Scadrial vs Roshar.

[Bigmikey357]

@StanLemon

Stormlight is harder to get, that's true. That would make it especially urgent for the Soulcasters to eliminate all sources of metal as soon as possible. KR aren't dumb, if I were them that's the first thing I attack. When speaking of destruction of supply lines I thought that was inherently obvious.

They may be only recently undying but the other points I made are still valid. And there were and are no shortage of Singer bodies to inhabit. And when they do remanifest they come with all the experience a military leader needs  while humans start nearly from scratch every time. And each Desolation came about faster and faster. At one point there was only one year between the ending of 1 Desolation and the beginning of another.

Finally, unless a Steelrunner can go fast enough to jump from the PR to the CR I don't see how Elsecaller/Willshaper are at a mobility disadvantage. They blink out at the speed of thought.

Oh, bonus. He might have known about the temporal metals but he had no way to produce them. Era 1 didn't have the technology or infrastructure to produce them, by his own design. Atium is temporal metal enough in this case.

[StanLemon]

1 hour ago, Bigmikey357 said:

@StanLemon

Stormlight is harder to get, that's true. That would make it especially urgent for the Soulcasters to eliminate all sources of metal as soon as possible. KR aren't dumb, if I were them that's the first thing I attack. When speaking of destruction of supply lines I thought that was inherently obvious.

And the Lord Ruler isn't dumb either, in fact he was a genius even if he was arrogant. How would they go about destroying all sources of metal exactly anyway? Metal is very very prevalent and Soulcasters are less so. They would very quickly become the primary targets. On top of that, Soulcasting uses up a decent amount of Stormlight with each use so they would most likely be using up more stormlight than the amount of metal that they would destroy, not very efficient. Also, them even learning they would need to target metal would be harder than it would be for Scadrian forces to figure out Stormlight due to the nature of Stormlight being a glowing clearly magical thing whereas metal is fairly innocuous. 

Quote

They may be only recently undying but the other points I made are still valid. And there were and are no shortage of Singer bodies to inhabit. And when they do remanifest they come with all the experience a military leader needs  while humans start nearly from scratch every time. And each Desolation came about faster and faster. At one point there was only one year between the ending of 1 Desolation and the beginning of another.

Yes, but it doesn't matter. This is a war between two already established sides. Yes their is no shortage of Singer bodies but their is also no shortage of Koloss either. We saw the Fuzed perform and the ones with Gravitation would be a problem for Koloss or normal soldiers to hit true but they still die easy enough. We saw multiple Fuzed "die" they aren't by any means unstoppable. 

Quote

Finally, unless a Steelrunner can go fast enough to jump from the PR to the CR I don't see how Elsecaller/Willshaper are at a mobility disadvantage. They blink out at the speed of thought.

Steelrunners could kill Elsecallers/Willshapers before they even knew it. A single Steelrunner could kill hundreds in seconds. Now as this scenario is during the Final Empire, TLR wouldn't send in Terrismen but he may give the power over to some Inquisitors. It shouldn't be hard to imagine just how deadly an Inquisitor with F-Steel could be.

Quote

Oh, bonus. He might have known about the temporal metals but he had no way to produce them. Era 1 didn't have the technology or infrastructure to produce them, by his own design. Atium is temporal metal enough in this case.

He could have made them in small amounts, enough for himself and maybe some Inquisitors. The Final Empire was plenty advanced for the inefficient method of refinement. Hell, in real life Cadmium was discovered in the early 1800s. Chromium, which may or may not be able to wipe out other types of Investiture (such as Stormlight) was discovered even earlier

 

Edited October 16, 2019 by StanLemon

[RShara]

What keeps TLR from steelrunning into the Rosharan's camps and destroying all their gemstones, then? He could do destroy them all in an hour or so without breathing hard.

[Calderis]

3 minutes ago, RShara said:

What keeps TLR from steelrunning into the Rosharan's camps and destroying all their gemstones, then? He could do destroy them all in an hour or so without breathing hard.

