Personal Writing Project

[IlstrawberrySeed]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

How would storing make you a savant when you don't provide investiture to your soul necessary to expand it and change it? That's the problem with savantism and Feruchemy, explained in the WoB, it's end-neutral, you don't have more investiture than you can provide by storing it. Investiture doesn't come from outside, form Preservation nor Ruin, it comes from your body, not even soul. Feruchemy isn't "2-ability power" it's one power with multiple actions. The same way Allomancer can burn or flare a metal, Feruchemist can store and tap attributes. It's one power. One ability. Converting attributes into investiture and vice versa.

Heightenings aren't Biochroma savants, because savantism is permanent and non-reversible by normal means. Heightenings are the natural effects of investiture, every highly invested object/people would have similar effects.

If the investiture flows through your soul, you could become a savant. If it doesn't, you cannot. I don't know of any cannon calling on this. The end-neutral bit is specifically for tapping savants, which might be all there is. I don't deny it - it's all speculation. When I first suggested being a filling savant, I said if they exist, which I believe they do.

Also, thanks, don't know what I was thinking when I asked that.

[alder24]

56 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

If the investiture flows through your soul, you could become a savant. If it doesn't, you cannot. I don't know of any cannon calling on this. The end-neutral bit is specifically for tapping savants, which might be all there is. I don't deny it - it's all speculation. When I first suggested being a filling savant, I said if they exist, which I believe they do.

Firstly, we have WoBs telling us that Feruchemist won't become savants without outside sources of investiture. Secondly, logically "storing savants” would do nothing. You still store 50%/1h and nothing changes, and there are still the same limits of how much of an attribute you can store without hurting yourself or dying. Moreover I believe that storing attributes actually takes away from your soul, just a little bit of it is transferred into a metalmind. Afterall, metalminds and attributes are identity locked, and even attributes might be "coded" into your soul. So storing an attribute makes you lose investiture from your soul, not gain it. So it doesn't provide the requirements for becoming a savant. Then if this exists, the flow of investiture through your soul when storing would be so painfully little, that you would quicker become a "tapping savant". But I don't believe it exists as it doesn't make sense (and WoBs).

The end neutrality is for Feruchemy as a whole. Feruchemy is end neutral. Power is neither gained nor lost, that's what makes it end neutral. Because you don't get any investiture that you didn't previously have, your soul isn't invested.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

Firstly, we have WoBs telling us that Feruchemist won't become savants without outside sources of investiture. Secondly, logically "storing savants” would do nothing. You still store 50%/1h and nothing changes, and there are still the same limits of how much of an attribute you can store without hurting yourself or dying. Moreover I believe that storing attributes actually takes away from your soul, just a little bit of it is transferred into a metalmind. Afterall, metalminds and attributes are identity locked, and even attributes might be "coded" into your soul. So storing an attribute makes you lose investiture from your soul, not gain it. So it doesn't provide the requirements for becoming a savant. Then if this exists, the flow of investiture through your soul when storing would be so painfully little, that you would quicker become a "tapping savant". But I don't believe it exists as it doesn't make sense (and WoBs).

The end neutrality is for Feruchemy as a whole. Feruchemy is end neutral. Power is neither gained nor lost, that's what makes it end neutral. Because you don't get any investiture that you didn't previously have, your soul isn't invested.

Actually, fuerochemistry is net neutral investiture wise, but not attribute wise. If you fill for an hour at 50%, you cannot tap for an hour at 150%. This is accentuated in impure metals - the more pure, the more efficient, and less is lost. I see what your saying about why it probably doesn't exist, and I am on the fence now, but saying it would do nothing is a misnomer. Not only would it likely increase efficiency, it wouldn't be the only almost invisible savanthood.

Edited February 27, 2023 by IlstrawberrySeed
Thanks @alder24

[alder24]

3 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Actually, fuerochemistry is net neutral investiture wise, but not attribute wise. If you fill for an hour at 50%, you cannot tap for an hour at 150%. This is excentuated in impure metals - the more pure, the more efficient, and less is lost. I see what your saying about why it probably doesn't exist, and I am on the fence now, but saying it would do nothing is a misnomer. Not only would it likely increase efficiency, it wouldn't be the only almost invisible savanthood.

But the attribute is investiture. But with tapping more than stored, you're using investiture to compress it, and therefore "lose" the attribute. But you didn't lose it, it is there but doing something different - compressing attributes to the required level.

What efficiency? That's the problem, you can't store more than you have. If you can store 50% per 1h of your strength without having any issues, then "storing savant" would still store only 50% per 1h. Nothing changes. What efficiency

I have no idea what word you want to write, neither does google 

[IlstrawberrySeed]

9 minutes ago, alder24 said:

But the attribute is investiture. But with tapping more than stored, you're using investiture to compress it, and therefore "lose" the attribute. But you didn't lose it, it is there but doing something different - compressing attributes to the required level.

