How to Nerf Steelrunning

[Trusk'our]

I've been bothered by this for a while; Steelrunners are just too powerful.

Even moving with a 20-50% extra boost to physical speed is a sizable edge in combat, but the true upper bound of steel Feruchemy (with no other supporting powers) is something like Mach 5 at sea level. 

That's 3,836 miles per hour, and since the fastest person who's ever been recorded ran about 27.5 mph (and only briefly at that), you can Tap your steel to become 139.5 times faster than him. . .

I don't know about anyone else, but that feels a little OP- I don't care if you even have Atium vision, if your opponent is moving faster than you are able to counter, you are dead.

In short, I'm 80% certain that Sanderson will nerf this power, just as with Hemalurgy. It would certainly make for a better story, and it means that it can be utilized more freely without concern for idiotic character choices needing to be made for the sake of plot.

But, how would you go about nerfing it? 

[Bluepanther512]

I don't think this is OP. For running in a straight line, yes, this is OP. But realistically the second you try to turn going too fast you are going to double the amount of bones in your legs at best.

[+hwiles]

I think they have a good reciprocal balance mechanism baked in actually, recall: coinshots are one of the most common mistings, and steelrunners are among the rarest ferrings. Without getting into an inappropriate level of detail, I would opine that this kind of extreme divergence implies that "natural" steel compounders should be essentially non-existent, or so rare that, yes, each one would essentially be an unstoppable god-emperor unto themselves and may Adonalsium have mercy on us all.

Once you control for natural compounding, things get much cleaner. In order for a steel runner with the awareness and connections (little c) to become a world hopper to achieve God status without natural compounding, they would need to hit the 5th heightening with Breath (they age and kill themselves like crazy metabolizing at 1000x speed!!!) And probably make best friends with either an Elantrian with loose morals or the wielder of Ishi's honorblade in order to get access to "free" recharged steelminds.

Human beings are persistence hunters. A steel runner, ironically, cannot outrun the people the harm or wrong unless they are also a natural coinshot (there have been some changes ((clarifications?)) to hemalurgy that imply that a steel spike might not be enough in most cases) because they have to get their charge from another living body or else have a way to directly convert raw investiture into essentially any arbitrary form of investiture, which is...already fully recognized and understood to, itself, be a Godlike and totally broken power (Elantrians and Unchained Bondsmiths).

[therunner]

I think there will be few points:

1. As mentioned by others rarity
2. While they get sped up reflexes (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76/#e6398) Steelrunners won't think faster , so they cannot really use their speed with e.g. great precision (i.e. get around opponent to strike him in very small weak spot for example). So fast thinking will remain F-Zinc thing, while reflexes and movement will be F-Steel thing.
3. Their speed breaks laws of physics (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/361/#e11357) , and this might mean that while moving fast, they don't have increased momentum and kinetic energy. As a result, they would not be able to e.g. wield melee weapons when sped up (unless something would be increasing their strength as well).
   • This is simply due to physics, Steelrunner is still as strong as usual, so even when accelerated, they can move themselves faster, but when acting on external objects, they are not acting with greater force nor do they have greater momentum. I.e. Steelrunner when sped up 10x would not be able to swing sword 10x as fast, because they are not strong enough.

Result of this would be that they are great messengers, have great defense (reflexively dodging), and their melee offense is rather limited (though with projectile weapons they would work quite well).

 

I think the above would also fit pretty well with what we know of Steelrunners in canon, in that in Era 2 while they do work as e.g. fast delivery man, they don't seem to have many military applications (which if they were as OP as most think, they would be among the most desirable bodyguards imaginable).

Quote

Even moving with a 20-50% extra boost to physical speed is a sizable edge in combat, but the true upper bound of steel Feruchemy (with no other supporting powers) is something like Mach 5 at sea level. 

They would not be able to run that fast, they would have trouble breathing at much lower speeds I think.
Wind pressure at Machs speeds would destroy their lungs.

Edited March 24 by therunner

[alder24]

10 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Even moving with a 20-50% extra boost to physical speed is a sizable edge in combat, but the true upper bound of steel Feruchemy (with no other supporting powers) is something like Mach 5 at sea level. 

I'm pretty sure running anywhere close to Mach 1 for a bit longer would kill you - you don't have to catch fire to be dead, just just have to run fast enough to heat up to deadly temperatures. Your body can't function at 50 degrees C, it would just kill you. Concorde was flying at Mach 2 and it was heated up to 120 degrees C. That's death for a human. Sure, Steelrunners can run fast, maybe reach low-Mach speeds for a very short moment, but doing that for longer would just kill them - without catching fire.

10 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

That's 3,836 miles per hour, and since the fastest person who's ever been recorded ran about 27.5 mph (and only briefly at that), you can Tap your steel to become 139.5 times faster than him. . .

Good luck storing enough attribute to tap that much speed. It would take you years to store that much to run for just a second. I'm quite sure @therunner once made a fancy equation to calculate how much attribute a Steelrunner needs to tap with diminishing returns and to get to Mach 1 you need a lot. 

 

10 hours ago, Bluepanther512 said:

I don't think this is OP. For running in a straight line, yes, this is OP. But realistically the second you try to turn going too fast you are going to double the amount of bones in your legs at best.

The magic of Feruchemy would protect you from that.

Spoiler

Questioner

I'm just curious about Steelrunners. I have to ask, assuming they have physical limitations?

Brandon Sanderson

They do. We can't go Speed Force on this sort of thing. Wind resistance is still a thing, and stuff like that.

Questioner

Bodily, their bodies--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. So, most magic in the cosmere will strengthen your body to let you use the magic to an extent, but-- Yeah, there's some pretty strong limitations.