Hell with his strength in allomancy, he could probably fracture them from a distance with iron and steel. 

[+Oltux72]

5 hours ago, StanLemon said:

And Radiants need Stormlight, lot easier to find new metal than a new source of Stormlight. Your argument is very flawed

To an extent. If there is no Stormlight, the KRs will be doomed. If there is an easy source, things reverse. The Radiants are much more self-contained. The metalborn are perfect assassins and paramilitaries. They have no facilities for supporting themselves. The KRs are almost a technicologically advanced civilization upon themselves. They have logistics (soulcasters, progression = farmers), sappers, combat engineers, field medics, transportation (much better than steelpushing) and intelligence specialists.

Metalborn need somebody and something to make their metals. In the very long run that means mines and smelters. And not just primitive ones. Their metals must be pure and the alloys precisely mixed. Hence they need fixed installations. Or long supply routes. TLR can defend at most one of them at a time. And if you include him, the supplies must work. He needs his atium.

5 hours ago, StanLemon said:

They are only undying in the most recent Desolation. Before the Everstorm when they die they go back to Braize and are trapped their until a Herald breaks and even then they need the bodies of Singers to manifest.

They still have the advantage of a fuel supply that does not spoil. Meaning naval aviation and troops. WIth  them, the Rosharans rule the oceans. Frictionless ships with air support and control over the wind. Unbeatable.

5 hours ago, StanLemon said:

Technically he likely did know about Chromium, Nicrosil, Cadmium, and Bendalloy. We have several WoB implying that he does and I can't think of any that say he didn't.

Unless he is willing the reveal the secret and actually make the stuff (chromium is harder to refine than preindustrial metals), it matters relatively little. TLR himself is chained to his atium supply.

5 hours ago, StanLemon said:

As far as mobility goes, Gravitation would give better mobility yes but Elsecallers can't compare to Steelrunning.

On very short distances. They have maybe two dozen steelrunners who can compound and we are talking about a planet. And it is limited to land.

5 hours ago, StanLemon said:

And you think TLR wouldn't do guerrilla tactics against them?

No, he wouldn't, as they would fail. The Radiants

• dominate the sky
• dominate the ocean (no way for coinshots or mistborn to fly over water except with extreme limitations)
• can change bases more quickly
• have global range (elsecalling)
• have better communication (spanreeds)
• have more reliable troops (Skaa in small unsupervised groups on a habitable planet - interesting concept)
• have supply routes out of enemy reach - everything flying at a few kilometers height is basically untouchable to anything but maybe emotional allomancy)

The Metalborn have advantages, but they are basically immobile on an operational level

• their fuel supply does not spoil for decades
• they benefit much more from a prepared battlefield (preinstalled metal anchors)
• they have a true strength in urban combat (better sensors and speed on a short scale)
• no good magic means of transportation

They won't beat an enemy who can teleport at guerilla.

5 hours ago, StanLemon said:

In fact it would be more beneficial for him to do so than them. He has so many ways he could get past their defenses and destroy their Stormlight reserves which would cripple the Radiants

Where would you store them if you were a Radiant? On islands within easy flight range of your targets. That is the strange point within the original premise. Whence to get Stormlight? And the obvious one, if your battlefield is a planet, how will you find each other? Build ships and go sailing around the world?

 

The advantage here depends on context. The larger and emptier of people the battlefield the better for the KRs. Provided they have enough Stormlight.

On 15/10/2019 at 6:56 AM, StanLemon said:

The fact that the Desolations were even a problem is one of my big strikes against the Radiants. With so many Radiants plus the worlds soldiers (admittedly at a low tech level) they still nearly got wiped out by the end of EVERY SINGLE DESOLATION and it was common for Heralds to to die during them too. Based on what we've seen so far in this current Desolation (which is arguably worse than any previous one because of the Everstorm, constantly returning Fuzed, lack of Heralds, and barely existent Radiants) plus from the visions that we saw with Dalinar I don't see why Scadrial couldn't beat them. They were fighting monsters and magic users yes but so far we haven't seen them fight anything that Scadrial couldn't have handled and yet the Radiants constantly barely survived.