What efficiency? That's the problem, you can't store more than you have. If you can store 50% per 1h of your strength without having any issues, then "storing savant" would still store only 50% per 1h. Nothing changes. What efficiency

I have no idea what word you want to write, neither does google 

An attribute is turning into investiture. If the investiture isn't turned back into attribute, you lost attribute. Wether it is lost in transfer or used for compression.

Efficiency of transfer to the metal. Less investiture used in the transfer to the metal, the more you can get out later.

What does that mean?

[alder24]

6 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

An attribute is turning into investiture. If the investiture isn't turned back into attribute, you lost attribute. Wether it is lost in transfer or used for compression.

The terms end-neutral are refering to investiture, and investiture only. 

7 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Efficiency of transfer to the metal. Less investiture used in the transfer to the metal, the more you can get out later.

I don't believe there is any investiture "lost" to a transfer, because of how it is described, coppermind - "when a Feruchemist is tapping an attribute at the same rate it was stored, they are able to get out exactly what they put in". If there was any loss to a transfer, then they would not be able to get exactly what they stored. Efficiency is still the same - 50% per 1h. It doesn't change. You decide how much you want to store, and for how long. Those are the only factors that matters during storing.

11 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

What does that mean?

Your edit: word "excentuated". I don't know what word is this, but I'm not native. Google wants to correct it to "accentuated".

[Tglassy]

Thank you all for the discussion!  Because of the ambiguity on Feruchemical Savanthood, I think I'll steer clear of that.  I'm already going to be delving into lots of theorycraft where Double Pewter is involved, I don't want to further complicate it by adding in a Savanthood that may or may not be a thing.  

[IlstrawberrySeed]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

The terms end-neutral are refering to investiture, and investiture only. 

I don't believe there is any investiture "lost" to a transfer, because of how it is described, coppermind - "when a Feruchemist is tapping an attribute at the same rate it was stored, they are able to get out exactly what they put in". If there was any loss to a transfer, then they would not be able to get exactly what they stored. Efficiency is still the same - 50% per 1h. It doesn't change. You decide how much you want to store, and for how long. Those are the only factors that matters during storing.

Your edit: word "excentuated". I don't know what word is this, but I'm not native. Google wants to correct it to "accentuated".

That is the word I was looking for - my computer wasn't suggesting that as a viable spelling.

A fuerochemist cannot tap at the same rate for the same time as they filled, though I cannot find the WoB I'm referencing. He says something along the lines of "Yeah, it's not 1 to 1. There's some loss there." I took it to mean loss in trasnfer, not/and loss in compression, but it could be just the latter. Also, I think since this argument is no longer relevant to the thread, it's ok to disagree without contenuing. I am genuinly on the fence - you one this fight, even if not absolutly. 

[alder24]

11 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

A fuerochemist cannot tap at the same rate for the same time as they filled, though I cannot find the WoB I'm referencing. He says something along the lines of "Yeah, it's not 1 to 1. There's some loss there." I took it to mean loss in trasnfer, not/and loss in compression, but it could be just the latter. Also, I think since this argument is no longer relevant to the thread, it's ok to disagree without contenuing. I am genuinly on the fence - you one this fight, even if not absolutly. 

This WoB?

Spoiler

Yoonseo Chang

Looking at Allomancy, you've mentioned that over time the power dilutes and each ability becomes less powerful. (for example a Tineye in Era 2 will generally be less powerful than one in Era 1) Does the same effect happen in Feruchemy as well? How would Feruchemy become less pure or diluted (other than Ferrings appearing)?

Brandon Sanderson

I have not gone as far with Feruchemy in that regard. I would say that if you're going to get a weakening of Feruchemy, which you're asking about, is the amount of stored attribute you get for lost attribute. There is decay there, you don't get a 1:1. Feruchemy generally I would say is not much weaker than it was before, a little bit but not much. This was done partially for narrative reasons. I wanted Allomancy... I wanted to back off a little on Allomancy and tell stories with it a little bit weaker. Again, mostly narrative reasons at this point. At this point on Scadrial, it's weakened about as much as it's going to because by this point people are having children that are more powerful because of the certain mixing. I'm not saying it's going up, I'm saying they have hit an equilibrium on Scadrial for the most part, at least in the Basin.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 2 (June 3, 2021)

It's about power dilution over decades, which is mainly a thing in Allomancy, and just a little bit in Feruchemy. But savantism gives you nothing here, because it's a weakening of your powers happening in your spiritual DNA. Just like Lerasium Mistborn is far more powerful than Misborn in Kelsier's times, Lerasium savant would be equally more powerful than Misborn in Kelsier's times savant. This WoB tells just it:

Spoiler

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)

Elend, as a Lerasium Mistborn, draws more raw power than Vin (quantitative difference), but if they both were to become a savant, there would be no qualitative difference, as both can do more with less power, but Elend still has more raw power to draw from, and still is a stronger savant than Vin.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

Yes, that WoB. It's describing the effects of loss through generations.

