Is it possible to power surges with breath

[bmcclure7]

Does anyone know if it's possible to power surges with breath?

[+ILuvHats]

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Leinton (paraphrased)

Can Breath be used to power Surgebinding?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They are very similar Investitures, and most of the magics can be powered with the other magics if you are capable of making that happen.

Questioner (paraphrased)

What would happen to the Breath?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The Breath would be consumed in the same way that Stormlight is. A renewing resource, much like atium is.

 

[Calderis]

This one as well, which implies it's one of the easier hacks, and shows that this could theoretically extend to any Investiture substituting for any other with varying degrees of difficulty. 

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Questioner

You've mentioned in the last couple of afterwords that you get interesting results when you mix types of investiture.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Twinborn and Surgebinders on Roshar. Can you mix a form of magic with a source of investiture? Can say Vasher use Stormlight in place of Breaths or would that require tampering via Hemalurgy or something like that?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of them require tampering. Some of them are a little bit easier than others. It depends on really what you mean. For instance, white sand can be charged in the presence of any Investiture right? It's just-- But that's not really using the magic, it's just charging it with other Investiture. But, you know, it would be very easy, for instance, if you can get yourself Invested-- Like, for instance, it'd be very easy to use Breaths to fuel Windrunning right? Because the oath and the bond and things like that are going to make it pretty easy. However fueling Allomancy with something else is going to be a lot harder. So it really depends on the magic. It's the sort of thing that there will be lots of science in the books dedicated to making happen in the future and you will find some of the processes these work easier than other ones.

source

 

[Bigmikey357]

Per WOB, one could power surges with Breath. The question becomes why in 16 hells would you want to? Sure in an emergency you have a scarf full of Breaths and your Stormlight gems have run out and you have the Assassin in White about to split your mug you might wanna use that stockpile. But the thing about Breaths is that it's a really sucky form of renewable Investiture. Stormlight is plentiful. Surges are therefore not fuel efficient, especially early in the bonding process. For example, in the sky fight between Kal and Szeth they used up a bunch of Stormlight. They didn't fight long but their usage rate was like an engine on continuous redline. How many Breaths would it have taken to duplicate that type of usage? 100? 200? 1000? And that number per person? A prolonged fight could drain a person from the 5th Heightening down to a drab and none of those Breaths are easily recovered if not impossible. Unless one can find a way to feed directly from Endowment's Shardpool I wouldn't use Breath to power any other magic system. Not Surgebinding, not Allomancy, not Sand Mastery. Why? Because the benefits one gets from keeping those Breaths far outweigh the effects of using them.  Hell, immortality and agelessness can be had for the relatively low price of 2000 Breaths along with resistance to all disease, immunity to all toxins and all the abilities granted by the first 4 heightenings. Flying is definitely cool, no mistake. But with near eternity to work with I'm sure I could find other methods to do so.

[Weltall]

12 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

Hell, immortality and agelessness can be had for the relatively low price of 2000 Breaths along with resistance to all disease, immunity to all toxins and all the abilities granted by the first 4 heightenings.

Alas, this immortality comes at a terrible price, for some at least: A total inability to get so much as a buzz out of alcohol. I wonder if there was an unconscious influence from Brandon's LDS beliefs on alcohol regarding how Cosmere healing treats it. Though given that it is technically a poison (albeit one a lot of people enjoy in small quantities) it could be just as simple as that.

But yes, I'd agree that in general keeping Breaths for their passive benefits outweighs the short-term advantages of using them to fuel other magic systems. But when you're in an emergency or you have an opponent who thinks you've got no access to magic and you have the opportunity to surprise them, it does make for a very useful ace to have up your sleeve. Brandon's eventually going to canonize the exchange rate between magics and he mentioned just last month that there are people working on it now, so we can look forward to that in the future.

[Lidolas]

21 minutes ago, Ookla the Gralsritter said:

Alas, this immortality comes at a terrible price, for some at least: A total inability to get so much as a buzz out of alcohol. I wonder if there was an unconscious influence from Brandon's LDS beliefs on alcohol regarding how Cosmere healing treats it. Though given that it is technically a poison (albeit one a lot of people enjoy in small quantities) it could be just as simple as that.