Questioner

If you had a steel/steel Twinborn racing a pewter/steel, would you say that the pure steel, or the pewter burning to enhance their body-- in a short race?

Brandon Sanderson

Who would win? Probably pewter then, at that point. I would have to have Peter-- I wouldn't do it myself, make Peter run the math, and see what he comes up with. Those are the sort of things I go to him with.

Oathbringer Houston signing (Nov. 18, 2017)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

What is the experience of Steelrunning? ...It doesn't speed up your mind, so how do you control yourself?

Brandon Sanderson

Most forms of Allomancy give a small boost to any attributes you would need in order to survive and use and manipulate it,  just like atium. So it's going to give you a slight ability-- might speed you up just enough to get some reactions and things, otherwise you just can't do it. What I don't have it doing is cancelling friction. I did that intentionally, so you can burn yourself up with that. But you have to use it measuredly and carefully.

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing (Dec. 6, 2016)

Edited March 24 by alder24

[NameIess]

5 hours ago, therunner said:

While they get sped up reflexes (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76/#e6398) Steelrunners won't think faster , so they cannot really use their speed with e.g. great precision (i.e. get around opponent to strike him in very small weak spot for example). So fast thinking will remain F-Zinc thing, while reflexes and movement will be F-Steel thing.

That WoB specifically states that bullet time is F-steel’s thing, which means it does speed up your perception and speed of thought.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

12 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

I've been bothered by this for a while; Steelrunners are just too powerful.

Even moving with a 20-50% extra boost to physical speed is a sizable edge in combat, but the true upper bound of steel Feruchemy (with no other supporting powers) is something like Mach 5 at sea level. 

That's 3,836 miles per hour, and since the fastest person who's ever been recorded ran about 27.5 mph (and only briefly at that), you can Tap your steel to become 139.5 times faster than him. . .

I don't know about anyone else, but that feels a little OP- I don't care if you even have Atium vision, if your opponent is moving faster than you are able to counter, you are dead.

In short, I'm 80% certain that Sanderson will nerf this power, just as with Hemalurgy. It would certainly make for a better story, and it means that it can be utilized more freely without concern for idiotic character choices needing to be made for the sake of plot.

But, how would you go about nerfing it? 

I think the largest nerf to steel was the amount of compression and loss that happens with it as demonstrated when Marasi has the bands. I think her hand, at least, was moving about Mach 1. The rest of her may not have been and she ended up dumping nearly all of the attribute in a matter of a couple seconds. 

I do think that bleeders use was still OP. She was so fast people couldn't see her but even moving 4x human max speed would make a person a blurr in a room. And it clearly can be used for a long period of time. 

Other than to demonstrate what a pain it is to store an attribute, it is super boring to read stories of people storing all the time. Noone rolls the dice with feruchemy while weakened on purpose... maybe there is a time or two where appearing weaker would be better. But for the most part, no matter how much feruchemy is "net neutral", when used on screen it is a massively net positive yield. We don't want to read about the hours and weeks of weakness we don't see... but the seconds of epic page turning dominance is why feruchemy is so great. 

Super speed is always going to be a pain to balance. The best way to balance super speed is by offering the character challenges that physical combat can't solve.  If you go murder hobo in diplomacy it may end with you being the winner right now but in the long run you will end up with armies hating you and sanctions that strangle your ability to live. Bleeder is the only character who could get away with it because she didn't have to be her self when using it. 

Even though a government might really enjoy using your destructive capabilities I envision that coming with a ton of red tape and so much restriction that it would make living with that power more trouble than I would want. 

[Returned]

I wouldn't bother nerfing it. It's powerful, as is most Metallic Arts magic, that's kind of the point. The balance for Feruchemy is already present anyways: storing a useful amount of an attribute, as most people seem to operationally define on 17th Shard, takes a long time and is risky while being done. Storing so small an amount that you aren't in active danger while doing so doesn't yield much of the attribute to be used later, and storing a lot at once leaves you vulnerable while also not storing much operational time/excess amount of the attribute.

What we see of Feruchemy actually happening in the books tends to represent weeks of intensive storage, at minimum, drained away in minutes at most and often far less time than that. But discussions here always seem to assume that storage is easy and therefore that large amounts of attributes will always be available, even though what seems to happen is you get one high-leverage Feruchemical application event per month at best. How much time separates the most dramatic uses of Wax's stored weight? How long does Bleeder's stored speed last her, and is there always enough for her to accomplish her goals? How often does Sazed get to use his super speed, and how often does it actually resolve his issues?

Steelrunners seem to drain their speed very quickly while tapping it. Expertise in applying it and experience working with the magic will grant a lot of finesse (my favorite example is always Ham's expertly judicious use of Allomantic pewter), but that's not really the typical Steelrunner case. I suppose we could talk about what the optimal approach would be to reliably have X amount of speed available to suit different use cases and see where that discussion leads but I don't think that that will lead to a conclusion that nerfing is necessary. Steel Feruchemy more versatile for sure, but is it generally more dangerous than a Coinshot tossing nails and ball bearings around them and then Pushing? Not necessarily by a lot.

Summary: Steelrunning is amazingly powerful if you have enough stored speed to successfully address some immediate goal to which physical speed is relevant, but because you generally won't have enough stored you will really have to be judicious in choosing which goals get the resource allocated to them. That means you don't get to use ultra-deluxe-super speed very often, and it's already not a guarantee of success when you do. Steelrunning is already limited, not in what it can accomplish, but in how often you get to use it and how long each use can be.

[therunner]

15 hours ago, NameIess said:

That WoB specifically states that bullet time is F-steel’s thing, which means it does speed up your perception and speed of thought.