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

I would say that if you're going to get a weakening of Feruchemy, which you're asking about, is the amount of stored attribute you get for lost attribute. There is decay there, you don't get a 1:1. Feruchemy generally I would say is not much weaker than it was before, a little bit but not much.

The weakening of fuerochemistry is the amount of investiture used to store and tap. We don't knwo for sure where the investiture is used; tapping, filling, or both. If there is any investiture used in filling at all - I would expect it to be possible to permeate the soul, even though it is part of the soul, it's moving through other parts.

[alder24]

4 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

The weakening of fuerochemistry is the amount of investiture used to store and tap.

No, it's not what the WoB says. It says that the weakening of Feruchemy is a proportion of the stored attribute you get, to the lost attribute. That's how I understand it. He doesn't say what is happening to that lost attribute, just that some attribute is lost. The way Brandon talks about it seems that he didn't canonize its mechanism yet, just that there is some loss

[IlstrawberrySeed]

12 minutes ago, alder24 said:

No, it's not what the WoB says. It says that the weakening of Feruchemy is a proportion of the stored attribute you get, to the lost attribute. That's how I understand it. He doesn't say what is happening to that lost attribute, just that some attribute is lost. The way Brandon talks about it seems that he didn't canonize its mechanism yet, just that there is some loss

That's the same way I read it, but I extrapolated out that since it's net nuetral, the investiture must be used. The only times it can be used is when it's kinetic - tapping or filling. If you disagree with these extrapolations, please let me know.

[Tglassy]

Math Time!

Ok, I want to work this out, and make sure I have things straight.  I've started writing, and eventually I'm going to get to where he's experimenting with Pewter and what he can do as a Twinborn.

In order to determine how much strength a single piece of pewter can hold, we need a unit.  But a Unit isn't just an amount of strength, it's an amount per length of time.   So i'm going to say Units Per Hour are the standard.  

I'm going to use DND rules here, so Average Man's Strength is 10, and the maximum Potential of a normal Human is a 20.  One Unit of Strength is equal to 1 point of Strength per hour.  So, if you store One Unit in a metalmind, you can increase your strength to 11 for an hour, or to 12 for half an hour, etc.  

I believe a Pewter Ring should be able to hold roughly 10 Units.  So, when it is full, you could increase your Strength to 11 for 10 hours.  Or to 20 for 1 hour.  Or higher for even less time.  It's at that point that you start losing movbility.  Yes, yes, I know there's decay, but I'm not including Decay in my math right now.  And to be honest, it might be a lot more than this.  But I have to start somewhere.  

I'm going to assume that one Unit of Strength is equal, regardless of who donates it.  A Unit of Strength from Ham is the same as Unit of Strength from Vin.  However, it is much easier for Ham to store a Unit of Strength than for Vin to, because he has more muscle to work with to begin with.  Ham's Strength was probably more like a 15, while Vin's would be closer to a 10.  She was in no way a body builder.  So if they were feruchemists, Ham could fill a metalmind a WHOLE lot faster than Vin could.  

This also means that a Ring can store the same amount of strength regardless of who is filling it, or how it is filled.  The ring can store 10 Units.  That's it.  If you have a natural 20 in Strength, you could fill the whole thing in an hour by storing 10 Units for an entire hour.  

Note:  Sazed takes two Pewter Bracers and fends off an army of Koloss for HOURS.  This means that Bracers can hold many times what a Ring can.  I mean, obviously, but still.  I would say Sazed grew his Strength to at least 25 while fighting Koloss, becaus he was obviously stronger than any man ever would.  No ordinary man could cave in a Koloss' head with a single punch.  It just doesn't work like that.  But Sazed did, which meanst he was pushing his body past what would normally be possible.  And he did that for hours.  And yes, he'd been storing up over a lifetime, but he'd been storing up over a lifetime in THE SAME TWO BRACERS. 

I'm going to assume that Bracers can store 100 Units.  With 100 Units, one could add 15 points of Strength, going from a 10 to a 25, for 6.6 hours.  If you include decay, that roughly fits with what happens in the books.  I'm going to say one bracer can hold 100 Units, and Sazed had 2, but they weren't full.  Remember, Sazed didn't have a lot of strength to begin with, so he wouldn't be able to store up much at any given time.  When he did store, he probably wasn't storing even a single unit over the course of an hour.  But this gives me a nice, round number to play with. 