Correct. Hence we must conclude that the Singers were more numerous or we haven't seen what Forms of Power in large numbers and with training can do. And the Unmade have shown only a small part of their full power.

[Bigmikey357]

Koloss would get obliterated by normal warform Parshendi, much less Fused. I mean, what would a metal sword do against a 30 ft tall Rock monster?

A regular Steelrunner is no match against someone wearing Shardplate and has Stormlight healing besides. Inquisitors have no weapon to penetrate that defense either. An obsidian ax? Against Shardplate? Not bloody likely. 

Lastly, are Dawnshards in play for this scenario? They have planetary effects from what little we know of them. They were involved with the Scouring of Amia, the making of the Shattered Plains, the destruction of Ashyn. I don't know how they'd come into play but that's enough power to even give TLR pause. If they aren't, well, I can think of a half dozen ways to get rid of metal or just plain make it unusable, even poison.  I mean metalborn can't just pick up a ball bearing, swallow it and instantly gain power. It has to be a precise chemical composition to be usable for Allomancy or Feruchemy. I can imagine an Elsecaller popping in from the CR into a storage cache, altering the metal stores to throw off their percentages and leaving.  Because if the scenario requires that Stormlight cannot be refueled on this battleground then it's only fair that the Scadrians can only use the metal they bring with them. Destroy the metal, win the war. If both sides run out of fuel, meaning the Radiants burned through all their Stormlight, selling out to ruin all the Scadrians metal, they still have Shardblades that don't require Stormlight to function while a metalborn without metal is just a normal guy.

Edited October 16, 2019 by Bigmikey357

[Calderis]

15 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

planetary effects from what little we know of them. They were involved with the Scouring of Amia, the making of the Shattered Plains, the destruction of Ashyn.

The only one of these I know of is Ashyn. We know almost nothing about the Dawnshards. 

Can you point me to the information please? 

[+Oltux72]

2 hours ago, RShara said:

What keeps TLR from steelrunning into the Rosharan's camps and destroying all their gemstones, then? He could do destroy them all in an hour or so without breathing hard.

• location - he has to know where they are
• navigation - he has to find them, without maps on an alien planet
• larger bodies of water
• and if they really wanted to, they could have bases in the CR
• range. He can compound, but that sows him down and he needs to carry the metal. He will certainly outrun his supply train

Remember if you are TLR and get lost, you live only as long as your atium lasts

[Calderis]

9 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Remember if you are TLR and get lost, you live only as long as your atium lasts

Not nearly the issue you're making it out to be. 

Marsh has lived 340 years off of a single pouch of atium. The "10 fold" quote on compounding is not an accurate number 

Edited October 16, 2019 by Calderis

[+Oltux72]

4 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Not nearly the issue you're making it out to be. 

Marsh has lived 340 years off of a single pouch of atium. The "10 fold" quote on compounding is not an accurate number 

TLR is much older. His fuel requirements have gone up. Do they go up proportionally?

[Calderis]

1 minute ago, Oltux72 said:

TLR is much older. His fuel requirements have gone up. Do they go up proportionally?

Yes they do. They go up so that to appear in his twenties at the time of Era 1 he'd need to tap 1000 years worth compared to the 300 something Marsh has to tap. 

But that's still 300+ of continual growing use and counting off of a pouch that KanPaar had sent out of the Homeland to sell, that a Kandra was carrying in one hand. 

Even at TLR rates, that's not going to run out in a few days, and TLR is going to have easy access to far more atium than that. 

[+Oltux72]

15 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Yes they do. They go up so that to appear in his twenties at the time of Era 1 he'd need to tap 1000 years worth compared to the 300 something Marsh has to tap. 