Not exactly

Quote

Alteroden

With [Feruchemical] zinc, you get mental speed. How is that any different from [Feruchemical] steel, except without [physical] speed?

Brandon Sanderson

I think of the mental speed actually turning you into... Let's say you sped up your body, and you wanted to figure out some really complex equations.

Alteroden

So it lets you have intuitive leaps.

Brandon Sanderson

Right. It basically turns you into Ken Jennings. That's how I imagine it.

Kurkistan

So it's not like bullet time?

Brandon Sanderson

No... It'll bullet time a little bit, it certainly will, because you're thinking faster than everyone else, but it has applications beyond bullet timing. Bullet time is really--

Kurkistan

That’s steel’s thing?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s kind of steel's thing. They kind of overlap on that one, because the steel thing... But yeah. It's more like "I think fast, but my reaction speed is not sped up".

Shadows of Self Chicago signing (Oct. 12, 2015)

 

Bullet time is 'kinda steel thing', but at the same time if F-Zinc lets you think fast, but your reaction time is not sped up, and F-steel also lets you think fast but your time is also sped up, what is the point of F-Zinc?

Hence why I think that F-Steel won't let you think faster, only react and move faster. To certain extent thinking might be sped up as well, but not to nearly the same levels as with F-Zinc. I mean, ''bullet time'' was just a very quick reaction and movement (see Matrix 1).

After all, F-steel is physical speed not physical and mental speed. F-Steel is plenty powerful already, I don't see a need to strengthen it even more.

 

Quote

That's 3,836 miles per hour, and since the fastest person who's ever been recorded ran about 27.5 mph (and only briefly at that), you can Tap your steel to become 139.5 times faster than him. . .

Quote

Good luck storing enough attribute to tap that much speed. It would take you years to store that much to run for just a second. I'm quite sure @therunner once made a fancy equation to calculate how much attribute a Steelrunner needs to tap with diminishing returns and to get to Mach 1 you need a lot. 

@alder24 , @Trusk'our yeah it was in one of the first 'vs.' threads. Basically compression will lead to exponential loss, hence you need exponentially large attributes. I.e. Mach 1 would require stores on order of e^34 (Mach 1 = 340 m/s, max human speed 10 m/s for simplicity), which is about 10^14. There were some more details to it, but basically these sort of feats are accessible to compounders only.

 

Edited March 25 by therunner

[Treamayne]

19 hours ago, NameIess said:

That WoB specifically states that bullet time is F-steel’s thing, which means it does speed up your perception and speed of thought.

3 hours ago, therunner said:

Not exactly

Bullet time is 'kinda steel thing', but at the same time if F-Zinc lets you think fast, but your reaction time is not sped up, and F-steel also lets you think fast but your time is also sped up, what is the point of F-Zinc?

Hence why I think that F-Steel won't let you think faster, only react and move faster. To certain extent thinking might be sped up as well, but not to nearly the same levels as with F-Zinc. I mean, ''bullet time'' was just a very quick reaction and movement (see Matrix 1).

Fortunately, we actually get to see the difference on-screen - in the Marsh vs Sazed WoA Fight:

Spoiler

WoA Ch 58:

Quote

Marsh immediately lurched away, thrown violently backward by his own Push. He slammed into the back wall, a cry of surprise escaping his lips. It echoed in the small, domed room.

Shadows danced in the room as the candle grew weaker. Sazed tapped sight, enhancing his vision, and released iron as he dashed toward the addled Inquisitor. Marsh, however, recovered quickly. He reached out, Pulling an unlit lamp off the wall. It zipped through the air, flying toward Marsh.

Sazed tapped zinc.

<snip>

His thoughts sped up, and he quickly saw the trajectory of the lamp. Marsh would be able to use it as a weapon against him. So Sazed tapped steel. 

<snip>

Steel stored physical speed. Sazed zipped across the room, air rushing in his ears as he shot past the open doorway. He snatched the lamp out of the air, then tapped iron hard—increasing his weight manyfold—and tapped pewter to give himself massive strength.

Marsh didn’t have time to react. He was now Pulling on a lamp held in Sazed’s inhumanly strong, inhumanly heavy, hand. Again, Marsh was yanked by his own Allomancy. The Pull threw him across the room, directly toward Sazed.

Annotations to Ch 58:

Quote

Marsh Vs. Sazed

But first we have the Marsh Sazed battle. I really like this scene, since I get to do something very new with it. Do you remember when I promised you that you’d see some cool interactions between Allomancy and Feruchemy?

I realized almost immediately, when designing Feruchemy, that I could do some very fun things with it mixing with Allomancy. With how much that Mistborn depend on their Steelpushes and Ironpulls, a person who can change his weight would have an enormous advantage. Everyone always says that Allomancy is the better combat skill, but that’s just because the resource it uses–metal–is far more plentiful than the resource Feruchemy uses. Put the two into a battle together with enough power to spare, and the Feruchemist will almost always win.

 

So, you need F-Zinc to think/compute, but F-Steel will allow you to react.

 

[NameIess]

5 hours ago, therunner said:

Bullet time is 'kinda steel thing', but at the same time if F-Zinc lets you think fast, but your reaction time is not sped up, and F-steel also lets you think fast but your time is also sped up, what is the point of F-Zinc?

Hence why I think that F-Steel won't let you think faster, only react and move faster. To certain extent thinking might be sped up as well, but not to nearly the same levels as with F-Zinc. I mean, ''bullet time'' was just a very quick reaction and movement (see Matrix 1).

After all, F-steel is physical speed not physical and mental speed. F-Steel is plenty powerful already, I don't see a need to strengthen it even more.

Quote

Alteroden

With [Feruchemical] zinc, you get mental speed. How is that any different from [Feruchemical] steel, except without [physical] speed?