Ok, so Rings are 10 Units, and Bracers 100.  There will also be a Breastplate at some point that holds 1000 Units, but that's later.  What this means is that with four Pewter Bracers (Two on arms, two on legs) and ten rings, a Pewter Feruchemist is limited to a maximum of 500 units of Strength.  If he did Forarms and upper arms, he could get up to 700 Units.  Addd in a Breastplate and it could get as high as 1,700.  

Which means, if there were no decay or loss of power and he didn't grow too big, he'd be able to increase his Strength up to 1,700 for an hour.  By DND standards, that means he could lift 25,000 lbs for one hour.  Or 50,000 for half an hour.  100,000 for fifteen minutes.  200,000 for seven and a half minutes.  Or 300,000 for three minutes and fifteen seconds.  

That's how he lifts his train.  And yes, I get decay, I get all that, I'm just doing some math.  He'd only be able to do this once he learns how to store strength without muscle mass, anyway.  

But this, at least, gives me a baseline.  With just the bracers and 500 Units of Strength, he could keep himself at a 20 strength (adding 10 points) for 50 hours without needing a recharge.  That's max normal human potential sustained for two whole days, without needing a recharge.

I'll talk about recharging on the next post. This one got a little long.  

[Tglassy]

I know, double posting, but this is a brainstorm thread.  The math below might be confusing, but it makes sense to me.  

I did that wrong in the previous post.  The DND math isn't right. So I made a graph on a spreadsheet to help me keep this straight.  I was way off.  

So, DND stats aren't a 1-1 Ratio.  Each point higher is an orderr of magnitude stronger.  The difference between an 11 and 12 is musch lower than the differrence between an 18 and 19.

So basically, it would cost one Unit to increase from 10 to 11, 11 to 12, and 12 to 13.  But it would cost 2 Units to go from a 13 to 14 or 14 to 15.  It would take 3 Units to go from 15 to 16, or 16 to 17, four for each of the next two, and finally 5 units to go from 19 to 20.  That more accurately represents the increase each one gives. It's basically like this:

What that means is that it would take 26 Units to go from a 10 in Strength to a 20 for an hour.  it would cost 57 Units to go to a 25, like I believe Sazed was at.  Which means, if the Bracers each hold 100 Units, and he went that high, he'd only be able to do it for a couple hours.  it still kinda works, but it's a much, MUCH lower amount of time and takes a LOT longer to fill.  And the Rings would grant 10 Units.   Those 10 Units become 20 for half an hour, or 40 for fifteen minutes, so Sazed would get about ten minutes out of each Ring to keep his Strength at a 25, which was what would be needed fighting Koloss.    

K.  Moving on.  Recharging.  I was contemplating someone with double Pewter, and how that would work.  Yes, I know compounding is awesome.  But it's more than that.  So much more.  

Because he can Burn Allomantic Pewter at the same time you're tapping Feruchemical Pewter.  Ok, so the more muscle someone has, the more strength they get from burning Pewter, right?  It roughly doubles your strength, maybe triples.  So what happens when you're also Tapping Pewter? 

So, there is a cap to how much Pewter you can carry on you.  As before, when Hank gets his breastplate and all the Pewter bracers and rings, he can hold roughly 1,700 Units of Strength.  But what happens when he taps all that Strength...and then Burns Pewter?  It should double it, right?  And even if he can't figure out how to separate Allomantic Strength from Normal Strength, to keep his Muscle Mass from getting too big, he should be able to...I don't know, filter it.  

So, if you get 10 times as many Units by burning a Pewtermind as what was put in, what happens if you burn that Pewtermind...while burning regular Pewter?  You get the strength from the Pewtermind, but that strength is doubled by burning regular Pewter.  So pour that into another Pewtermind, right?  And do it again.  Only this time, that Pewtermind has half the muscle mass associated with it.  Do it again, and the next metalmind will have a quarter of the muscle mass increase.  Do it enough, eventually, you've basically filtered out the Muscle Mass increase from the strength.  

Moving on.  Hank will be able to hold roughly 1700 Units of Strength, and should always have Pewter burning in his system, which doubles that 1700's effectiveness, giving him 3400 Units of Strength.  By the new math, the highest Hank can bring himself for an hour would be...roughly a Strength score of 126, for an hour, compared to a base 10.  Now, he could pull more out at once, so that 1700 becomes 3400 for half an hour, 6800 for a quarter hour, 13,600 for fifteen minutes, 27,200 for seven and a half minuttes, 54,400 for three minutes and fifteen seconds, and finally 108,800 for about a minute and a half.  Then doubled from burning Allomantic Pewter, to a total of 217,602.  With that many points, that puts his max strength, no decay, at 934, compared the a normal person of 10. That gives him a lifting capacity of 28,000 lbs.  Which is not enough for a Train Car.  Boo.  

