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


king of nowhere

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Very minor BoM spoiler on the matter of rarity of comounder combinations (seriously, it's not plot relevant at all, it's just there. But some people can be bothered by that):

According to the woman who seems to be Khriss, Wax is one of the only three Crasher twinborn (allomantic steel + feruchemical iron) to have ever existed.

I think that speaks volumes for specific combinations of abilities. Allomancy isn't rare enough to be extremely unusual but is far from common, and feruchemical blood is likely even weaker due to the breeding programs prior, and would only reliably occur in relatively pure Terris bloodlines that are rarer still.

So being twinborn at all is difficult, and there are 256 possible twinborn powersets. Being a steel compounder would take a huge stroke of luck.

 

Like if one of your parents was a chromium ferring? :P

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I'm wondering about the numbers given there:

when they mention that there is one misting in a thousand, does it mean that one person in a thousand is a misting, or that there is one tipe of misting for every 1000 people, so that there are 16 mistings in 1000 people? the book seemed closer to the first interpretation, but the second is more consistent with the MAG and some words of brandon.

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I suppose that Steel Feruchemy is one of the type of power who rapid consume your Metalmind.

 

Bleeder may uses the Victim's Metalmind therefore She has much than a couple of weeks of Feruchemical Speed in her MetalMind.

 

From an old question of mine during an AMA:
 

Q:If a Ferring creates a metalmind and then loses his power (for example through Hemalurgy), could he still use his previous-made metalmind ?

 

A: No, he could not. And, unfortunately, the person who stole a bit of his soul would probably be keyed with enough Identity to use his metalmind.  :( (This is uncertain, though, based on how much of the soul got ripped off, and how much the spike has decayed.)

Edited by Yata
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My reaction to steelrunning was similar, considering it extremely broken as a power. Going into these books I'd always assumed that the steel just sped up your motions, but didn't actually change your perception of time.

 

Like, driving a car really fast on the highway. Normal people can go 20 mph, but a Steelrunner could go 60mph. But driving your car faster doesn't give you more reaction time, in fact, you need to be more careful when going fast because you've got more momentum. I always assumed good Steelrunners would be those who could use their powers with precision and learn to control themselves at fast speeds.

 

Having it actually change one's perception of time... it's incredibly broken, actually. Like was said earlier in the thread, it's basically a personal bendalloy bubble with fewer drawbacks. Not to mention, if you're thinking about compounding, then not only do you have unlimited speed, but you can also use that speed along with Coinshot powers. Terrifyingly effective, honestly.

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As for "how Bleeder could do that without burning herself" and whatnot, we have to keep in mind that kandra's bodies may be more durable than human.

I'd personally go with speed being difficult to store. Regeneration is also broken, but unless you're a Compounder it doesn't matter that much.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've got three questions.

1. Who will win in a fight between a Steel Compounder and a Mistborn with sufficiently large amounts of metals (including atium)?

2. If a Steel compounder is tapping steel he sort of views the world in bullet time right? So if he Pushes off a coin right then (burning plain steel) will he move superfast from the outside point of view or at a normal speed (which means very slowly from his own POV)?

3. In a slight aside.. Does a Compounder have too grind up Invested metalminds and swallow them or is just piercing the skin so that its in your bloodstream enough to burn it?

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1. Who will win in a fight between a Steel Compounder and a Mistborn with sufficiently large amounts of metals (including atium)?

We don't know. My money is on Steel Compounder.

Actually, there are is an example - if you read Naruto, look up the fight in the Valley Of The End. Sasuke is basically burning atium (Sharingan let's him see opponent's next move) but Naruto is moving so fast that the he has trouble adjusting.

Image here:

naruto-4517.jpg

I say a Steel Compounder can go way faster than that. Compounding Steel may be the most broken Metallic power there is.

2. If a Steel compounder is tapping steel he sort of views the world in bullet time right? So if he Pushes off a coin right then (burning plain steel) will he move superfast from the outside point of view or at a normal speed (which means very slowly from his own POV)?