But that's still 300+ of continual growing use and counting off of a pouch that KanPaar had sent out of the Homeland to sell, that a Kandra was carrying in one hand. 

Even at TLR rates, that's not going to run out in a few days, and TLR is going to have easy access to far more atium than that. 

1. We do not know how much Marsh stored up while he was young. If he was ready to spend half his time at age 85, assuming he was 35 when he started, that gives him 675 stored years
2. How many of his years did he gain by using cadmium?

[Calderis]

21 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

How many of his years did he gain by using cadmium?

Why would he have cadmium? He'd have to have killed to steal that power. 

I don't think Harmony has had cadmium misting just hanging out with ironeyes. 

[+Oltux72]

5 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Why would he have cadmium? He'd have to have killed to steal that power. 

I don't think Harmony has had cadmium misting just hanging out with ironeyes. 

He could pay them.

So let's assume it was all atium all along. Yet still TLR has used up 500 000 years of youth. Marsh as a worst case about 50 000 years. Probably much less. At Marsh's age it still matters how young you make yourself most of them time.

[Bigmikey357]

4 hours ago, Calderis said:

The only one of these I know of is Ashyn. We know almost nothing about the Dawnshards. 

Can you point me to the information please? 

I'm not sure I have any reference on this, merely speculation based on half remembered WOB's. But the speculation isn't completely unfounded IMO. The 3 events I mentioned could likely only been done with Surges. Honor's last days had him raving about how Surges were going to destroy the world again. The disconnect comes from what we have seen so far. As powerful as the surges are we have seen no evidence in their usage that would lead anyone to believe that they could cause the level of destruction represented by say, the Shattered Plains. There is a missing puzzle piece. So either the Radiants can pool their power either through a Bondsmith intermediary or the Spren hold hands or whatever mechanism Brandon decided to use, or it a Dawnshard. We don't know much about them and I really want that to be remedied.

[Gisaku75]

5 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

Koloss would get obliterated by normal warform Parshendi, much less Fused. I mean, what would a metal sword do against a 30 ft tall Rock monster?

A regular Steelrunner is no match against someone wearing Shardplate and has Stormlight healing besides. Inquisitors have no weapon to penetrate that defense either. An obsidian ax? Against Shardplate? Not bloody likely. 

Why would parshedi in warform be dangerous to the Koloss when they are barely able to withstand an alethy army? Moreover, givethe difference in gravity between Roshar and Scadrial the Koloss would be much stronger than normal and therefore more dangerous. 

The fused are powerful but they are very few, and sooner or later they would end up the voidlight. And even reaping hundreds of victims, sooner or later they would be overwhelmed. Same thing for the Thunderclas, the Koloss weapons are like huge steel mace, sooner or later and with huge losses they would prevail. Or it could deal with TLR directly with a steelpush + duralluminium. At that point TLR should simply transform the captured and injured Parshedi into new Koloss reducing their losses to a minimum.

A steelrunner or mistborn with the atium should simply thrust a dagger into the visor slit until it overlaps the brain and break the blade there. maybe a dagger for each eye. When Shallan is pierced by the crossbow dart he does not die, but loses control of a part of the body. So much so that he needs help getting the dart out, and then he faints.

For the inquisitors the same speech. A coin or a obsidian dagger through the slit of the helmet. Or he could pick up a Koloss blade and destroy the shardplate. Pewter A + Steel F would give it an unbridgeable advantage.

[Bigmikey357]

A normal Parshendi warform beats Koloss because they are smarter, more manuverable, and are armored. Put singers in warform next to a thunderclast with Fused lashing boulders down at the flanks and the rear or quicksanding the ground, of all the forces from Scadrial the Koloss are the least worrying. They're big dumb animals with huge blunt swords, strong but slow. 