Brandon Sanderson

I think of the mental speed actually turning you into... Let's say you sped up your body, and you wanted to figure out some really complex equations.

Alteroden

So it lets you have intuitive leaps.

Brandon Sanderson

Right. It basically turns you into Ken Jennings. That's how I imagine it.

Kurkistan

So it's not like bullet time?

Brandon Sanderson

No... It'll bullet time a little bit, it certainly will, because you're thinking faster than everyone else, but it has applications beyond bullet timing. Bullet time is really--

Kurkistan

That’s steel’s thing?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s kind of steel's thing. They kind of overlap on that one, because the steel thing... But yeah. It's more like "I think fast, but my reaction speed is not sped up".

Shadows of Self Chicago signing (Oct. 12, 2015)

They overlap. F-steel gives you sped-up thought and reactions, F-zinc gives you a little bit of sped up thought and greater intelligence.

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

Fortunately, we actually get to see the difference on-screen - in the Marsh vs Sazed WoA Fight:

  Reveal hidden contents

WoA Ch 58:

Annotations to Ch 58:

 

So, you need F-Zinc to think/compute, but F-Steel will allow you to react.

 

We also see Bleeder using F-steel in Shadows of Self, and for her it seems to be normal bullet time, where from her perspective she's moving normally but everyone else is slowed down/frozen. She moves and reacts normally, even though she's moving extremely fast.

[Returned]

I've imagined the difference between F-steel and F-zinc to be primarily about processes, plus a bit of the "necessary secondary power" aspect of superhuman abilities.

The former piece, about processes, is that physical processes should all be sped up by the F-steel, including things like neurochemical signaling. Your nervous system and brain work faster in a physical context but other processes aren't affected. So you don't think faster (in the abstract sense that you do not come up with ideas or process them more quickly), but the processes that relate to movement are sped up appropriately to suit your physical speed: you can see and respond to things around you, can choose to stop moving and immediately do so, etc. But you don't "think" faster, nor do physical processes unrelated to movement occur and more quickly (for example, your wounds shouldn't heal more quickly while tapping F-steel). F-zinc seems to speed up the rate at which you come up with ideas and increases your ability to recall and arrange ideas together in ways that lead to what you want.

The "necessary secondary power" piece is one that is already confirmed multiple times in text and out. In the same way that tapping F-iron magically makes the body strong enough to endure its own increased weight, F-steel grants enough secondary capability to make the physical speed useful. If brain activity related to controlling your body weren't commensurately increased you would have a hard time using the speed to much effect. You wouldn't be able to find your footing while running quickly, would have disconnected, spastic, individual movements, and similar. We see clearly in the books that these are not the case. What F-zinc speeds up is not physical processes, except to the extent that such processes are necessary to accomplish what zinc does grant.

[therunner]

4 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Fortunately, we actually get to see the difference on-screen - in the Marsh vs Sazed WoA Fight:

  Hide contents

WoA Ch 58:

Annotations to Ch 58:

 

So, you need F-Zinc to think/compute, but F-Steel will allow you to react.

 

Thanks for those quotes!

3 hours ago, NameIess said:

They overlap. F-steel gives you sped-up thought and reactions, F-zinc gives you a little bit of sped up thought and greater intelligence.

Citation please.
Nowhere is it stated that F-steel grants you sped-up thoughts.
And F-Zinc does give you sped-up thoughts (see both Sazed quote above, and Waxes experience with it).

F-Steel is Physical speed, F-Zinc is mental speed. Why on earth would F-Zinc grant only 'a little bit of sped up thought'?
And greater intelligence also does not fall under it, again, Wax when tapping it didn't suddenly become far smarter, he just thought through a lot of scenarios quickly.

3 hours ago, NameIess said:

We also see Bleeder using F-steel in Shadows of Self, and for her it seems to be normal bullet time, where from her perspective she's moving normally but everyone else is slowed down/frozen. She moves and reacts normally, even though she's moving extremely fast.

Bleeder also happens to be Kandra, one good enough to be personal servant of TLR. They have rather great control over their biology (possibly up to DNA level), so she might simply have engineered herself to have sped up cognition.


@Returned those 'required secondary powers', are typically so that the user actually survives it (up to a point), especially in Feruchemy.
E.g. you don't crush yourself. They are not about making the power useful on its own (see F-Aluminum, which alone is basically pointless).
F-Steel does not have to grant sped-up thought do be survivable, increased reflexes are sufficient.

Edit: In fact per Ars Arcanum, when storing F-Zinc, Feruchemist is slow in thinking, but such effect is not present when storing F-Steel, they only move slower.
Hence, it does not make sense that F-Steel would speed up thinking to the same extent as physical speed. Some increase might be present but it would far below the physical speed increase.

Edited March 25 by therunner

[NameIess]

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Citation please.
Nowhere is it stated that F-steel grants you sped-up thoughts.

The WoB in my post above with relevant passages highlighted is the citation. Brandon states that F-steel and F-zinc overlap. If I'm understanding your position correctly you're saying that F-zinc increases thought speed and intelligence, but not reaction speed, while F-steel increases physical speed and reaction speed, but not speed of thought. If that were the case, where is the overlap? The only possible way that F-steel can overlap with F-zinc is via sped-up thought.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

And F-Zinc does give you sped-up thoughts (see both Sazed quote above, and Waxes experience with it).

F-Steel is Physical speed, F-Zinc is mental speed. Why on earth would F-Zinc grant only 'a little bit of sped up thought'?
And greater intelligence also does not fall under it, again, Wax when tapping it didn't suddenly become far smarter, he just thought through a lot of scenarios quickly.

I agree that F-zinc speeds up thought at least somewhat, but that doesn't mean that F-steel can't do the same thing. 