If he's standing still, the coin will move at normal steel, but if he's Steelrunning, his speed will be added to the coin.

3. In a slight aside.. Does a Compounder have too grind up Invested metalminds and swallow them or is just piercing the skin so that its in your bloodstream enough to burn it?

Theoretically it's possible to burn metals in your body, but I'm not sure anybody figured it out. People generally swallow metals to burn them.

Edited by Oversleep
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by the way, there is a "meta" indication of how broken steelrunning is in BoM (it is ok to spoiler it in other threads now, right?)

when marasi got the bands, she used up most of the Feruchemical steel to reach wax and heal him, so wax had no speed to tap. that's obviously an excuse because with speed wax could have solved the problems at hand without having to deal with his uncle. You realize a power is broken when the author himself has to find a way to remove it from a scene like that. it also suggests that steel could be difficult to store, because it's the only attribute in tha bands that comes even close to running out

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by the way, there is a "meta" indication of how broken steelrunning is in BoM (it is ok to spoiler it in other threads now, right?)

when marasi got the bands, she used up most of the Feruchemical steel to reach wax and heal him, so wax had no speed to tap. that's obviously an excuse because with speed wax could have solved the problems at hand without having to deal with his uncle. You realize a power is broken when the author himself has to find a way to remove it from a scene like that. it also suggests that steel could be difficult to store, because it's the only attribute in tha bands that comes even close to running out

Also with Marasi and the Bands, when she first tried to move her hands while tapping the speed so quickly, she could visibly see the vacuum trailing behind her.

So she's at least moving at the ultrasonic range. Her clothes didn't get torn apart or anything either. I'm not sure a human can fight a steel compounder.

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Also with Marasi and the Bands, when she first tried to move her hands while tapping the speed so quickly, she could visibly see the vacuum trailing behind her.

So she's at least moving at the ultrasonic range. Her clothes didn't get torn apart or anything either. I'm not sure a human can fight a steel compounder.

well she also had all the other abilities to heal from any physical damage going at that speed caused her. otherwise there is a hard limit on how fast you can go before you actually destroy your body. There are WoB on that

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Also with Marasi and the Bands, when she first tried to move her hands while tapping the speed so quickly, she could visibly see the vacuum trailing behind her.

So she's at least moving at the ultrasonic range. Her clothes didn't get torn apart or anything either. I'm not sure a human can fight a steel compounder.

Yes, but still it is notable there was no damage to the clothing

 

Moving fast enough to cause sonic booms should destroy the body. The wind would be such to burn from the heat (the concorde plane, moving at 2000 km/h, reached over 100 degrees on the surface - celsius, not fahrehneit. Against a surrounding atmosphere that is much more rarefied and much colder than what marasi had. and the concorde has a better aerodinamic shape than a human arm). So, marasi had a temperature of at least 500 degrees, probably more, against her arms. of course with the level of pewter she was flaring and gold healing she was tapping she took no damage from that. but I'd have expected her sleeves to catch fire. Or at least be ripped and torn from the wind. the fact that they don't could mean that Feruchemical steel really acts like a speed bubble for you, including a thin amount of air that get sped up with you and shields you from the worst of the attrition. which removes one of the few limitations for the more insanely powerful uses of the ability. but if air moved along with you, then she should not have left vacuum behind her. So... mistery. maybe Feruchemical steel makes one immune to friction damage from moving at high speed, just like Feruchemical iron makes one immune to crushing himself?

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Yes, but still it is notable there was no damage to the clothing

 

Moving fast enough to cause sonic booms should destroy the body. The wind would be such to burn from the heat (the concorde plane, moving at 2000 km/h, reached over 100 degrees on the surface - celsius, not fahrehneit. Against a surrounding atmosphere that is much more rarefied and much colder than what marasi had. and the concorde has a better aerodinamic shape than a human arm). So, marasi had a temperature of at least 500 degrees, probably more, against her arms. of course with the level of pewter she was flaring and gold healing she was tapping she took no damage from that. but I'd have expected her sleeves to catch fire. Or at least be ripped and torn from the wind. the fact that they don't could mean that Feruchemical steel really acts like a speed bubble for you, including a thin amount of air that get sped up with you and shields you from the worst of the attrition. which removes one of the few limitations for the more insanely powerful uses of the ability. but if air moved along with you, then she should not have left vacuum behind her. So... mistery. maybe Feruchemical steel makes one immune to friction damage from moving at high speed, just like Feruchemical iron makes one immune to crushing himself?