Radiants can heal any damage and are more numerous than metalborn. Shardplate makes wearer at least twice as strong as any Thug. The shock troop Koloss can be neutralized in an afternoon by either Knight or Fused. We've gone over this. TLR is the only being with the combination of powers to even inconvenience an army of KR. If he catches them napping he can wipe out their entire force, but he is only one dude and Knights aren't dumb. TLR isn't making Inquisitor Fullborn so he's really conducting the battle on his own, cause only a Fullborn can kill more than a handful of Knights at any one time.

 

[Calderis]

I really don't think that radiants are more numerous than metalborn, sorry. 

At their height the radiants numbered in the thousands. Some "orders" but there are millions of people in TFE, and of percentages alone, I'd have to guess that there are far more Allomancers than there ever were radiants. They don't have the limiting factor that is the spren to cap their numbers.

Edit: Luthadel alone had a population of 1-2 million 

Quote

wackyHair

What's the population of the shardworld's we've seen so far (even in very general terms, like one's much bigger than the others or something)?

Brandon Sanderson

Scadrial is certainly the least populated of the major shard worlds. Then Nalthis, I'd guess, followed by Roshar, and finally Sel--which likely has the largest population. I would have to look closely to see which is bigger between those last two.

Phantine

Does a population of about 100 million during The Final Empire (with 1-2 million in Luthadel), and around 15 million during Alloy of Law (with about 5 million in Elendel) seem right?

Brandon Sanderson

Have to RAFO this for now, for reasons I can't explain without giving spoilers.

Phantine

How about as far as Elend/Wax knows, at the beginning of their respective series?

Brandon Sanderson

Then those numbers, if they're off, are at least close.

faragorn

Interesting that Sel has such a large population, given that the actual numbers of soldiers shown seem to be quite small.

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just say that Opelon has an inflated opinion of its own size in relation to the rest of the world.

Footnote: The RAFO about the Scadrian population may be due to the existence of the Southerners, which had not been revealed as of this time.
/r/books AMA 2015 (June 8, 2015)

 

Edited October 16, 2019 by Calderis

[Pathfinder]

47 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I really don't think that radiants are more numerous than metalborn, sorry. 

At their height the radiants numbered in the thousands. Some "orders" but there are millions of people in TFE, and of percentages alone, I'd have to guess that there are far more Allomancers than there ever were radiants. They don't have the limiting factor that is the spren to cap their numbers.

Edit: Luthadel alone had a population of 1-2 million 

 

I think you are skewing the numbers unfairly in your favor. Even if there is a decent percentage of 15 million (which it is stated full feruchemists and mistborn are exceedingly rare, then twin born are very very rare, with ferrings being rare, and mistings being relatively common but still a small portion of the population). But lets give the benefit of the doubt and give a nice chunk of the percentage. Of that chunk, some will be "useless" in direct combat (gold, aluminum, bronze and duralumin misting, aluminum, duralumin, brass, copper, bronze, cadmium, bendalloy, electrum ferrings). Then of the remaining, you do not know the range of what mistings and ferrings you will get. Coinshots tend to be more numerous as per the books so that is good at least. So just like you said we do not know how many combat ready radiants they would get (though as per WoB, it is not because the order itself would not be combative, it is the choice of the individual. You can be a truthwatcher or elsecaller, and be on the front lines killing enemies. You can be a pacific windrunner. The order itself may lend to certain personalities, but it does not prevent someone from fighting if they chose to and believe in it) while mistings and ferrings powers can be useless in combat making then equate a normal person and be reliant on guns and such. Those mistings that are for all intents and purposes as useful in a direct fight as a normal person, is reducing your number of combat ready mistings and ferrings from your percentage. 

So TLDR, I think it is jumping the gun to assume there will be so many more mistings and ferrings that could contribute to direct combat fight with their abilities. I am sure there could be clever uses of certain abilities (such as bronze misting and ferrings scouts), but that is one less soldier with an ability to use on the enemy which was the same argument pointed towards non-combative radiants. 

