Lerasium strength?

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

When blowing down the doors to the well of Ascension, Vin needed duralumin not only steel but also pewter.   We also saw her use the duralumin boost to throw the horses, again using pewter and steel.  

I personally think the pewter was the reason she was using duralumin less so than the steel as in both cases the steel should have been fine given it working on mass.  

Do you all think that Elend in either or both cases could have performed those feats by simply flaring the metals instead?  How much stronger was Elend than Vin?   If Lerasium mistborns are double the strength of the typical mistborn in the era does that mean Elends strength on pewter was roughly 4x a normal human?  6x when flared?  Would he be 4x as durable as a normal human?  When steel pushing do you think he was able to push things twice as fast or see things half as big as the smallest metal pieces Vin was able to see?  

Do we have much to go on at all saying what kind of advantages a lerasium mistborn would have vs a typical mistborn that we have seen on screen?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Do we have much to go on at all saying what kind of advantages a lerasium mistborn would have vs a typical mistborn that we have seen on screen?

From what I could tell, Elend could do things with just the regular metals Vin would need Duralumin for. Like controlling Hemalurgic Constructs and healing a severe gut wound he recieved at the Well of Ascension by the knife of Preservation. It took Vin months to recover from an axe wound to the gut in book one, but it seems implied that it took much less time for Elend to do the same. Since it was noted he was already fighting Steel Inquisitors with Vin for a while.

 

Edited January 26, 2023 by JustQuestin2004

[Treamayne]

41 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

It took Vin months to recover from an axe wound to the gut in book one, but it seems implied that it took much less time for Elend to do the same. Since it was noted he was already fighting Steel Inquisitors with Vin for a while.

To be fair, we don't know how long it took for him to heal, since there was about 15 months between the end of WoA and the start of HoA.

2 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Do you all think that Elend in either or both cases could have performed those feats by simply flaring the metals instead?

He probably could have thrown the horses and riders without Duralumin, but I doubt he could have moved the Stone entrance in TLR's meditation chamber without it. It's heavily implied that it needs the multiplicative application of steel provided to Inquisitors through having multiple Hemalurgic spikes of A-Steel.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

42 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

To be fair, we don't know how long it took for him to heal, since there was about 15 months between the end of WoA and the start of HoA.

15!?

I thought it was like 6 or something. Never mind that then.

 

[Mistchemist16]

The only things I can tell about Lerasium’s power level is that it’s equal or greater to duralumin, since it can perform feats of similar level.  I don’t know how it stacks up in comparison to a Misting ability paired with a Hemalurgic spike. The best point to speculate is based on breaking copper clouds

Questioner

There is quantitative difference in Allomancy (e.g. Elend is stronger than Vin), there is skill difference (e.g. Breeze is better than Vin with zinc), but is there a qualitative difference too?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s the scale of what we call savant. Wax can do more with less. It’s not just skill, the burning for long, using for so long, will actually adapt your soul to the power.

Questioner

So can bronze savants pierce copperclouds?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, a bronze savant should be able to pierce copperclouds. It depends on the strengths of the coppercloud and the strength of the savant, but yes.

Questioner

So Elend could theoretically learn to pierce copperclouds?

Brandon Sanderson

Weaker ones, yeah, totally. He can learn how to do it by brute force.

Shadows of Self San Francisco signing (Oct. 9, 2015)

We know Inquisitors and Vin with the earrings can do so, but both should have greater skill in bronze. If you guys have any guesses for how to compare Allomancer power levels, let me know, but I honestly don’t expect anything else that could work.

Anyway, the WoB also seems to imply that Elend could also learn to replicate Zane’s hovering with training. I imagine that is just as much an issue of finesse as simply brute forcing it

Edited January 26, 2023 by Mistchemist16

[StanLemon]

So the only concrete example of the difference in power we have between a Lerasium Mistborn and a regular Mistborn is controlling Kandra. Vin is above average in power for a Mistborn, and even with Duralumin she still had some difficulty breaking through and taking control. However, Lerasium Mistborn are described as powerful enough to do it without Lerasium. This seems to imply that a Lerasium Mistborn can come close to or match the power of Duralumin.

I'd imagine that a Lerasium Mistborn would still have to flair their metals to match the power of Duralumin though. Also, Duralumin does make things more complicated as it isn't a set boost in power. Because Duralumin compresses all the metals in a person, the more power a Mistborn gets a stronger boost if they have more metals in their system. I'd imagine though, that as Vin had just her standard vials with most of her Duralumin boosts, that would be the safe default power assumption when comparing the two types of Mistborn strengths.

[Quantus he/him]

I don't think "Lerasuim Mistborn" have any set strength advantage just for being first generation from the metal, it all has to do with how much Lerasium you get.  A sliver of it would make a very weak mistborn, but they'd still be a Lerasium Mistborn (technically).

 

 

Quote

 

Questioner

The size of the metal, does it matter to transfer Allomancy or can it be really really tiny or really really big?

Brandon Sanderson

For Allomancy? Or what, a bead of lerasium? Is that what you're talking about?

Questioner

Yeah, when you're transferring the powers, like to make someone a Mistborn...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah it has to be-- The size of it is going to influence how strong a Mistborn you are.

