Headbutts vs Dropkicks.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

Hello all again. 

I don't necessarily want to create another Stormlight vs Pewter thread but I do have 2 instances that I really want to dive into and compare. 

Vins headbutt 

Kaladins dropkick

 

So we see Vin pop a dudes head like a zit with a Duralumin fueled pewter headbutt in the Well of Ascension. 

We see Kaladin crack plate with a dropkick in Words of Radiance. 

These are both awesome shows of strength from each magic system but they work so differently.  

Kaladins legs shatter from the impact and need to be healed back up.  

Vins skull just straight up wins the hardness battle and she destroys the enemies with her own.  

I am sort of curious what people think of these 2 scenes. Do you think that Vins body could have withstood the same forces with pewter and duralumin that Kaladins fall made? 

Would Kaladins head ever be able to pop another humans head without popping itself and needing to heal back?  

Would Vin ever be able to generate similar force with any direct strike simply fueled by pewter and duralumin? And if she did would her pewter enhanced bones be able to withstand it?  Mechanics would matter here. Note that longbones are designed to absorb pressure and stress in those ways and all parts of her connective tissue would be far harder as well.

I don't know what strike she would have to use to generate any force like that... and its hard because we don't even know how much force Kaladin produced thanks to the crumpling of his bones as he made contact... getting jabbed with a hard stick hurts worse than getting jabbed by a pool noodle... would it make a difference at all?  

Now I know that ultimately healing is imba compared to just being tougher.  It doesn't matter how tough you are if you break once and are out of the fight... but how much tougher would you have to be to survive dropkicking a dude in shardplate hard enough to make it break like that did?  Do you think a strike like that is at all possible with duralumin fueled pewter and still allowing the allomancer to walk away?  

 

 

[Treamayne]

20 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Hello all again. 

I don't necessarily want to create another Stormlight vs Pewter thread but I do have 2 instances that I really want to dive into and compare. 

Vins headbutt 

Kaladins dropkick

 

Vins skull just straight up wins the hardness battle and she destroys the enemies with her own. 

Wins the hardness battle, but did not walk away. Remember she was concussed, lost conciousness and needed significant healing time (though she also had other injuries). Also note, it wasn't a "true" headbutt (skull to skull) but her forehead into the Thug's face (significantly less bone, and much more soft tissue)

WoA Ch 38

Spoiler

She didn’t have a choice. Vin burned duralumin and flared her pewter. She flung her opponent’s hands aside and smashed her head upward into his face.

The man’s head exploded as easily as the eyeball had earlier.

Vin gasped for breath and pushed the headless corpse off her. Elend stumbled back, his suit and face sprayed red. Vin stumbled to her feet. Her vision swam as her pewter dissipated—but even through that, she could see an emotion on Elend’s face, stark as the blood on his brilliant white uniform.

Horror.

No, she thought, her mind fading. Please, Elend, not that….

She fell forward, unable to maintain consciousness.

 

26 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

1. Would Kaladins head ever be able to pop another humans head without popping itself and needing to heal back?  
2. Would Vin ever be able to generate similar force with any direct strike simply fueled by pewter and duralumin?
3. Do you think a strike like that is at all possible with duralumin fueled pewter and still allowing the allomancer to walk away?  

1. Nope
2. Nope. Petwer plus duralumin might do many things, but replicating the force of many times the acceleration of gravity isn't one of them (though they don't say how many lashings he used - Ch 57 "Lashed himself that direction many times in quick succession. As many as he dared." )
3. Now - Steel + Iron + Pewter + Durlumin - that might replicate Kal's stunt, and the Allomancer is likely to walk away
   • Assuming you aren't trying to push the Plate itself (which may be difficult to impossible - though Duralumin might manage it) you would need to be pushing on something heavy behind you while also pulling on something heavy on the other side of the Shardbearer - the doubled force of push/pull with duralumin might generate enough force to be a similar strike (steel alone was shown to throw multiple horses) and, theoretically Pewter might be enough to keep your bones intact from the strike - though probably still damaged (especially soft tissue, ligaments and tendons).

[alder24]

10 hours ago, Treamayne said:

• Nope. Petwer plus duralumin might do many things, but replicating the force of many times the acceleration of gravity isn't one of them (though they don't say how many lashings he used - Ch 57 "Lashed himself that direction many times in quick succession. As many as he dared." )

Well, that guy's head exploded. Not just his jaw, his head just exploded. That's a lot of force. I think VIn could replicate what Kaladin did in the arena. But it would be even more dangerous to her - a Shardplate is much harder than human bones. Those two feats might be even comparable.