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Bleeder also happens to be Kandra, one good enough to be personal servant of TLR. They have rather great control over their biology (possibly up to DNA level), so she might simply have engineered herself to have sped up cognition.

I do not believe that it works that way. Human thoughts, so far as I understand it, are limited by the speed of action potentials along neurons. Bleeder might be able to increase her speed of thought slightly, but she was moving at an approximately equal rate to that of Wayne's speed bubble, fast enough that bullets were visible and moved "sluggishly". Without magical enhancements, I do not believe that thinking fast enough to comprehend everything is physically possible, no matter how you alter your biology.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Edit: In fact per Ars Arcanum, when storing F-Zinc, Feruchemist is slow in thinking, but such effect is not present when storing F-Steel, they only move slower.
Hence, it does not make sense that F-Steel would speed up thinking to the same extent as physical speed. Some increase might be present but it would far below the physical speed increase.

Relevant quotes from TLM's Ars Arcanum:

Spoiler

Quote

Steelrunner Ferrings can store physical speed in a steel metalmind, slowing them while actively storing, and can tap it at a later time to increase their speed.

Quote

Sparker Ferrings can store mental speed in a zinc metalmind, dulling their ability to think and reason while actively storing, and can tap it at a later time to think and reason more quickly.

 

Nowhere does it state that F-steel doesn't increase thought speed, it merely doesn't mention such side effects. This isn't remarkable, since other side effects such as F-iron's increase of strength so as to prevent the user from crushing themselves, are not mentioned either:

(again from TLM's Ars Arcanum)

Spoiler

Quote

Skimmer Ferrings can store physical weight in an iron metalmind, reducing their effective weight while actively storing, and can tap it at a later time to increase their effective weight.

 

[Returned]

1 hour ago, therunner said:

@Returned those 'required secondary powers', are typically so that the user actually survives it (up to a point), especially in Feruchemy.
E.g. you don't crush yourself. They are not about making the power useful on its own (see F-Aluminum, which alone is basically pointless).
F-Steel does not have to grant sped-up thought do be survivable, increased reflexes are sufficient.

Edit: In fact per Ars Arcanum, when storing F-Zinc, Feruchemist is slow in thinking, but such effect is not present when storing F-Steel, they only move slower.
Hence, it does not make sense that F-Steel would speed up thinking to the same extent as physical speed. Some increase might be present but it would far below the physical speed increase.

When storing weight in iron your bodily fluids don't suddenly boil away through your eyes and mucus membranes nor burst your capillaries despite their suddenly reduced density while retaining equivalent volume. That's never explicitly narrated but must be true based on when we've seen people store large amounts of their weight. To the extent that physical processes in the brain are relevant to physical speed, we really don't have any reason to think that they aren't also slowed during storage (though, as ever, magic can cover any piece of discontinuity at any point).

In any case you're ignoring the distinction that I drew in my post; I did not suggest that F-steel speeds up "thinking", only that it affects physical processes (including in the brain) which are relevant to physical movement. It's not even about survival (though that is obviously important), it's about ability to use the magic at all. Choosing to grab an object requires neurochemical and electrical activity, including assessing when the object is in reach, stopping your arm from continuing to move, closing your hand around it, receiving sensory input that you're touching it, that sort of thing. The brain is and must be involved because that's how moving your body works. We have some reason to think that people tapping F-steel are not numb, for example, even though the sensation of touch is a process that runs through the brain.

When Bleeder killed targets in a whole room full of people she had the ability to see them, identify them, choose one to target, aim the gun or position the knife, kill them, and then move on to the next. Reflexes alone can't account for all of that, even if reflexes themselves were not physical processes which run through the brain (which they are and do). Unless a Steelrunner needs to waste their speed while waiting for their minds to catch up to physical circumstances around them (which could be the case), or they always pulse their tapping of speed without any narration to that effect (also possible) they must have some capacity to process information more quickly than if they weren't tapping at all. Otherwise utilizing their speed would not allow for anything like normal physical function even though we have seen examples of exactly that.

 

Let's try an example: you're a Feruchemist at bat in a baseball game.

In case A, the pitcher throws the ball and you tap F-zinc. Your mind races and you can apprehend the spin of the ball, its trajectory, speed, and any other characteristics of the pitch that you need in order to understand where the ball will be when you could hit it, how the bat should be positioned, the angle and timing of the swing, and so on. But even though your thinking is quick enough to do all of that in an instant you cannot physically move the bat where it needs to be any more quickly than you normally could. You may not be able to hit the ball despite your thorough knowledge of its path, even though the physical components of thought may be sped up to do the thinking (with magic there will always be some breakdown of realistic mechanisms).

In case B, the pitcher throws the ball and you tap F-steel. You cannot make any detailed observations nor extrapolations of the ball's path because your thinking is not sped up, but you could position yourself such that you could hit the ball from any angle at any time. Or, at any rate, it seems to me that that is something F-steel would allow. To suggest that there is no element of perception or information processing which is sped up along with your body is to say that this is untrue, and that a Feruchemist could not be more successful in hitting the ball when tapping steel than at any other time. Saying "reflexes" doesn't seem to me to cover this, as in real life a normal-speed batter could swing, decline to swing, try to bunt, etc.

Another example: you are a Feruchemist evaluating calculus equations.

You tap zinc and look at an equation. The relevant relationships between items in the equation become more clear to you and you can run through any necessary calculations and algebraic manipulations required in a flash, even potentially intuiting details you didn't already know. But you can't use any of that sped-up thinking to write down the results or any intermediate steps any more quickly, even though similar neurochemical processes must be happening more quickly than normal in your brain to allow the thoughts (or the magic directly covers for them). The zinc can save you time in solving the equation, but not in writing the solution down.

