hoid What have I missed?

[Onironte he/him]

In Tress of the Emerald Sea it says that Hoid would have a 20% chance to kill the Sorceress, but Brandon has repeatedly said that a Dawnshard cannot harm anyone –Hoid can't even eat meat–. Has he managed to change this somehow? What am I missing?

[alder24]

14 minutes ago, Onironte said:

In Tress of the Emerald Sea it says that Hoid would have a 20% chance to kill the Sorceress, but Brandon has repeatedly said that a Dawnshard cannot harm anyone –Hoid can't even eat meat–. Has he managed to change this somehow? What am I missing?

Riina knows Hoid can't kill or hurt somebody because of his Dawnshard. This still works on him. But he can do something to her, which would be very nasty and unpleasant, might even cause her death, nut technically wouldn't count as hurting her. This is what she feared. WoB:

Spoiler

EogelAorist

We know that, at least as late as Stormlight Archive, Hoid can't physically hurt people. Does Riina not know that? Or did Hoid regain that ability by the time of Tress? Or does she just not want to risk it, in case he can do something to her that wouldn't technically count as harming?

Brandon Sanderson

It is the last one. Plus, Hoid's very good at doing things to people that do not involve harming them that can get around his particular brand of Torment, and she would fall into being someone that it would be easy to do some of those things to.

Tress Spoiler Stream (March 31, 2023)

[Quantus he/him]

Well, that's the fallout Hoid has faced from previously holding one of the Dawnshards, but I dont think that is confirmed to affect everyone that hold any of hte four (which are different from each other in ways we dont yet know).  

That being said, Hoid cannot Physically harm anyone, eat meat, or seriously contemplate doing either.  But he can punch a disembodied Cognitive Shadow in the face (which surprised even him) implying he is free to do Cognitive (and possibly Spiritual) Damage.

Also, Tress is one further into the future of the Cosmere than almost any story we have, so the possibility does remain that Hoid has found a way around that limitation off-screen.  

[ftl]

Quote

In Tress of the Emerald Sea it says that Hoid would have a 20% chance to kill the Sorceress, but Brandon has repeatedly said that a Dawnshard cannot harm anyone –Hoid can't even eat meat–. Has he managed to change this somehow? What am I missing?

I think there's a few things here, all of which add up to a lot of wiggle room.

First, Riina does not know what Brandon has said. Brandon is telling us fans things, but he is not an in-world character and Riina might not know that "Dawnshards cannot harm anyone", at least not with the kind of certainty she wants.

Second, "Dawnshards can't harm anyone" isn't a hard rule in the Cosmere. We know that Hoid, due to having held a Dawnshard, could not harm anyone at certain points in the story. But... time passes. Tress is further in the future than any other stories. Maybe Hoid found a way around it. Maybe Riina thinks Hoid MIGHT have a way around it (20% chance, say?) - or, at least, doesn't know for sure that he hasn't.

Third, in the book, we don't even know Riina's thought process! We have HOID describing what he thinks Riina must be thinking. And he does NOT say "He has a 20% chance of killing Riina". He says "Riina is cautious, and if she thought she even had a small chance of losing, she'd flee rather than fight." Using "one in five" as a small chance of losing, in that sentence. We don't know whether Riina actually estimated her chances of dying at 20%, 1%, or 0.1% - just that it was high enough for her to decide to flee rather than fight.

Fourth - yes, it's possible Hoid cannot kill anyone. But he has teammates! If Hoid could, say, disarm Riina, Tress or Fort or anybody else in the room could deal the killing blow. I entirely believe that Hoid & team could find a way to kill Riina even if Hoid is personally restricted to doing things that technically don't cause harm. And, well... Hoid's had a lot of time to find ways to ruin someone's day in ways that technically aren't harm.