In order to lift a Train car, he would need over 8,000 Strength.  To get that for one and a half minutes, he would need to have access to half a million full Units which he could pull out all at once for a total of 16 million points, with no Feruchemical decay and no muscle mass increase.  The laws of diminishing returns is dead set against this happening.

The math just doen't support my very cool scene.  

I may write it anyway.  Sanderson's 0th Law.  Go with what's cool.

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by Tglassy

[alder24]

20 hours ago, Tglassy said:

I believe a Pewter Ring should be able to hold roughly 10 Units.  So, when it is full, you could increase your Strength to 11 for 10 hours.  Or to 20 for 1 hour.  Or higher for even less time.  It's at that point that you start losing movbility.  Yes, yes, I know there's decay, but I'm not including Decay in my math right now.  And to be honest, it might be a lot more than this.  But I have to start somewhere.  

10h for a ring? I think Sazed was filling his rings for either 3 days which lasted only for a few short bursts of power in a fight against Marsh. If Sazed slept only 6h a day, that would give him 54h of attributes in each ring - and we don't even know if that was a full ring. But that's only with 1 unit per 1h, WoB says they store 80%, so it would be 8 units per 1h for Average Man's Strength at 10, which would give 54*8 units of strength per 1h in a single ring, 432 per 1h. Is that a lot? Not when you consider diminishing returns.

With this and the average ring volume, you could calculate how much attribute can be stored in cm^3 of a metal.

For the deminishing returns you could create a function, based on this WoB, to know what how much less time you can use an attribute if you tap it more

Spoiler

Sporkify

This is more towards the whole physics stuff, but is Feruchemy really balanced? If it gives diminishing returns, wouldn't this end up as a net loss of power?

Brandon Sanderson

It doesn't diminish. Or, well, it does—but only if you compound it. You get 1 for 1 back, but compounding the power requires an expenditure of the power itself. For instance, if you are weak for one hour, you can gain the lost strength for one hour. But that's not really that much strength. After all, you probably weren't as weak as zero people during that time. So if you want to be as strong as two men, you couldn't do it for a full hour. You'd have to spend some energy to compound, then spend the compounded energy itself.

In more mathematical terms, let's say you spend one hour at 50% strength. You could then spend one hour at 150% strength, or perhaps 25 min at 200% strength, or maybe 10min at 250% strength. Each increment is harder, and therefore 'strains' you more and burns your energy more quickly. And since most Feruchemists don't store at 50% strength, but instead at something like 80% strength (it feels like much more when they do it, but you can't really push the body to that much forced weakness without risking death) you can burn through a few day's strength in a very short time if you aren't careful.

Footnote: This question was asked when fueling Feruchemy with Allomancy had only been seen in Rashek. As such, the term compounding is used purely to reference tapping at a higher rate than can be stored.
Hero of Ages Q&A - Time Waster's Guide (Oct. 15, 2008)

By doing a quick Excel chart from those 3 data points, and using it to determine more data points (each 50% increase cuts time by a bit more than a half), it gives you 400% for 20 seconds from 1h of 50%. That's getting low very fast, comparable to what Sazed did with rings, but probably there should be even more decay.

Spoiler

 

20 hours ago, Tglassy said:

I'm going to assume that Bracers can store 100 Units. 

Far too little, in my opinion, with Sazed fighting description in mind, and diminishing returns.

19 hours ago, Tglassy said:

So, DND stats aren't a 1-1 Ratio.  Each point higher is an orderr of magnitude stronger.  The difference between an 11 and 12 is musch lower than the differrence between an 18 and 19.

I think it would be far easier to have it in 1-1 scale, afterall Brandon and books always talks about percentage of attribute. And that would be the only way when doubling your strength from A-pewter would make sense.

20 hours ago, Tglassy said:

Because he can Burn Allomantic Pewter at the same time you're tapping Feruchemical Pewter.  Ok, so the more muscle someone has, the more strength they get from burning Pewter, right?  It roughly doubles your strength, maybe triples.  So what happens when you're also Tapping Pewter? 

I don't think it would double the strength added by metalminds. Vin was far smaller and physically weaker, but far stronger in pewter than Ham. The power comes from Allomancy, from Preservation. And this is what matters, how much can you get from Preservation. But it could multiply your pewtermind strength.

20 hours ago, Tglassy said:

In order to lift a Train car, he would need over 8,000 Strength.  To get that for one and a half minutes, he would need to have access to half a million full Units which he could pull out all at once for a total of 16 million points, with no Feruchemical decay and no muscle mass increase.  The laws of diminishing returns is dead set against this happening.

The math just doen't support my very cool scene.  