You then release zinc and look at another equation, tapping steel. You can write down anything you like at incredible speed (writing with a pen is a considered, deliberate action and not a reflex) and with your normal penmanship, but you cannot solve the equation any more quickly than you could if not tapping steel. The steel can save you time in writing down the solution, but cannot save you time in figuring the solution out. The position that you have advanced would seem to preclude a Steelrunner from being able to write at all.

Edited March 25 by Returned

[Isilel]

On 3/24/2024 at 10:44 AM, therunner said:

I think the above would also fit pretty well with what we know of Steelrunners in canon, in that in Era 2 while they do work as e.g. fast delivery man,

So, I really hope that this ad gets retroactively de-canonized or something, because it suggests that Steelrunners are actually fairly common _and_ that storing speed is pretty easy. 

Ditto the one with Slider short-order cooks, which makes equally no sense given that Sliders are supposed to be rare, so what odds on even one of them becoming a cook of all possible occupations, bendalloy is sufficiently expensive that even Wax couldn't provide Wayne with enough to fit in hours of compressed time and finally, that burning it literally burns one's life away, so doing so for a client should be very well payed.

[Duxredux]

I agree with @Returned, I'm not sure if it even needs nerfing. The Bands of Mourning exist at all, we saw a hacked Elantrian in TLM, a nuke big enough to wipe out at least a 100 mile radius was deployed against Elendel, and Duralumin allowed Wayne to outrun electrons. Insanely powerful stuff is going on, not just F-Steel. They have specific applications that can make them incredibly useful but a Steelrunner needs to be at the right time, in the right place, with the right information, with the right storages to make a difference. Not only are we assuming sufficient storage for our stunts, but we're assuming a sufficiently disciplined Ferring. Wax and Wayne are in the habit of storing whenever possible because doing so saved their lives, but even Sazed was running into situations when he just hadn't bothered to store enough attribute (I think weight was one he only stored incidentally) and he was really wishing he had been better prepared. Emphasize the hassle and opportunity cost of storing Speed and explore the scenarios where huge bursts of speed aren't the optimal solution and we can go from there. If being able to run at Mach 1 for 5 seconds meant that you could never go out for sports for months, rarely hang out normally with friends and have regular normal conversations, or spending hour after hour moving through life as if a bug through amber? For many, that cost would be too high. 

Sure, speedsters can be busted, but they aren't the end all solution to everything, otherwise the Justice League wouldn't need anyone other than the Flash. Steelrunners are a severely nerfed version of the Flash anyway, since as Brandon puts it, limitations are more interesting than powers. Steelrunners have plenty of drawbacks, notably access to F-Steel did not save Tyndwyl or Idashwy. That said... we might get more viewpoints like Wax where trying to take down a speedster might be a more interesting challenge than the protagonist being a Steelrunner. 

1 hour ago, Isilel said:

So, I really hope that this ad gets retroactively de-canonized or something, because it suggests that Steelrunners are actually fairly common _and_ that storing speed is pretty easy. 

Ditto the one with Slider short-order cooks, which makes equally no sense given that Sliders are supposed to be rare, so what odds on even one of them becoming a cook of all possible occupations, bendalloy is sufficiently expensive that even Wax couldn't provide Wayne with enough to fit in hours of compressed time and finally, that burning it literally burns one's life away, so doing so for a client should be very well payed.

Could be false advertising. They print Jak's stuff and ads for talking tools, so I doubt the newspapers fact check all that much. A company claiming Bendalloy or Speed as a cost lets them charge a premium when they could have an alternative business practice or machinery doing the job - like what we see with people speculating how the Vanishers were stealing cargo with Sliders or Steelrunners which Wax shot down pretty readily. This also obscures business secrets with misdirection. We have fast food and speedy message delivery without the Metallic Arts, so maybe we're seeing people par-cook or freeze meals, or maybe the invention of the radio allowing for long-distance communication before it hits the general public. I wouldn't take the broadsheets as too reliable unless specifically confirmed by Brandon as factual.

Edited March 25 by Duxredux

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Steelrunners are a severely nerfed version of the Flash anyway, since as Brandon puts it, limitations are more interesting than powers.

This is what I always loved about his books. The limitations built in endless speculation for my mind to consider random pairings of powers and synergies. Then he wrote SA and I felt the magic of his magic systems being interesting thanks to their limitations drain out of my body. Truly a sad day... but I needed more cosmere. 

Anyways back to the topic at hand. I agree fully that F steel is balanced. What is not balanced is compounding steel. But compounding anything is not balanced so to nerf F steel to the ground because you need to solve compounding is a really poor approach to finding balance. 

I stand by the thought that being a speedster is just not practical in most situations in life. You might be the best duelist in the cosmere but it just doesn't really do a ton for you! Super speed without other enhancements is a recipe for disaster. For writing purposes or gameplay purposes a speedster is going to build more enemies than he does friends while using that speed. The nice part is you could lean into the super speed as a reason to not try to improve physical aspects of yourself and just focus solely on the social aspects of life. 

[Treamayne]

55 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

You might be the best duelist in the cosmere but it just doesn't really do a ton for you!

This reminds me of one of my favorite sections of Codex Alera:

Spoiler

The non-human villain who is already exponentially faster than the protagonists gains access to the Elemental Magic of the series and becomes even faster - then meets an actually trained Duelist.

Book 6, Ch 50:

Spoiler

He had barely moved his feet.

The Vord Queen’s eyes narrowed, and she streaked toward Araris again, her sword flashing. Again, sparks flooded the hive, and Isana had to lift her hand to shield her eyes against them. By the time the two had parted once more, a second cut, almost precisely parallel to the Queen’s first injury, but an inch closer to her throat, also graced her cheek.

