitch? Speed is kind of a weird thing in that it really isn't a natural part of you like heat and identity, just something you can potentially have.

Edited by natc
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I've always wondered about the difficulty of storing it though. Does actually being in motion improve the rate?

It shouldn't. I mean tapping steel has absolutely nothing to do with being in motion, it just makes you all around faster. Storing speed while sitting down should be perfectly feasible, although your perception and stuff may slow down noticably.

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I've always wondered about the difficulty of storing it though. Does actually being in significant motion improve the rate as opposed to just sitting there making the odd twitch? Speed is kind of a weird thing in that it really isn't a natural part of you like heat and identity, just something you can potentially have.

 

Me too. Like if you are storing it does simply sitting still with minimal motion work or do you have to intentionally slow your movement. I picture someone doing everything in slow motion like they were in zero gravity.. It is weird.. 

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Me too. Like if you are storing it does simply sitting still with minimal motion work or do you have to intentionally slow your movement. I picture someone doing everything in slow motion like they were in zero gravity.. It is weird.. 

Even if that were the case, you could just walk in a circle or something, so it still shouldn't be that hard to do. However, there would be no other attribute that works like this to out knowledge, (you don't have to lift something to store strengt for example) at least appart from the coded ones, like memory.

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You don't have to lift things to store strength, because the act of lifting something isn't strength, it's the work performed by your strength. You have strength as long as you have existing muscles, and if you're atrophied somehow I'd assume there won't be much to store. Blind people probably can't store vision either.

The only speed you have while standing still is if you're measuring yourself relative to some other celestial body than the planet you're standing on, which would be weird for a metallic art. Relative to the ground you're standing on your rate of change of distance (a somewhat scientifically questionable thing at best) is 0.

You need to breath more to store breath because you technically have none if you stop, and having no nutrition to store due to starvation is possible. Why would speed be perpetually present in spite of lack of actual movement?

Edited by natc
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Plus, Paalm/Idaashwy used it in relatively short (but powerful) bursts, while Sazed was running as fast as he dared nonstop.

It's not like you have to be the Flash throughout a fight, only when it matters.

I've always wondered about the difficulty of storing it though. Does actually being in significant motion improve the rate as opposed to just sitting there making the odd twitch? Speed is kind of a weird thing in that it really isn't a natural part of you like heat and identity, just something you can potentially have.

Well I imagine that given all the effects of steel what's actually being stored is something more akin to your temporal momentum, it's not just your faster muscle fibers since a) it doesn't deflate you when storing like pewter does and B) that doesn't explain the bullet time.

So I imagine that it wouldn't matter whether or not you're moving, time would just seem to be going a lot faster, so personal cadmium wheras tapping it is personal Bendalloy.

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Ok, a couple of points that I haven't seen raised in this debate yet.


 


1) On the subject of how much Speed Bleeder could store: Bleeder didn't need to store all the speed himself. We have confirmation that if you get spiked with a feruchemical spike, the spiking grafts enough of the donor's spiritweb onto your sDNA that you can use their metal minds. Bleeder could have watched and waited while her soon-to-be victim spent months storing Speed, then spiked her and stole her metal minds, already full. That's what I would do if I fully understood the intricacies of Hemalurgy and were preparing to spike a Steelrunner. Hell, I'd probably make a point to spike her while she was actively storing, so she has the hardest time running away.


 


2) On the subject of learning to Compound, practice makes perfect sense to me, not in the sense of practicing how to burn a metal mind, but in the re-storage process. Allomancy produces fast, spectacular bursts of power that flow into you. I would imagine that the real trick of Compounding is one of timing. You have to be able to start storing just as you burn the metal mind, but before the Investiture can take allomantic form as it normally would when burning metals. This is very precise timing, and something that absolutely could take practice (though tapping a Zinc mind would probably help with this).


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  • 1 month later...

I reopen this thread after one month because I reread SoS in the meantime, and the chracters there really state that bleeder had shot four people faster than the gun could have. Along with the comment that they were killed so fast that the four shootings would have sounded as one, they also say that they were killed by the same weapon. So, steel apparently turns your pistol into a machine gun.

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I reopen this thread after one month because I reread SoS in the meantime, and the chracters there really state that bleeder had shot four people faster than the gun could have. Along with the comment that they were killed so fast that the four shootings would have sounded as one, they also say that they were killed by the same weapon. So, steel apparently turns your pistol into a machine gun.