I may write it anyway.  Sanderson's 0th Law.  Go with what's cool.

Yikes  Even half of the train car won't work with your math. Buuuut, just saying, Wax could become heavier than a building for a fraction of a second, so I can see you can become strong enough to lift a car just to put it back on track, for a fraction of a second.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 3/1/2023 at 3:01 PM, Tglassy said:

Math Time!

Ok, I want to work this out, and make sure I have things straight.  I've started writing, and eventually I'm going to get to where he's experimenting with Pewter and what he can do as a Twinborn.

In order to determine how much strength a single piece of pewter can hold, we need a unit.  But a Unit isn't just an amount of strength, it's an amount per length of time.   So i'm going to say Units Per Hour are the standard.  

I'm going to use DND rules here, so Average Man's Strength is 10, and the maximum Potential of a normal Human is a 20.  One Unit of Strength is equal to 1 point of Strength per hour.  So, if you store One Unit in a metalmind, you can increase your strength to 11 for an hour, or to 12 for half an hour, etc.  

I believe a Pewter Ring should be able to hold roughly 10 Units.  So, when it is full, you could increase your Strength to 11 for 10 hours.  Or to 20 for 1 hour.  Or higher for even less time.  It's at that point that you start losing movbility.  Yes, yes, I know there's decay, but I'm not including Decay in my math right now.  And to be honest, it might be a lot more than this.  But I have to start somewhere.  

I'm going to assume that one Unit of Strength is equal, regardless of who donates it.  A Unit of Strength from Ham is the same as Unit of Strength from Vin.  However, it is much easier for Ham to store a Unit of Strength than for Vin to, because he has more muscle to work with to begin with.  Ham's Strength was probably more like a 15, while Vin's would be closer to a 10.  She was in no way a body builder.  So if they were feruchemists, Ham could fill a metalmind a WHOLE lot faster than Vin could.  

This also means that a Ring can store the same amount of strength regardless of who is filling it, or how it is filled.  The ring can store 10 Units.  That's it.  If you have a natural 20 in Strength, you could fill the whole thing in an hour by storing 10 Units for an entire hour.  

Note:  Sazed takes two Pewter Bracers and fends off an army of Koloss for HOURS.  This means that Bracers can hold many times what a Ring can.  I mean, obviously, but still.  I would say Sazed grew his Strength to at least 25 while fighting Koloss, becaus he was obviously stronger than any man ever would.  No ordinary man could cave in a Koloss' head with a single punch.  It just doesn't work like that.  But Sazed did, which meanst he was pushing his body past what would normally be possible.  And he did that for hours.  And yes, he'd been storing up over a lifetime, but he'd been storing up over a lifetime in THE SAME TWO BRACERS. 

I'm going to assume that Bracers can store 100 Units.  With 100 Units, one could add 15 points of Strength, going from a 10 to a 25, for 6.6 hours.  If you include decay, that roughly fits with what happens in the books.  I'm going to say one bracer can hold 100 Units, and Sazed had 2, but they weren't full.  Remember, Sazed didn't have a lot of strength to begin with, so he wouldn't be able to store up much at any given time.  When he did store, he probably wasn't storing even a single unit over the course of an hour.  But this gives me a nice, round number to play with. 

Ok, so Rings are 10 Units, and Bracers 100.  There will also be a Breastplate at some point that holds 1000 Units, but that's later.  What this means is that with four Pewter Bracers (Two on arms, two on legs) and ten rings, a Pewter Feruchemist is limited to a maximum of 500 units of Strength.  If he did Forarms and upper arms, he could get up to 700 Units.  Addd in a Breastplate and it could get as high as 1,700.  

Which means, if there were no decay or loss of power and he didn't grow too big, he'd be able to increase his Strength up to 1,700 for an hour.  By DND standards, that means he could lift 25,000 lbs for one hour.  Or 50,000 for half an hour.  100,000 for fifteen minutes.  200,000 for seven and a half minutes.  Or 300,000 for three minutes and fifteen seconds.  

That's how he lifts his train.  And yes, I get decay, I get all that, I'm just doing some math.  He'd only be able to do this once he learns how to store strength without muscle mass, anyway.  

But this, at least, gives me a baseline.  With just the bracers and 500 Units of Strength, he could keep himself at a 20 strength (adding 10 points) for 50 hours without needing a recharge.  That's max normal human potential sustained for two whole days, without needing a recharge.

I'll talk about recharging on the next post. This one got a little long.  

On 3/1/2023 at 4:01 PM, Tglassy said:

I know, double posting, but this is a brainstorm thread.  The math below might be confusing, but it makes sense to me.  

I did that wrong in the previous post.  The DND math isn't right. So I made a graph on a spreadsheet to help me keep this straight.  I was way off.  