again keep in mind she had ALL the powers. She could have stored the heat. Now regards to the wind shredding her clothes, you got me there though it does mention there being a sonic boom as result of her sudden movement. Regarding friction damage though there is WoB that that is an actual issue for a steel runner.

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again keep in mind she had ALL the powers. She could have stored the heat. Now regards to the wind shredding her clothes, you got me there though it does mention there being a sonic boom as result of her sudden movement. Regarding friction damage though there is WoB that that is an actual issue for a steel runner.

oh, right, i wanted to mention that, but i forgot:

the boook states that she tapped everything, so she should have incinerated her clothing just because of that. even putting that aside, storing heat just as it is produced in a way that would keep your clothes from burning would require fine control; marasi just got the power and she had other things in her mind, there's no way she was doing it. 

on the other hand, the details in that scene don't seem all that consistent, so I think it's more like a small accuracy mistake from brandon than a feature of the powers.

 

The way I see those conversations XD:

alas, I am sorry about it, but there are bands spoilers that are relevant to the discussion and must be treated that way.

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oh, right, i wanted to mention that, but i forgot:

the boook states that she tapped everything, so she should have incinerated her clothing just because of that. even putting that aside, storing heat just as it is produced in a way that would keep your clothes from burning would require fine control; marasi just got the power and she had other things in her mind, there's no way she was doing it. 

on the other hand, the details in that scene don't seem all that consistent, so I think it's more like a small accuracy mistake from brandon than a feature of the powers.

 

alas, I am sorry about it, but there are bands spoilers that are relevant to the discussion and must be treated that way.

then of what she tapped was connection, which she was very connected to her clothes unlike MeLaan so they were considered part of her, and thus immune :P

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We were discussing over on the thread about why Steel is so hard to store that the perception boost may not be 1:1. You might double your speed but only get 150% of your original thought processing, and the rest of it is enhanced reflexes, also not 1:1. 

This means that if there is a hard limit on how fast a non-Kandra, non-Bloodmaker can move with Steel, an exponential decrease in processing to speed, all added onto the absolute nightmare that is storing Steel, a normal Steelrunner may be closer to Awesome, Yet Impractical. As for compounders, they'd still be broken as usual (Think heat compounding and health compounding, it's broken in general), but you'd have a hard limit on how fast you could run without dying, a hard time keeping up with yourself provided perception didn't scale 1:1 and I see no reason why it would, and while I'm listing things at that speed you might actually have difficultly performing more than basic tasks.

 

Example: If you move at mach speed, I'm fairly sure punching somebody's face is going to do more damage to your fist than it will to their face, given your hand is using tons of kinetic energy to move forward into something that is physically incapable of getting out of the way fast enough. You can't move it and you can't go through it, so all that energy will probably just shatter your hand. Attempting to fire a gun while moving that quickly will break the gun, forcing you to slow down to fire. Attempting to fire a gun at all probably means you need to stop moving to aim, which means that even if it's for a brief moment in real time, you're still not moving, and you probably also slowed down so you could fire the gun properly, creating a wonderful opening to get shot at. 

Throw in the fact that you would have difficultly using melee weapons without slowing down (because they don't get durability to go with the swing-speed and your arms sure don't get durability either, Steelrunning could turn out as just being Feruchemy's version of Bendalloy, with its own set of drawbacks and benefits.

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We were discussing over on the thread about why Steel is so hard to store that the perception boost may not be 1:1. You might double your speed but only get 150% of your original thought processing, and the rest of it is enhanced reflexes, also not 1:1. 