Questioner

It couldn't be a sliver.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah-- Well it could, you'd just be really weak as a Mistborn.

Bands of Mourning release party (Jan. 25, 2016)

 

 

[Returned]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

I don't think "Lerasuim Mistborn" have any set strength advantage just for being first generation from the metal, it all has to do with how much Lerasium you get.  A sliver of it would make a very weak mistborn, but they'd still be a Lerasium Mistborn (technically).

It might be interesting to know the rate of dilution across generations removed from someone who burned a given amount of lerasium, as suggested in the OP, but we don't have enough information to make good guesses about it. For practical reasons relating to how Allomancy works, I suspect that we'll never get to this information outside of a WoB (or similar).

[Quantus he/him]

1 hour ago, Returned said:

It might be interesting to know the rate of dilution across generations removed from someone who burned a given amount of lerasium, as suggested in the OP, but we don't have enough information to make good guesses about it. For practical reasons relating to how Allomancy works, I suspect that we'll never get to this information outside of a WoB (or similar).

Agreed, we'd need an isolated population that had Lerasium seed Mistborn but no Lerasium Mistings to muddy the generational progression and dilution down from strong mistborn to weak to mistings only.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

1 hour ago, Returned said:

It might be interesting to know the rate of dilution across generations removed from someone who burned a given amount of lerasium, as suggested in the OP, but we don't have enough information to make good guesses about it. For practical reasons relating to how Allomancy works, I suspect that we'll never get to this information outside of a WoB (or similar).

I do believe there was a WoB stating that the decay in allomamtic power from genetics was at its limit.  This is what we can expect from allomancers now.  

[Frustration he/him]

8 minutes ago, Returned said:

 

Spoilers for TLM aren't allowed here.

[Returned]

7 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Agreed, we'd need an isolated population that had Lerasium seed Mistborn but no Lerasium Mistings to muddy the generational progression and dilution down from strong mistborn to weak to mistings only.

And even then we'd have trouble accounting for some physical differences, skill, experience burning metals, etc. Maybe something more complicated could be worked out via Feruchemy, but it still seems difficult. For example, a piece of metal of known composition and mass could be filled X% full by one person and Y% by another. It still seems like there would be lots of issues to deal with, and I don't think an in-world character would find much use for the information and so wouldn't pursue it.

4 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I do believe there was a WoB stating that the decay in allomamtic power from genetics was at its limit.  This is what we can expect from allomancers now. 

Right, but that doesn't give us information on the rate of decrease in Allomantic strength from an initial hit of lerasium (by itself). Maybe there could be some cool extrapolations but I feel like we'd still need more information that in-world sources are unlikely to bother trying to get.

Unrelatedly, I made an edit to my above post to remove the spoiler, per @Frustration's comment, but it'll still be in your quote of it unless you change it. Could you help me clear up my mistake and update it when you have a chance?

Quote

Spoilers for TLM aren't allowed here.

Still too early? Thanks for the reminder, I've edited it (hopefully enough).

Edited January 26, 2023 by Returned

[Chaos he/him]

1 hour ago, Returned said:

Still too early? Thanks for the reminder, I've edited it (hopefully enough).

You're in the wrong forum. The spoiler periods are six months. There are two totally separate Lost Metal spoiler boards where are things are quarantined. It is permissible for you to use spoiler tags for TLM content here. 

You may want to look at: 

 

And

Note also the description of this forum explicitly says TLM is not allowed  I can understand the confusion given that it's labeled as Mistborn, but yeah, spoiler period stuff is special. I have had to delete some things that were quoted.

[Returned]

26 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Note also the description of this forum explicitly says TLM is not allowed  I can understand the confusion given that it's labeled as Mistborn, but yeah, spoiler period stuff is special. I have had to delete some things that were quoted.

I'd not double-checked which sub-forum I was in when the topic turned into spoiler-evidence territory, and have already lost track of how long it's been since TLM came out. Thank you for fixing my post to comply with the policy, I'll be more attentive in the future.

[cometaryorbit]

I'd argue that Elend was at least 5x normal strength and probably more than 6-7x, based on pewter and directly matching strength with a giant (11' iirc) koloss.

Per WoB, normal strength pewter is double strength at normal burn/triple flared.

A normal, basic koloss is 5' tall and has the strength of five people, minus a small amount of Hemalurgic decay... so say 4.75x or so.

If koloss strength scales normally with size (square cube law) then a 10' koloss will be about 19x normal human strength (4.75x4); an 11' koloss about 23x (4.75x4.84).

Now it might not scale quite that extremely, since a larger koloss doesn't have more spikes... but they are far more heavily built than human, so it'd surely be more than the 9-10x or so you'd get assuming only the base human strength increases with size (say at 10' tall: x4 for size + x4.75 for spikes = x8.75).

So even an imo fairly conservative intermediate value of x15 would mean Elend is at least x5 stronger than normal pewter use.

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[Frustration he/him]

In HoA page 40 Elend outpushes a steel inquisitor, who a few pages later is revealed to only have a single f-steel spike extra, so he has 2-3 times regular steel power, depending on if he was a natural coinshot or not.

So Lerasium beads the size of the one Elend ate make you at least 3-4 time more powerful than ordinary allomancers