So, DND stats aren't a 1-1 Ratio.  Each point higher is an orderr of magnitude stronger.  The difference between an 11 and 12 is musch lower than the differrence between an 18 and 19.

So basically, it would cost one Unit to increase from 10 to 11, 11 to 12, and 12 to 13.  But it would cost 2 Units to go from a 13 to 14 or 14 to 15.  It would take 3 Units to go from 15 to 16, or 16 to 17, four for each of the next two, and finally 5 units to go from 19 to 20.  That more accurately represents the increase each one gives. It's basically like this:

What that means is that it would take 26 Units to go from a 10 in Strength to a 20 for an hour.  it would cost 57 Units to go to a 25, like I believe Sazed was at.  Which means, if the Bracers each hold 100 Units, and he went that high, he'd only be able to do it for a couple hours.  it still kinda works, but it's a much, MUCH lower amount of time and takes a LOT longer to fill.  And the Rings would grant 10 Units.   Those 10 Units become 20 for half an hour, or 40 for fifteen minutes, so Sazed would get about ten minutes out of each Ring to keep his Strength at a 25, which was what would be needed fighting Koloss.    

K.  Moving on.  Recharging.  I was contemplating someone with double Pewter, and how that would work.  Yes, I know compounding is awesome.  But it's more than that.  So much more.  

Because he can Burn Allomantic Pewter at the same time you're tapping Feruchemical Pewter.  Ok, so the more muscle someone has, the more strength they get from burning Pewter, right?  It roughly doubles your strength, maybe triples.  So what happens when you're also Tapping Pewter? 

So, there is a cap to how much Pewter you can carry on you.  As before, when Hank gets his breastplate and all the Pewter bracers and rings, he can hold roughly 1,700 Units of Strength.  But what happens when he taps all that Strength...and then Burns Pewter?  It should double it, right?  And even if he can't figure out how to separate Allomantic Strength from Normal Strength, to keep his Muscle Mass from getting too big, he should be able to...I don't know, filter it.  

So, if you get 10 times as many Units by burning a Pewtermind as what was put in, what happens if you burn that Pewtermind...while burning regular Pewter?  You get the strength from the Pewtermind, but that strength is doubled by burning regular Pewter.  So pour that into another Pewtermind, right?  And do it again.  Only this time, that Pewtermind has half the muscle mass associated with it.  Do it again, and the next metalmind will have a quarter of the muscle mass increase.  Do it enough, eventually, you've basically filtered out the Muscle Mass increase from the strength.  

Moving on.  Hank will be able to hold roughly 1700 Units of Strength, and should always have Pewter burning in his system, which doubles that 1700's effectiveness, giving him 3400 Units of Strength.  By the new math, the highest Hank can bring himself for an hour would be...roughly a Strength score of 126, for an hour, compared to a base 10.  Now, he could pull more out at once, so that 1700 becomes 3400 for half an hour, 6800 for a quarter hour, 13,600 for fifteen minutes, 27,200 for seven and a half minuttes, 54,400 for three minutes and fifteen seconds, and finally 108,800 for about a minute and a half.  Then doubled from burning Allomantic Pewter, to a total of 217,602.  With that many points, that puts his max strength, no decay, at 934, compared the a normal person of 10. That gives him a lifting capacity of 28,000 lbs.  Which is not enough for a Train Car.  Boo.  

In order to lift a Train car, he would need over 8,000 Strength.  To get that for one and a half minutes, he would need to have access to half a million full Units which he could pull out all at once for a total of 16 million points, with no Feruchemical decay and no muscle mass increase.  The laws of diminishing returns is dead set against this happening.

The math just doen't support my very cool scene.  

I may write it anyway.  Sanderson's 0th Law.  Go with what's cool.

 

Alder is right, It's much too slow. With diminishing returns, BoM:

Spoiler

provided at least Mach 1 speed for at least 2 minutes in about 24ccs of metal.

 

On 3/2/2023 at 0:15 PM, alder24 said:

based on this WoB,

By doing a quick Excel chart from those 3 data points, and using it to determine more data points (each 50% increase cuts time by a bit more than a half), it gives you 400% for 20 seconds from 1h of 50%. That's getting low very fast, comparable to what Sazed did with rings, but probably there should be even more decay.

  Hide contents

I don't think those are real numbers for diminishing returns, after all there is loss from tapping at regular speed. Perhaps not noticible in practice, but still there.

[Tglassy]

Hold the phone.  

Medallions.  They..um...they kind of break this.  

I've been trying to figure out a maximum amount of attribute that could go into a metal...but I don't think it exists.  Let me explain.

When the Southern Scadrians fly in their ships, they use their Medallions to grant Iron Feruchemy.  They are also, then, storing weight in the Iron coins.  And they never stop.  They just keep doing it, all day and every day, and can even trade coins.  