“Speed isn’t enough,” Araris said in a gentle voice. “Not by itself. Your technique is sloppy. You haven’t drilled enough.”

 

 

[therunner]

14 hours ago, NameIess said:

Nowhere does it state that F-steel doesn't increase thought speed, it merely doesn't mention such side effects. This isn't remarkable, since other side effects such as F-iron's increase of strength so as to prevent the user from crushing themselves, are not mentioned either:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

True, however Iron's increase in strength is far smaller than the increase in weight, Wax never moves when tapping a lot, and indeed is more sluggish when tapping weight.
So based on that, F-steel increase in speed of thought would be minor again.

Second, strength derived from F-Iron is only with respect to changes to the body, but it would not let Wax e.g. lift heavier items. Which would then imply that F-Steel increase in speed of thought is solely relevant when it comes to processing things directly related to speed. E.g. you process your surrounding fast enough to be able to move, but you cannot think of a plan (because that part is not relevant to movement at all).

14 hours ago, NameIess said:

 If that were the case, where is the overlap? The only possible way that F-steel can overlap with F-zinc is via sped-up thought.

I agree that F-zinc speeds up thought at least somewhat, but that doesn't mean that F-steel can't do the same thing. 

Per Ars Arcanum, you yourself quoted, speeding up thinking speeds is the main thing F-zinc does. So no, it does not 'speed up toughts somewhat', that is the main thing it does.
There might be an overlap, but it will be minor effect on F-Steel side of things, with odd limitations (like with 'strength' in F-Iron).

Quote

Sparker Ferrings can store mental speed in a zinc metalmind, dulling their ability to think and reason while actively storing, and can tap it at a later time to think and reason more quickly.

Quote

Steelrunner Ferrings can store physical speed in a steel metalmind, slowing them while actively storing, and can tap it at a later time to increase their speed.

Ars Arcanum literally calls out increased thinking speed in F-Zinc, and does not mention it at all with F-Steel. If that is not evidence that F-Steel does not increase thinking speed too much (if at all), I don't know what is.

13 hours ago, Returned said:

When storing weight in iron your bodily fluids don't suddenly boil away through your eyes and mucus membranes nor burst your capillaries despite their suddenly reduced density while retaining equivalent volume. That's never explicitly narrated but must be true based on when we've seen people store large amounts of their weight. To the extent that physical processes in the brain are relevant to physical speed, we really don't have any reason to think that they aren't also slowed during storage (though, as ever, magic can cover any piece of discontinuity at any point).

I mean, yeah it is magic as you say, magic can cover that part pretty well (as in strength increase in F-Iron, which makes no sense from any physical stand point).
So trying to extrapolate from 'what should happen physically' is pretty shaky.

I am just working from what stated primary effects are, and those are clearly intended to be distinct, F-Zins is mental/thinking speed, F-Steel is physical/moving speed.
Some overlap might be there, but any change in thinking in F-Steel will be by necessity minor effect.

I mean, humans can move at hundreds of km/h, we just need relatively empty areas do so safely, like when driving a car. So speed alone does not require increase in thinking speed to be survivable or usable.

13 hours ago, Returned said:

Another example: you are a Feruchemist evaluating calculus equations.

You tap zinc and look at an equation. The relevant relationships between items in the equation become more clear to you and you can run through any necessary calculations and algebraic manipulations required in a flash, even potentially intuiting details you didn't already know. But you can't use any of that sped-up thinking to write down the results or any intermediate steps any more quickly, even though similar neurochemical processes must be happening more quickly than normal in your brain to allow the thoughts (or the magic directly covers for them). The zinc can save you time in solving the equation, but not in writing the solution down.

You then release zinc and look at another equation, tapping steel. You can write down anything you like at incredible speed (writing with a pen is a considered, deliberate action and not a reflex) and with your normal penmanship, but you cannot solve the equation any more quickly than you could if not tapping steel. The steel can save you time in writing down the solution, but cannot save you time in figuring the solution out. The position that you have advanced would seem to preclude a Steelrunner from being able to write at all.

And yes, I think Steelrunner would not be able to write things faster than they can think. So in that situation, while they could physically move fast enough to write out hundreds of ideas, they would be limited by what they can think of to write.
They would be able to write, but they would write much slower than they theoretically could. The one idea they would have they would write out fast, but then they would sit there thinking of what next.

With both F-Zinc and F-steel, thinking and moving speeds would be matched, and it would allow them to write things out as quickly as they come up with them.

Basically, F-steel is external speed, how quickly you interact with your surroundings, F-zinc is internal speed how quickly you interact with yourself (like thinking).
If you have only F-zinc, you think fast, but you cannot externally act on it any faster.
If you have only F-steel, you can act on external things quickly, but internally there is little to act on (as it is not producing new ideas fast enough).

If you have both, you can leverage them to full extent, like Full Feruchemist could (and Marasi possibly did when she 'tapped everything').

Also, Bleeder is Kandra not human, deriving anything about experience of Steelrunner from her is flawed.

To summarize, the stated description of what F-Steel does and what F-Zinc does, seem pretty clear to me that F-Steel does not let you think faster (no matter how much we can argue that physically it should). If it does it is minor effect, with unknown and odd limitations (like F-Iron 'strength', that effects literally only the mass of the user, and even that not fully).

As a result, Steelrunner cannot perform actions they cannot think of, they cannot formulate new plans any faster, adapt to changing circumstances other then reflexively etc. They would not be able to speed up, and start coming up with plan in increased speed as they are approaching enemy. But they would be able to dodge if the enemy swung at them, or quickly execute plan they thought of before hand.