[Treamayne]

7 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Well, that guy's head exploded. Not just his jaw, his head just exploded. That's a lot of force. I think VIn could replicate what Kaladin did in the arena. But it would be even more dangerous to her - a Shardplate is much harder than human bones. Those two feats might be even comparable.

I was not discounting that his head "exploded" (though I think term is loaded*). I'm saying that curvature of objects and tnsile strength matter. It's why cracking an egg from the rounded edges is harder than cracking from the sides where the curvature is less. So, when breaking a skull open, going through the nose, orbital sockets and brain to strike the skull from the inside had a more pronounced (and visual) effect than if she had struck at the forehead, crown or temples - which I think would have been less visually gory (if still quite lethal) and far more damaging to Vin. She essentially had brain pudding as a padding for her own skull by the time her strike hit something hard enough to do her real damage. A Pewter-only kick to armor (much less shardplate) has none of those benefits (soft tissue, padding, etc.). 

 

*By loaded, I mean it will be different for different people - but I doubt it would have been like a grenade, or even a breach charge. More like all the heavy stuff knocked away a few inches to a foot, and all the liquid and soft tissue sprayed out. After all, the description of Elend was blood on his uniform, not gobs of brain matter or skull shrapnel hitting him

Edited November 30, 2023 by Treamayne
Note

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

45 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

I was not discounting that his head "exploded" (though I think term is loaded*). I'm saying that curvature of objects and tnsile strength matter. It's why cracking an egg from the rounded edges is harder than cracking from the sides where the curvature is less. So, when breaking a skull open, going through the nose, orbital sockets and brain to strike the skull from the inside had a more pronounced (and visual) effect than if she had struck at the forehead, crown or temples - which I think would have been less visually gory (if still quite lethal) and far more damaging to Vin. She essentially had brain pudding as a padding for her own skull by the time her strike hit something hard enough to do her real damage. A Pewter-only kick to armor (much less shardplate) has none of those benefits (soft tissue, padding, etc.). 

 

*By loaded, I mean it will be different for different people - but I doubt it would have been like a grenade, or even a breach charge. More like all the heavy stuff knocked away a few inches to a foot, and all the liquid and soft tissue sprayed out. After all, the description of Elend was blood on his uniform, not gobs of brain matter or skull shrapnel hitting him

I don't have a book to reference at the moment but I am curious, and I don't know exactly why I am thinking this might be the case, but was Vin fighting other allomamcers in this instance?  Was a totally random soldier trying to hold and grapple her or was this guy a thug / potential pewterarm as well?  

I don't know that she would be struggling to get away from him if he were a regular dude.  

Also the ability to generate that much force from a headbutt while being grappled. That is what I think shines. You really don't have a ton of range of motion and space or time to generate a ton of speed or force yet she still destroyed his head.  (This would be far more impressive if he was a pewterarm thug as well but even if he wasn't there is a tremendous amount of force being generated by the duralumin pewter push.)

I also wonder if part of her passing out was just that she suddenly had no more pewter.  Even Kaladin is quickly deflated when his stormlight runs out... 

How much of it was a true concussion and how much of it was all of the pewterdrag effects of fighting enhanced and then suddenly having none? A shock to say the least.  

A lot of why I ask the question of pewter toughness is because I was on a Muay Thai kick and seeing the force some of those kicks generate... not to mention the training up of those bones to bend steel and not break... 

If someone like that had access to pewter and / or duralumin or even Feruchemical steel to titrate their pewter burning benefits, how much damage could they do with a properly lined up kick? 

What if it was Tarson delivering the kick? 

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Well, that guy's head exploded. Not just his jaw, his head just exploded. That's a lot of force. I think VIn could replicate what Kaladin did in the arena. But it would be even more dangerous to her - a Shardplate is much harder than human bones. Those two feats might be even comparable.

I feel like for sure it would be dangerous... in this case healing trumps being unbreakable.  But I see pewter with duralumin as a momentary man of steel sort of buff. I don't know entirely though so I ask the community for their opinions. 

[alder24]

5 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I don't have a book to reference at the moment but I am curious, and I don't know exactly why I am thinking this might be the case, but was Vin fighting other allomamcers in this instance?  Was a totally random soldier trying to hold and grapple her or was this guy a thug / potential pewterarm as well?  

That was a Thug:

Quote

The first Thug. She'd broken his leg, then forgotten— He got his hands around her neck, squeezing as he knelt above her, his legs pressing against her chest, his face wild with rage. His eyes bulged, adrenaline mixing with pewter.

 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

6 minutes ago, alder24 said:

That was a Thug:

 

That's what I thought. So the head popping is actually a pewter hardened head as well.  Still no figures to compare it to but it definately makes the feat all the more impressive. She didn't just headbutt a person. She headbutted a trained pewterarm.