Storing attributes at ridiculous speed.

[Hmmm lies she/her]

We know that you can't store 100% of an attribute, but does anything stop you from storing 9999999999999999999999/10000000000000000000000 of your hearing ability for a short time, then fill up your entire metalmind incredibly fast. Of course for some things, like health, you might die instantly, but not for a lot of them. There must be a reason this doesn't work of course, otherwise Sazed wouldn't have needed to store eyesight for a long period of time. Any WoB?

[alder24]

22 minutes ago, Hmmm lies said:

We know that you can't store 100% of an attribute, but does anything stop you from storing 9999999999999999999999/10000000000000000000000 of your hearing ability for a short time, then fill up your entire metalmind incredibly fast. Of course for some things, like health, you might die instantly, but not for a lot of them. There must be a reason this doesn't work of course, otherwise Sazed wouldn't have needed to store eyesight for a long period of time. Any WoB?

No, it doesn't work like that. In most cases it's how much your body can handle that determines how much you can store and this differs depending on attributes. Storing 99.9999999% of a certain attribute isn't that helpful, because taping it back won't be so different from tapping 99% for example - you can't become 1000 times lighter and then tap it to be 1000 times heavier, that's not how Feruchemy works. You can become 80% lighter and then become 180% heavier when taping. When approaching the limit of storing, there isn't much difference between for example 80% or 81% of an attribute.  Feruchemy works more with percentages, and there is only so much weight that you can store - if there were no low limits for storing, you still would be able to store only 100% of your weight and tap it to get 200% - you can't store more than that, you can't store faster. You store an attribute per some period of time, and that time is far more impactful than the percentage of your attribute you store. 

Spoiler

Thoughtful Spurts

If there's really no upper limit to Feruchemy for practical reasons* , why didn't Sazed just fill steel at ridiculous levels for a few minutes in [Well of Ascension], and then go back to running instead of leaving his steelminds there? Say, being some 100,000 times slower than he would normally be for about a minute. Meaning that a Feruchemist should be able to fill a given metalmind in very short periods of time if you fill at a high enough rate.

*(yes, you have the limit of how much you can store in a given metalmind and for how many metalminds you can carry on your person, but those are probably too high to really be taken into account in more "normal" circumstances)

Brandon Sanderson

The low end is bounded. You can pull out tons--but in filling, you can only go so far. I didn't ever explicitly talk about this in the series, but the implications are there. Not all have the same bounds, but in your example, the body just can't slow beyond a certain point. Think of it this way--you can only fill a weight metalmind with as much weight as you have to give. So you can become very, very light--but you only add to a time for doubling your weight. You can't make yourself 100,000 times slower and gain 100,000 times multiplication. You can give up all of your normal speed, and so when you tap that speed out you are at 200% for an equal period. (And that's a theoretical maximum; realistically, you can only go to down around 75% slower or the like.)

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

 

[Hmmm lies she/her]

Ahh okay, I thought it was like if you stored half of something for an hour, you could do twice as much for an hour. Thanks for the clairification.