Awakening + Fabrials

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

Another Awakening question here. 

So being the 10th heightening on its own will not allow a person to have any sort of healing magic (Perhaps they can regen a bit but shard withered limbs and such would all stay). 

What if you were at the 9th or 10th heightening and had a regrown fabrial? Could you awaken it and command it to use itself on you when you get injured? 

Then you carry all of your breaths in your clothing and such. Even if you get chopped through the spine that fabrial could revive you and you would have access to all of your breaths again. Perhaps you could carry the breaths on your person still and not worry about it. 

If a shardblade passed through your spine would all breaths be lost instantly or would the fabrial heal you quickly enough that you would retain most of them? 

[alder24]

32 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

What if you were at the 9th or 10th heightening and had a regrown fabrial? Could you awaken it and command it to use itself on you when you get injured? 

Regrow fabrial is spren's physical manifestation, similarly to how a Shardblade is spren's physical manifestation. It's too invested to be Awakened. You can't do that. But you likely could Awaken a device that uses up other investiture, like Stormlight, to heal you - but that would be complicated and other things would likely be required (as Breaths can't just heal, you need a power that heals, like F-gold, or Aon that heals - stuff like that - Awakened device would be a brain that activates that power using external fuel to heal).

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

44 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Regrow fabrial is spren's physical manifestation, similarly to how a Shardblade is spren's physical manifestation. It's too invested to be Awakened. You can't do that. But you likely could Awaken a device that uses up other investiture, like Stormlight, to heal you - but that would be complicated and other things would likely be required (as Breaths can't just heal, you need a power that heals, like F-gold, or Aon that heals - stuff like that - Awakened device would be a brain that activates that power using external fuel to heal).

Ah okay.  Well with the Elantrians and Radiants being more than just functionally immortal while near their home base I would just desperately like to see other systems not be ragdolls. 

It's a bummer that the god king can trip and fall 2 feet crack his head open and die, while claiming to be one of the most invested individuals in the cosmere and other, less invested, individuals can swallow a warhead, have it go off in their stomachs, and stormlight will have them pieced back together before the Shockwave hits the next room. 

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Ah okay.  Well with the Elantrians and Radiants being more than just functionally immortal while near their home base I would just desperately like to see other systems not be ragdolls. 

Radiants aren't immortal. They age and die. 

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

It's a bummer that the god king can trip and fall 2 feet crack his head open and die, while claiming to be one of the most invested individuals in the cosmere and other, less invested, individuals can swallow a warhead, have it go off in their stomachs, and stormlight will have them pieced back together before the Shockwave hits the next room. 

That's a great limitation for an interesting magic system.

[Quantus he/him]

7 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Radiants aren't immortal. They age and die. 

That's a great limitation for an interesting magic system.

It's probably also the difference between having a bunch of Investiture stuffed into your physical body vs having a shard of Living Investiture Bonded directly to your spiritweb.  

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Radiants aren't immortal. They age and die. 

That's a great limitation for an interesting magic system.

I mean I think the chance of death certainly makes Warbreaker a more enjoyable system to read about. 

It does impress me all the more that Vasher has survived so many fights, and against some dangerous people too. 

When I think about it... Radiant's healing through everything is only highlighted because radiants, even the best soldier in the cosmere, have all taken hits that should have killed them had they been anyone else.  

How many times has Vasher been hit through his fighting?  Shards or no shards Vasher never took a hit that could kill him. Vivenna's cloak could have caught an arrow coming at the eye slit. 

While Awakening can't heal a person, we really haven't seen much threat against the awakeners anyways. 

And I guess there is always Nightblood. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

5 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

What if you were at the 9th or 10th heightening and had a regrown fabrial? Could you awaken it and command it to use itself on you when you get injured? 

Then you carry all of your breaths in your clothing and such. Even if you get chopped through the spine that fabrial could revive you and you would have access to all of your breaths again. Perhaps you could carry the breaths on your person still and not worry about it. 

If a shardblade passed through your spine would all breaths be lost instantly or would the fabrial heal you quickly enough that you would retain most of them? 

I'm with @alder24 on this one; you couldn't Awaken a Regrowth Fabrial itself due to its highly Invested nature, but you could use Awakening in part to construct an autonomous construct that could heal you. Specifically, I think you could take a Nicrosilmind and Goldmind (or one that provides Regrowth instead and has Gemstone stores for Stormlight or such) combo and mix them together with the correct Command and create a device that could automatically heal you of your injures. I think that this could allow someone to survive injuries from a Shardblade to the spine, as we've already seen that Regrowth can do that; the only limitation normally is that you cannot heal yourself after receiving the blow, you need to have an external force do the healing immediately afterward to keep you alive. A device such as you suggest should be able to fit criteria. All in all, good idea @Tamriel Wolfsbaine  

4 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

It's a bummer that the god king can trip and fall 2 feet crack his head open and die, while claiming to be one of the most invested individuals in the cosmere and other, less invested, individuals can swallow a warhead, have it go off in their stomachs, and stormlight will have them pieced back together before the Shockwave hits the next room. 

Lol, true, but still a good limitation to have in a story (I know that you and @alder24 feel the same way too). 

Honestly, it's kind of needed as well; I love the concept of a magic system that allows its practitioners to gain more power over time- it means that there is always more for them to work towards and achieve. However, this can soon become quite problematic. They get too much power and everything becomes a non-issue for them and the story stops being interesting. I've seen this trope happen whenever a wizard can absorb others' powers (such as in "The Sorcerer's Apprentace" and In "What if: Doctor Strange Lost his Heart instead of his hands")- they get too much power and logically shouldn't be able to be beaten, but they still do anyway because the magic system doesn't have enough rules to keep anything in check and by then I've lost interest in the story and can't take the villain serous because I know that they're going to lose despite being virtually invincible. It's annoying.

But Awakening doesn't have that problem because the things it increases for you aren't world-breaking things. You do become more powerful, and there's a lot that can be done with more Breaths, but you still have strong limitations, and you must be smart to achieve your end goals.

Hemalurgy is in a similar boat I'd say; it allows for the practitioner to grow in power over time, always having more that they can achieve with smarts and hard work. And the powers it grants do stack in such a manner that they could become game breaking- someone with powers like the Lord Ruler would be nearly unstoppable if they put their mind to it. However, Hemalurgy balances this out by placing more strict costs and limitations in place, and it's tons of fun trying to wiggle around them and exploit loopholes to find ever-increasing paths to power through it. Plus, with Hemalurgy you know where you stand with your power level- you don't just "happen" to achieve an effect with a lesser amount of Investiture that should require a larger amount of it, so when you get more power it actually matters (unlike the aforementioned wizard scenarios) All in all, it's a total blast of a magic system for those reasons.

Anyway, I'll stop fanboy-ing about the topic (for now ), but I guess that's one of the big reasons I'm a Hemalurgic enthusiast. . .