This means that if there is a hard limit on how fast a non-Kandra, non-Bloodmaker can move with Steel, an exponential decrease in processing to speed, all added onto the absolute nightmare that is storing Steel, a normal Steelrunner may be closer to Awesome, Yet Impractical. As for compounders, they'd still be broken as usual (Think heat compounding and health compounding, it's broken in general), but you'd have a hard limit on how fast you could run without dying, a hard time keeping up with yourself provided perception didn't scale 1:1 and I see no reason why it would, and while I'm listing things at that speed you might actually have difficultly performing more than basic tasks.

 

Example: If you move at mach speed, I'm fairly sure punching somebody's face is going to do more damage to your fist than it will to their face, given your hand is using tons of kinetic energy to move forward into something that is physically incapable of getting out of the way fast enough. You can't move it and you can't go through it, so all that energy will probably just shatter your hand. Attempting to fire a gun while moving that quickly will break the gun, forcing you to slow down to fire. Attempting to fire a gun at all probably means you need to stop moving to aim, which means that even if it's for a brief moment in real time, you're still not moving, and you probably also slowed down so you could fire the gun properly, creating a wonderful opening to get shot at. 

Throw in the fact that you would have difficultly using melee weapons without slowing down (because they don't get durability to go with the swing-speed and your arms sure don't get durability either, Steelrunning could turn out as just being Feruchemy's version of Bendalloy, with its own set of drawbacks and benefits.

 

Not to mention this:

 

Imagine yourself as a normal steel Compounder.  How do you find out where that upper limit is?  How do you know where to draw the line between "I am the Flash!" and "I am a broken mess of squish!"  Do you push yourself to test those limits, risking horrible injury and death?  Or do you play it safe and stay in a more reasonable, human range?

 

I'm guessing that except in very extreme cases, most people are gonna go with the latter most of the time.

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And if you get it wrong, that's a one in a billion combination dead with no replacement forthcoming. Wonder how long it takes before you get WWII-esque forced tests to determine once and for all the exact limits.

Why would anyone want it?

I mean, Nazi experiments on humans DID push medicine forward, but the experiments itself were so horrible and inhuman that I don't even want to research that topic. I had my share of depression when I read obligatory books for school - those written by survivors of German and Russian camps...

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I'm not saying it's a good thing at all. i'm just wondering how long it will take before somebody starts forcing Steelrunners to move at increasingly quick speeds for the purposes of learning where the lethal limit it. It's horrible, but barring Scadrial figuring out Hemalurgy or a trick with the medallions so you can both not die and find where you would, it would probably be the only way.

But I really don't want to talk about WWII here so I'll drop any further thoughts I have on the topic.

Edited by Observer
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I think it's pretty hard to force a steelrunner to do anything he does not want to. especially if you want them to experiment with a full metalmind.

really, that's as if the nazis have given increasingly powerful guns to the jews because they wanted to see at what point the recoil became unmanageable. that's one of the few things they did not try; they were nuts, not dumb

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Alright, this is the last I'm going to say on the subject because I really do not want to get into WWII things.

Nazi tests advanced science by a decent amount, because they didn't have any moral qualms about figuring out exactly what amount of force would break certain parts of a body, what it takes to kill a given person, and even a handful of things that had nothing to do with killing test subjects. Pilot stress limits, saving people from freezing to death and lifejacket design were, iirc, influenced by Nazi science. A lot this can be extremely useful, even if most of their "science" was probably just creative sadism.

Furthermore they were far from incompetent. While they certainly had their share of really dumb moves, basically every nation can say the same. You don't exactly get in a position to literally take over the world by being stupid.

/rant

 

It's totally possible force a Steelrunner to do something. No matter how fast you move, your physical body won't do much against hard materials. You'll just shatter your skeleton trying to go mach speed at bricks. As long as they don't leave your guards where they can be attacked during metalmind hours, there shouldn't be any problems. If they get uncooperative you can just poison their air supply, dozens of toxins to pick from. Sure it'd take some work to test this stuff, but the same holds true for almost any of the metallic arts.

Edited by Observer
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