That's actually a common side-effect of healing abilities in fictional stories.  In Captain America: First Avengers, after his treatment, Steve Rodgers can't get drunk.  In Heroes, Claire Bennet drinks 20 shots without feeling the effects and pretends to be drunk to hide her ability.

But having the conversion rate set would be great!  Maybe 1 breath could sustain 60 minutes of surgebinding....

[Bigmikey357]

That conversation rate is going to be crucial to our understanding once the systems begin mixing in meaningful ways.  I suspect that 1 Breath is going to sustain much less than an hour's worth of Surgebinding; that would make using Breaths way more preferred as a fuel source than the native Investiture source.  We know breaths are 'sticky', so using it may be quite efficient but 1 breath an hour when you consider how OP Surgebinding is seems a touch unrealistic. 

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, Bigmikey357 said:

That conversation rate is going to be crucial to our understanding once the systems begin mixing in meaningful ways.  I suspect that 1 Breath is going to sustain much less than an hour's worth of Surgebinding; that would make using Breaths way more preferred as a fuel source than the native Investiture source.  We know breaths are 'sticky', so using it may be quite efficient but 1 breath an hour when you consider how OP Surgebinding is seems a touch unrealistic. 

The problem with this entire argument is that Surgebinding is variable. A single lashing? A multi lashing? And illusion? 

All going to function at very different rates. 

Additionally, half of what makes radiants OP is just the benefits of holding Stormlight. The increased physical abilities, and healing. 

You don't get any of that from breath. You get lifesense and the Heightenings. 

[dantlee]

I'm really hoping (though I'll doubt we'll get it in Book 4) we'll get to see some breath-powered surgebinding from Hoid soon, since he's the only character that has both a spren bond and breaths.

[Lidolas]

1 hour ago, dantlee said:

I'm really hoping (though I'll doubt we'll get it in Book 4) we'll get to see some breath-powered surgebinding from Hoid soon, since he's the only character that has both a spren bond and breaths.

That would be cool, but given Hoid's avoidance of violence, I think I'd rather see Zahel bond a spren and do some damage.

[galendo]

On 12/12/2018 at 0:47 PM, Bigmikey357 said:

That conversation rate is going to be crucial to our understanding once the systems begin mixing in meaningful ways.  I suspect that 1 Breath is going to sustain much less than an hour's worth of Surgebinding; that would make using Breaths way more preferred as a fuel source than the native Investiture source.  We know breaths are 'sticky', so using it may be quite efficient but 1 breath an hour when you consider how OP Surgebinding is seems a touch unrealistic. 

One Breath will be much, much less than an hour of Surgebinding in most cases (though it's worth noting that some things, such as Shallan's illusions, can be maintained for a long time on minimal Stormlight).  The only real measure of Breath/Stormlight conversion we have is Nightblood, but at the end of Warbreaker:

Spoiler

Nightblood goes through probably a couple hundred Breaths or more in a matter of minutes.  The pertinent quotes are from chapter 56:

"In a matter of minutes, the Breath Vivenna had given him had been reduced by half."  We unfortunately don't know exactly how much Breath that is, but being the amount that would have been required to Awaken a cloak using a simple command, it was probably more than 100 and less than 300.

"The longer Vasher held the sword, the faster it drained his Breath."  This is, unfortunately, the kicker that prevents an easy comparison.

"He was left with just barely enough Breath to reach the First Heightening. Another few seconds, and Nightblood would have sucked the rest away."  The First Heightening is about 50 Breaths, so after a few minutes of being wielded Nightblood is consuming something like 10-20 Breaths a second.

I'd have to reread the battle at the end of OB to figure out how long Szeth had the sword unsheathed, but assuming it was also an unbroken "matter of minutes", then however much Stormlight he went through would have been equivalent to anywhere from probably a hundred to several thousand Breaths.  Again, unfortunately we can't get a tight bound on this number, since at, say, 10 Breaths a second, one additional minute is a difference of at least 600 Breaths and probably 1000 or more.

But the point is that a Breath can't be a whole lot of Stormlight, or else Szeth would have died pretty quickly after he lost Nightblood's sheath.  We're talking something measured in broams, not in gemhearts.