Edited March 26 by therunner

[Treamayne]

The way I think of it is:

• F-Steel makes muscles move faster - Physical Movement, and WoB-Confirmed digestion (which uses abdominal muscles) with some Required Secondary Powers of slightly increased metal burning (WoB) and slightly increased thought (wrt reaction timing requirements - dodge the weapon but not write a Thesis thinking)
• F-Zinc makes neurons fire faster - Mental thought, reasoning, logic, deduction, inductive reasoning, etc with some minor Required Secondary Powers of slighty increased reaction timing (neurons controlling muscles relay instructions quicker, but the muscles do not move faster).

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

4 hours ago, therunner said:

Also, Bleeder is Kandra not human, deriving anything about experience of Steelrunner from her is flawed

I was just thinking about this.  If it is not already on the list of things a kandra could do then this is evidence for a new trick. @Trusk'our could a kandra hot wire their neuro pathways to replicate Feruchemical zinc to a point where bleeder is able to act and think while using steel?  She clearly thinks fast enough that looking into Wayne's bendalloy bubble she was able to recognize they were sped up roughly the same speed.  (Which shows how fast she had to be thinking and moving considering Wayne's bubble has slowed down shockwaves enough for Wax to process an escape route as the explosion is going off in the same room...) 

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

could a kandra hot wire their neuro pathways to replicate Feruchemical zinc to a point where bleeder is able to act and think while using steel? 

It's not about hotwiring Neural paths, it's that Kandra do not have a central nervous system at all - so their "thinking" is more like WAN distributed processing, and the "brain" moving each muscle or muscle group is actually part of that muscle/group. WoB:

Spoiler

zas678

TenSoon wonders, and I wonder too- How can kandra think and be sentient without brains? Doesn't the body need a physical coordinator to relay between the Physical and Cognitive realm? Or do the spikes do a good enough job with that?

Brandon Sanderson

I imagine kandra having a non-centralized nervous system, with brain power spread through their bodies. Well, non-centralized is probably the wrong way to say it. They have lobes of thought and memory attached to muscles here and there, and don't have a single 'brain.' They certainly have brain-like material, though.

/r/Fantasy_Bookclub Alloy of Law Q&A (Jan. 17, 2012)

 

Edited March 26 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

17 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

It's not about hotwiring Neural paths, it's that Kandra do not have a central nervous system at all - so their "thinking" is more like WAN distributed processing, and the "brain" moving each muscle or muscle group is actually part of that muscle/group. WoB:

  Hide contents

zas678

TenSoon wonders, and I wonder too- How can kandra think and be sentient without brains? Doesn't the body need a physical coordinator to relay between the Physical and Cognitive realm? Or do the spikes do a good enough job with that?

Brandon Sanderson

I imagine kandra having a non-centralized nervous system, with brain power spread through their bodies. Well, non-centralized is probably the wrong way to say it. They have lobes of thought and memory attached to muscles here and there, and don't have a single 'brain.' They certainly have brain-like material, though.

/r/Fantasy_Bookclub Alloy of Law Q&A (Jan. 17, 2012)

 

So what exactly do you suppose the benefit to a blessing of presence is for the kandra?  I always thought it was like some passive benefits of copper and zinc feruchemy (same benefits)  but it sounds like their ability to think and move is better than zinc anyways. 

Of course that is assuming that is the only reason bleeder was functional. 

I think steels bullet time is more than adequate to function at lower levels. 

I think that feruchemy does a good job at protecting itself and making itself functional at lower rates.  For instance, Bleeder really didn't have to be moving at such a massive pace.  To be able to get from one side of a room to another is only a few strides.  At a run it could be covered in a couple seconds. If you quadruple your speed you could get multiple shots off while the noise from the first one is still sounding. 

I am willing to bet that all feruchemical enhancements can pretty well compensate at a tripling and quadrupling of an attribute. We don't see feruchemists choose to just double or triple or quadruple anything really. Its usually massive usages at once leaving a ton of waste.  Bleeder could be a blurr in doors at 80mph and be functioning nearly totally normally. 

When we see feruchemy limiting what the magic can compensate for is when the user is magnifying things far beyond what they are normally. 10s of times stronger or 100s of times heavier... considering Wax can and often does store upwards of 6,000,000 pounds worth of weight (for a second) his tapping to break floors and crush buildings is him weighing 100s if not 1000s of times more than he usually does.  I don't know that he could take a step if he wanted to but the protection is still functioning. 

To make steel scary strong you don't need to be 37x faster than normal. Marasi moving at that rate could have slaughtered every person on that mountain before they could blink. She had a very specific goal... get to Wax and save him. But it only lasted a couple of seconds. Perhaps her need for zinc here is totally warranted but she is also tapping 37x or more of typical speed. 

At 4 times her normal speed she would be a menace and the spiritual realm would not have had to do nearly as much heavy lifting to keep her functional. 

I would say steel runners are still really strong at that estimation. Storing 20% for a minute could allow you 10 seconds of double your normal speed likely. Counting diminishing returns I would say even if 10 minutes at 20% storage only bought you 10 seconds at 4x normal speed it is more than enough to kill a room full of bad guys before they really realize you are doing it. 

Just watch hema fencing at 200% normal speed... you almost can't see the strikes.  At 400% normal speed the fencers would be a blur.

[Treamayne]

18 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

but it sounds like their ability to think and move is better than zinc anyways. 

Of course that is assuming that is the only reason bleeder was functional. 

I think you missed the point I was trying to make:

• I was not trying to imply that Kandra "thinking" is better than F-Zinc
• I was trying to show that it's possible that:
  • F-Steel affects muscles > Kandra "Lobes" are part of their muscles > It's possible that Bleeder saw effects from F-Steel that a human would not experience due to this interaction