 

Actually, this was Wax's assumption.  If you go back and read the fight scene itself, Winsting distinctly hears multiple gunshots fired.  I think, in this case, Wax was simply wrong.  In his defense, though, he had an awful lot on his mind.  The physics of how fast one can fire a gun probably wasn't high on his list of things to ponder in depth.

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Actually, this was Wax's assumption.  If you go back and read the fight scene itself, Winsting distinctly hears multiple gunshots fired.  I think, in this case, Wax was simply wrong.  In his defense, though, he had an awful lot on his mind.  The physics of how fast one can fire a gun probably wasn't high on his list of things to ponder in depth.

To be fair, there would have been multiple gunshoots one way or another, because of the shoot out that the speed gunning started. I'd have to do a reread of the scene but that's not necessarily evidence.

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To be fair, there would have been multiple gunshoots one way or another, because of the shoot out that the speed gunning started. I'd have to do a reread of the scene but that's not necessarily evidence.

 

True enough.  Though when it comes down to deciding between "this shouldn't be possible because physics" and "the protagonist made an incorrect assumption" I'm going to go with the choice that doesn't break physics until I am presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. :)

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True enough.  Though when it comes down to deciding between "this shouldn't be possible because physics" and "the protagonist made an incorrect assumption" I'm going to go with the choice that doesn't break physics until I am presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. :)

Fair enough. Although, from iron Feruchemy we already know that the Terris people do not care for such puny concepts like "physics" or how do you explain someone gaining more mass without growing or getting denser? Actually, between this, the how exactly did she get so much speed and the number of spikes debate this number of details on what actually happened but aren't to keeping some kind of mystery are kind of gathering. (Did anyone get back to him on that spike number thing, by the way?)

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Fair enough. Although, from iron Feruchemy we already know that the Terris people do not care for such puny concepts like "physics" or how do you explain someone gaining more mass without growing or getting denser? Actually, between this, the how exactly did she get so much speed and the number of spikes debate this number of details on what actually happened but aren't to keeping some kind of mystery are kind of gathering. (Did anyone get back to him on that spike number thing, by the way?)

 

Feruchemy breaking physics on the human body I can get behind.  Having it affect something like the mechanics on a gun you happen to be holding is where I draw the line.  There's no evidence anywhere else that Feruchemy can affect anything other than yourself.

 

As for how she got so much speed, I think there's something behind the idea that she got really, really clever with trading out her spikes and managed to cobble together some level of Compounding.

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Feruchemy breaking physics on the human body I can get behind.  Having it affect something like the mechanics on a gun you happen to be holding is where I draw the line.  There's no evidence anywhere else that Feruchemy can affect anything other than yourself.

 

As for how she got so much speed, I think there's something behind the idea that she got really, really clever with trading out her spikes and managed to cobble together some level of Compounding.

Connection Feruchemy, granted we don't know the details yet but its entire premise apparently rests on manipulating how other people precive them and not simply how their skill to deal with them, so it's not like Feruchemy has to be entirely internal, Especially if what Steel actually maipulates is the flow of time.

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Well, most likely connection feruchemy interferes with the connections in the spiritual realm that are connected to/make up your spiritweb. So it can probably be considered internal in a roundabout way.

Which makes me wonder, is there an emotion-independent cosmic factor in the spiritual realm that equates determination? Is luck a real thing too?

Edited by natc
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Connection Feruchemy, granted we don't know the details yet but its entire premise apparently rests on manipulating how other people precive them and not simply how their skill to deal with them, so it's not like Feruchemy has to be entirely internal, Especially if what Steel actually maipulates is the flow of time.

 

...you're right.  Dangit, Duralumin, messing it up for everybody.  :lol:  Though Chromium might affect other things, too.  Basically, the Spiritual metals are just weird.

 

But Steel is still a physical metal; pewter, tin, iron - none of these have shown any evidence of messing with things other than the Feruchemist.  The idea that steel could speed up things you're touching just doesn't seem to fit the pattern.

 

I've always found it curious how out of all the metals, only pewter and tin do basically the same thing in Allomancy and Feruchemy.  None of the rest of them even come close.

 

Also, something that occurred to me this morning:

 

We have that WoB that states atium alloys all have temporal effects.  In the Ars Arcanum, Feruchemy (the magic melding Ruin and Preservation) is described as "shuttling attributes through time".  Dangit, Ruin, for a dude who can't see into the future worth squat, you sure do mess with time a lot.

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...you're right.  Dangit, Duralumin, messing it up for everybody.  :lol:  Though Chromium might affect other things, too.  Basically, the Spiritual metals are just weird.