 

for example, lets say you get 150,000 metal born. That is not 100 percent pewter thugs, coinshots, gold ferrings, and so on. Couple of hundred are going to be aluminum gnats. Couple hundred are going to be gold mistings. Couple of hundred are going to be gasper ferrings, and so on. 

Edited October 16, 2019 by Pathfinder

[Calderis]

@Pathfinder one, this is TFE, so twinborn aren't a thing to deal with. And two, for whatever reason we don't know, some kinds of mistings are more prevalent then others.

Coinshots, for example, are common. 

Quote

Kaymyth (parapharased) (paraphrased)

I asked another question about the population levels of Mistings, Ferrings, and Twinborn.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The numbers in the [Alloy of Law Mistborn Adventure Game] supplement are off. (It states the occurrence of Mistings/Ferrings is 1 in 50 people.) He said that they're not terrible, but they definitely are shown as somewhat more common than they really are. But he also said that they're not nearly as rare as people seem to think; for example, he stated that virtually everyone would know at least one Coinshot. So there are definitely a lot of Allomancers around.

And the occurrence of Twinborn would not be a normal statistical spread (alas).  As folks opined before in this thread, the Terris folk do tend to keep somewhat to themselves, so there's not a huge amount of population mix.  So Twinborn will be rarer.

I did point out that there had to be some mix, else we'd be seeing full Feruchemists around, and to that he mostly just smiled and looked mysterious.  As he does.

Footnote: Kaymyth later clarified that Brandon said that the MAG numbers are too high.
ConQuest 46 (May 22, 2015)

"virtually everyone would know at least one Coinshot" 

And that's at alloy of law timeframe, where in the north, allomancy has reached a saturation point of max dilution, where Mistborn don't even occur anymore. 

Quote

This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rulesyeahdiomedes

After the Ascension and everything, how the Allomancy got exponentially weaker after generations. Is something happening after that in the current Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but it’s going to hit a certain point of saturation where it’s going to stop weakening. It’s already kind of, the weakening is…

This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rulesyeahdiomedes

Evened out?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah

Calamity Philadelphia signing (Feb. 20, 2016)

In TFE Allomancers would be generally stronger and more common 

Add in that plate does not hold up to bullets nearly as well as people like to assume... 

Quote

Questioner

How many shots would it take for Wax using his gun to break a section of Shardplate?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on the gun... Okay, so Vindication. He could probably... depends on the bullet, cause he's got several styles. But let's just say two or three. There's an argument he could do it with one, with the right shot, the right bullet, in the right moment.

Orem Signing (March 16, 2019)

And yes, I realize that's talking about Vindiction and some of ranettes "special" bullets... But it still shows that your not going to have plate shrugging off Coinshots like they do arrows. The force that Coinshots can apply behind their shits is in no way trivial. Especially when you do the math. Unlike a bullet which has an initial charge and then continually loses moment, a Coinshot can push with enough force to loft themselves off the ground... And they keep applying that force until they reach a range that they're strength begins to fall of. That continual acceleration means that even if a coin starts slower than a bullet, it sure doesn't stay that way. 

As I've said, I think the radiants are being overestimated here. Especially if it takes the radiants stormlight to regenerate their plate.

[Pathfinder]

47 minutes ago, Calderis said:

@Pathfinder one, this is TFE, so twinborn aren't a thing to deal with. And two, for whatever reason we don't know, some kinds of mistings are more prevalent then others.

Coinshots, for example, are common. 

"virtually everyone would know at least one Coinshot" 

And that's at alloy of law timeframe, where in the north, allomancy has reached a saturation point of max dilution, where Mistborn don't even occur anymore. 

In TFE Allomancers would be generally stronger and more common 

Add in that plate does not hold up to bullets nearly as well as people like to assume... 