But no one ever mentions them pulling the weight OUT.  Just putting it in.  That suggests that...well...it suggests a couple things.

One, it could be suggesting that the coins are essentially holding an infinite amount of weight.  If that were the case, then there really IS no top level of Attribute that Hank could store.  All he would need is a couple Pewter Bracers, and he could store as much as he wanted.  A near infiinte amount.

However, the second option is that it isn't really giving Iron Feruchemy, but allowing you to store your weight like Copper does.  In other words, you put your weight into the medallion, then later you pull your weight out when you remove it.  It doesn't store up weight as much as lets you go without it for a while.  Kind of like the way the Medallions grant the power, but only while touching it. 

Either way, from what it appears, I was really, really underballing the amount of attribute a specific item can hold.  And if you can compound, you can completely fill the metalmind, whereas anyone else would have a hard time doing that.  

I don't know if it's really worth determining exact amounts, to be honest.  I doubt seriously Sazed fully filled those rings during that three day period.  And I doubt he had fully filled his Pewterminds, even after a lifetime of storing Strength here and there.  Who knows what the upper limit actually is.  I mean, Miles tapped Health constantly.  He had a good thirty or so gold nails embeded in his body, but each one probably wasn't that big.  But he had enough to go for days, or maybe weeks, without recharging them, tapping health at a steady rate.  He wasn't even afraid of blowing himself up.  That probably didn't even dip his reserves. And we know by Wayne that even being shot a few times can drain a Goldmind quickly.  

So...I may just go on that assumption.  That there really isn't a limit to how much attribute a particular item can store.  And if there is, then bracers, or a breastplate as I was considering, can store so much as to, for all intents and purposes, be more than will ever be needed in any situation, including lifting a train and setting it on the tracks.  

[alder24]

11 hours ago, Tglassy said:

Medallions.  They..um...they kind of break this.  

I've been trying to figure out a maximum amount of attribute that could go into a metal...but I don't think it exists.  Let me explain.

When the Southern Scadrians fly in their ships, they use their Medallions to grant Iron Feruchemy.  They are also, then, storing weight in the Iron coins.  And they never stop.  They just keep doing it, all day and every day, and can even trade coins. 

Well, they store untill they get full, then switch for new one. We never really get to see Malwish perspective so we don't know, but this is what I've always assumed. 

Then Wax has a pair of iron bracers he wears on his upper arms, and he stores 25% of his weight constantly. This can accumulate over years yet he never had to switch them. Yes, he uses that on several occasions, but still years of storing weight never filled even one of them. It means metal can store a lot of attributes. Like Sazed’s copperminds that stored everything in them.

11 hours ago, Tglassy said:

However, the second option is that it isn't really giving Iron Feruchemy, but allowing you to store your weight like Copper does.  In other words, you put your weight into the medallion, then later you pull your weight out when you remove it.  It doesn't store up weight as much as lets you go without it for a while.  Kind of like the way the Medallions grant the power, but only while touching it. 

They use warmth and connection medallions which they tap to draw those attributes, and the warmth is filled by special people, so medallions have to work in both ways, with limited attribute.

11 hours ago, Tglassy said:

So...I may just go on that assumption.  That there really isn't a limit to how much attribute a particular item can store.  And if there is, then bracers, or a breastplate as I was considering, can store so much as to, for all intents and purposes, be more than will ever be needed in any situation, including lifting a train and setting it on the tracks.  

Yeah a typical ferring wont be able to fully fill a bracer, but a compounder would. So as long as your character is only a Ferring, he can have just one metalmind, but as a compounder he needs multiple. 

[Tglassy]

12 hours ago, alder24 said:

Yeah a typical ferring wont be able to fully fill a bracer, but a compounder would. So as long as your character is only a Ferring, he can have just one metalmind, but as a compounder he needs multiple. 

And with Multiple completely full Metalminds, the amount of attribute you get is insane.  Maybe my "Lift a train" idea isn't so far fetched.  

Edit:  I am knee deep in writing the First Part, which is a story of when Hank was a child.  I've made his father a Copper Ferring, and his mother's father a Soother.  He's a scrawny boy, loves playing sports with the other kids but just isn't that great, and has a strong protective streak, if not much common sense.  Imma have his father take him to the village to get tested for Feruchemy, and then a scene or two later as he first learns how to store and tap Strength.  I'll mix in some of his siblings in the scenes to see the family life.  Then he'll face off against a bully that threw him across the field in the beginning of the story.  

It'll be short and sweet.  Currently at 2,600 words, or roughly 11 pages.  Should be roughly double that before this Part is done.  Then I'll fast forward a number of years and see what happens then!

Edited March 6, 2023 by Tglassy