 

But Steel is still a physical metal; pewter, tin, iron - none of these have shown any evidence of messing with things other than the Feruchemist.  The idea that steel could speed up things you're touching just doesn't seem to fit the pattern.

 

I've always found it curious how out of all the metals, only pewter and tin do basically the same thing in Allomancy and Feruchemy.  None of the rest of them even come close.

 

Also, something that occurred to me this morning:

 

We have that WoB that states atium alloys all have temporal effects.  In the Ars Arcanum, Feruchemy (the magic melding Ruin and Preservation) is described as "shuttling attributes through time".  Dangit, Ruin, for a dude who can't see into the future worth squat, you sure do mess with time a lot.

The thing with the physical metals is this, they really don't act consistent with each other. Iron, the one that we've seen most of is again just plain weird and does something "physical" by completely ignoring physics and only changing the body partially, i.e. mass change but not density. On the other hand Pewter seems to actually play physical limitations straight and doesn't so much store a nebulous strenght concept as it does actual muscles mass and all the side effects to come along with it including the muscles restricting your movement and the weight increase that would come with more muscles. (at least i assume so, given that just having more muslces would do nothing to help you wrestle against Kollos, if they can still just toss you away like a featherweight.) Yet another one Tin has the speciality of being coded to different senses instead of giving an general bost like its allomantic equivalent.

Bottom line, Feruchemy is really inconsistent with the way an attribute is defined and how the different metals act, meaning one of them can't really be used to argue another.

Edited by Edgedancer
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From an objective, in-world standpoint, I really hate Compounding. I think it makes all logic fly out the window; it utterly annihilates any semblance of realism in the Mistborn world. Any Compounder that works with any of the more useful Feruchemical abilities is so much more vastly powerful than even a Twinborn that they could easily install themselves as another Lord Ruler; a Gold Compounder is already at ludicrous strength, and a Steel Compounder is so laughably overpowered that they could do anything they wanted, whenever they wanted, without any concern for anything ever again. 

 

Combining this with the fact that we know people in the previous books (e.g, the Lord Ruler, Steel Inquisitors) should have been able to Compound, it also raises the question how any of the protagonists managed to do anything at all, ever, and why a Steel Compounder does not currently rule Scadrial. 

 

Personally, I think Brandon has dug himself into a pretty deep hole here, as Compounding has been mentioned too often to simply be retconned, but is too powerful to simply conveniently pretend that no-one else has figured out how to abuse it yet (Miles did, after all)...I really don't see a way he can fix his magical system anymore, and indeed I would much rather have preferred Compounding had never been introduced at all.

Edited by Three1415
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From an objective, in-world standpoint, I really hate Compounding. I think it makes all logic fly out the window; it utterly annihilates any semblance of realism in the Mistborn world. Any Compounder that works with any of the more useful Feruchemical abilities is so much more vastly powerful than even a Twinborn that they could easily install themselves as another Lord Ruler; a Gold Compounder is already at ludicrous strength, and a Steel Compounder is so laughably overpowered that they could do anything they wanted, whenever they wanted, without any concern for anything ever again. 

 

Combining this with the fact that we know people in the previous books (e.g, the Lord Ruler, Steel Inquisitors) should have been able to Compound, it also raises the question how any of the protagonists managed to do anything at all, ever, and why a Steel Compounder does not currently rule Scadrial. 

 

Personally, I think Brandon has dug himself into a pretty deep hole here, as Compounding has been mentioned too often to simply be retconned, but is too powerful to simply conveniently pretend that no-one else has figured out how to abuse it yet (Miles did, after all)...I really don't see a way he can fix his magical system anymore, and indeed I would much rather have preferred Compounding had never been introduced at all.

Eh, a gold compounder lacks the offensive strenght to do the damage needed to conquer the world and a steel compounder can still be killed by a suprise attack, assuming you get weaponary they can't detect with a steel bubble (really steel has some of the best abilities in both systems) (well they may be able to stay in bullet time permanently but that'd probably make them go insane) Now both of these together would really be a significant jugernaut, which in theory could be achived with the help of two hemalurgic spikes.

 

As far as I know it doesn't even really matter if the Inquisitors could compound, becuase Ruin can in theory power both Allomancy and Feruchemy just like Vin did for Elend in the end. Granted, he may be less efficient at it with Allomancy but something like them running out off an important ability in a critical moment means that Ruin lost because of a slight oversight on his part.

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