And yes, I realize that's talking about Vindiction and some of ranettes "special" bullets... But it still shows that your not going to have plate shrugging off Coinshots like they do arrows. The force that Coinshots can apply behind their shits is in no way trivial. Especially when you do the math. Unlike a bullet which has an initial charge and then continually loses moment, a Coinshot can push with enough force to loft themselves off the ground... And they keep applying that force until they reach a range that they're strength begins to fall of. That continual acceleration means that even if a coin starts slower than a bullet, it sure doesn't stay that way. 

As I've said, I think the radiants are being overestimated here. Especially if it takes the radiants stormlight to regenerate their plate.

I am sorry, to clarify, I was speaking of the discussion regarding the numbers of mistings/ferrings/mistborn/feruchemists versus radiants. You stated you believed there would not be the number of Radiants that was implied by the other poster (sorry don't have a chance to scroll up and confirm who). That radiants were not all combatants. That due to the population density of Scadrial, there would potentially be more metalborn. I was pointing out of the metalborn, not all would be direct combat effective, so the number you would be drawing upon would be less than you initially posited. I was also pointing out that although yes some radiants were not combative, it was due to personal choice, not due to the order they belong to. In order words, not all truthwatchers did not fight. Not all dustbringers did fight. Just because the powers you received from the order you belonged to lended towards defense or offense did not mean that order did not fight at all, or always fought. You could have a truthwatcher or elsecaller on the front lines, using their surges offensively (truthwatchers regenerating faster with the addition of regrowth, and well we have seen Jasnah with transformation and transportation), just like you could have a dustbringer who refuses to fight. The order does not determine their combat capabilities. With allomancy and feruchemy however it does. I wasn't commenting on the effectiveness of coinshots, or pewter thugs, or gold ferrings versus a radiant in shardplate and etc. I was commenting it is an unfair assumption that all those metalborn you will have access to will be coinshots, pewter thugs, or gold ferrings. You are going to have aluminum gnats, gold mistings, and so on, which will reduce the number of offensive combatants based on magical ability. You could totally put a gun in every single one of those hands, but if we are comparing numbers of metalborn versus radiant, I do not believe it is so clear cut. 

 

Hopefully that clarified things. 

 

edit: to put it another way:

walk up to a truthwatcher. Ask if he or she wants to fight. If he or she says yes, he or she can regenerate faster, and (potentially) use illusions to fight. If he or she says no, then that person just refused

walk up to a dustbringer. Ask if he or she wants to fight. If he or she says yes, he or she can burn and slide to fight. If he or she says no, then that person just refused

walk up to a pewter thug. Ask if he or she wants to fight. If he or she says yes, he or she can move faster, strike harder, and take more damage to fight. If he or she says no, then that person just refused

walk up to a aluminum gnat. Ask if he or she wants to fight. If he or she says yes, he or she can...... do nothing. Hand that person a gun, and include them in the general infantry to fight. If he or she says no, then that person just refused. 

walk up to a gold misting. Ask if he or she wants to fight. ie he or she says yes, he or she can..... do nothing. Hand that person a gun and include them in the general infantry to fight. If he or she says no, then that person just refused.

 

In both the aluminum gnat, and gold misting, they are included under the umbrella of metal born, and would take up a percentage of the percentage of metalborn, yet they would be no more effective than any other normal person in combat. That is an aluminum gnat or gold misting in the percentage that you get instead of a pewter thug or coinshot. So you may not have as large of a pool of combat effective metalborn to draw upon as you earlier posited. 

Edited October 16, 2019 by Pathfinder

[Calderis]

@Pathfinder I think your making some assumptions about what I've said.

3/4 of radiants were non-combatants by choice. I agree. That says nothing about order. 

The radiants, at their height, numbered in the thousands. 

Luthadel alone had 1-2 million people. TFE Scadrial had 100 million. Let's lowball luthadel to a million and cut TFE in half to account for the Southerners. 

Just picking some arbitrary numbers here to show an example. Say 16% of the population is mistings and its all equally distributed, with 0.1% of those Allomancers total number being Mistborn. 

That's 499,500 mistings and 8,000 Mistborn in TFE. 

That's 9,990 mistings of each type with 160 Mistborn in Luthadel alone. 

Let's drop that down to 1.6% and that's still far more metalborn than radiants. 

49,500 mistings. 3,121,of each type, with 800 Mistborn in TFE. 

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle with that "virtually everyone would know a Coinshot" bit. 

So no, I don't think I'm overestimating the disparity here. 

[Pathfinder]

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

@Pathfinder I think your making some assumptions about what I've said.

3/4 of radiants were non-combatants by choice. I agree. That says nothing about order. 

The radiants, at their height, numbered in the thousands. 

Luthadel alone had 1-2 million people. TFE Scadrial had 100 million. Let's lowball luthadel to a million and cut TFE in half to account for the Southerners. 

Just picking some arbitrary numbers here to show an example. Say 16% of the population is mistings and its all equally distributed, with 0.1% of those Allomancers total number being Mistborn. 

That's 499,500 mistings and 8,000 Mistborn in TFE. 

That's 9,990 mistings of each type with 160 Mistborn in Luthadel alone. 

Let's drop that down to 1.6% and that's still far more metalborn than radiants. 

49,500 mistings. 3,121,of each type, with 800 Mistborn in TFE. 

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle with that "virtually everyone would know a Coinshot" bit. 

So no, I don't think I'm overestimating the disparity here. 

The rough percentage Brandon gave was 1 every couple of thousand, or .05 percent. If we assume 15 million as the population, as you mentioned earlier, then the next step is how many people are combat capable. I would not assume the entire population of a planet are all adults in their prime correct? Roughly 30 percent of our planet's population is under 15, and roughly 10 percent of our planet's population is over 65. Now being certain metalborn would widen this range as a 70 year old pewter thug could still fight very well, but for purposes of sanity, to me, we should exclude those age groups.

So now you have 9 million people of the right age to fight.

.05 percent of 9 million is 4,500

You gave the example of .1 percent being mistborn. that is 4 and a half people so let us round up to 5 mistborn. 

Coinshots are relatively more prolific, so we will make them, what? 10 percent? 450 coinshots

Now you have the other metals, of which among allomancy is 15, and feruchemy is 16. So 31 abilities you could get. so 89.9 percent left divided equally among 31 abilities is 2.9 percent. But let us round that up to 3 percent. That means you have 135 pewter thugs, 135 gold ferrings, 135 aluminum gnats, 135 gold mistings, and so on.

That is also not accounting for twinborn, their rarity, and possible combinations. 

So 4,500 metalborn sounds about in line with 3,000 to 4,000 radiants. WoB below for reference:

 

Questioner

So what is the, like, actual density of metalborns born in Elendel?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh boy, I have this in my notes somewhere. Um...

Questioner

*inaudible* I guess?

Brandon Sanderson

Roughly. All metalborn? One out of every couple thousands. Little more common than you would probably think, based on... I don't know. People usually assume they're a little more rare than they are. But, yeah...

Questioner

Yeah. It just-- As I was reading I kept finding people saying, "Oh yeah, it's so rare. It's so insanely rare." I was like, "I feel like it's not that rare," like...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, but still. One every couple thousand. Like, you're going to know somebody, but the chances of you actually being one are pretty rare.

Calamity release party (Feb. 16, 2016)

Edited October 16, 2019 by Pathfinder

[RShara]

Books overrule WoBs, and the books state 16% of the population exposed to the mists became Allomancers.

[Quantus]

6 minutes ago, RShara said:

Books overrule WoBs, and the books state 16% of the population exposed to the mists became Allomancers.

A couple questions on that:  Allomancers as in Mistings or full Mistborn?  And was the context Elendel (as the WOB above), or was it instead LTR's empire, or the whole planet?  Each of those could have different ratio's.