Compounder Cousins

[Trusk'our he/him]

Compounding is a pretty powerful ability and is well known now across northern Scadrial. 

But, I think there may be another Twinborn grouping with equal potential. 

If natural Soulbering works like most other Feruchemical powers, a F-nicrosil Twinborn should be able to temporarily reduce the strength of their Allomancy to empower it later. Basically the opposite of what a Compounder does, using their Feruchemical strength to cover their Allomantic limitations. 

A Pewterarm Soulbearer could become massivly strong, quick, poised, and durable, a Coinshot make incredibly long Steeljumps, or an Oracle actually have a vision of the future. 

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

16 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Compounding is a pretty powerful ability and is well known now across northern Scadrial. 

But, I think there may be another Twinborn grouping with equal potential. 

If natural Soulbering works like most other Feruchemical powers, a F-nicrosil Twinborn should be able to temporarily reduce the strength of their Allomancy to empower it later. Basically the opposite of what a Compounder does, using their Feruchemical strength to cover their Allomantic limitations. 

A Pewterarm Soulbearer could become massivly strong, quick, poised, and durable, a Coinshot make incredibly long Steeljumps, or an Oracle actually have a vision of the future. 

I think that's correct, yes, with the caveat that I don't expect the scaling to work as neatly, cleanly, and linearly as for most forms of feruchemy in actual practice just because of how absurdly overpowered that would be with virtually zero effort involved. Meaning that, one might only be able to accelerate their abilities as a pewterarm by a certain maximum scale factor before their allomancy just can't keep up and burn faster or hotter no matter how much soulbearing they engage in and this should be different for every alloy.

So like...for example, Pewter being a physical power and one of the fastest allomantically burning metals, you're going to run into a physiological wall on a functional level relatively quickly; tapping 100x on a nicrosilmind may still only get you to 5x power and 5x burn speed capacity (not a full 100x) for your Pewter allomancy because otherwise the flux of kinetic Investiture going through one's soul could reach the magnitude of being immediately and permanently damaging with cascading effects (instant-irreversible-super-savanthood, or more likely just death) while simultaneously every movement of one's body damages all objects around it (or more likely just death from being rocketed into space by one's own footsteps). 

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, Lewis Nethur said:

I think that's correct, yes, with the caveat that I don't expect the scaling to work as neatly, cleanly, and linearly as for most forms of feruchemy in actual practice just because of how absurdly overpowered that would be with virtually zero effort involved. Meaning that, one might only be able to accelerate their abilities as a pewterarm by a certain maximum scale factor before their allomancy just can't keep up and burn faster or hotter no matter how much soulbearing they engage in and this should be different for every alloy.

I think I agree with the concept, at least in general. 

I think Feruchemical attributes that are inherently more Investiture intensive (so, probably steel and nicrosil being up there while ones like copper are on the lower end) will have a steeper drop off due to compression loss. The more Investiture you must tap to get a certain level of the ability, the bigger the loss becomes.

Regarding the issue that a Soulbearer will just have more Investiture available and may accidentally bring about Savantism, but I think that depends somewhat on whether the enhanced power softens the blow or not. Though, given that they must take breaks from their heightened Allomancy in order to strengthen it, they will probably have less total Investiture saturating their system than a Twinborn using their Allomancy regularly, so I personally doubt it will be that big an issue for them compared to Compounders.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

31 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I think I agree with the concept, at least in general. 

I think Feruchemical attributes that are inherently more Investiture intensive (so, probably steel and nicrosil being up there while ones like copper are on the lower end) will have a steeper drop off due to compression loss. The more Investiture you must tap to get a certain level of the ability, the bigger the loss becomes.

Regarding the issue that a Soulbearer will just have more Investiture available and may accidentally bring about Savantism, but I think that depends somewhat on whether the enhanced power softens the blow or not. Though, given that they must take breaks from their heightened Allomancy in order to strengthen it, they will probably have less total Investiture saturating their system than a Twinborn using their Allomancy regularly, so I personally doubt it will be that big an issue for them compared to Compounders.

Honestly, if it helps, I would liken F-nicrosil usage on allomancy to being functionally similar to being able to moderate and modulate A-nicrosil on allomancy.

Feruchemy typically comes with more guardrails against accidental death though, so F-nicroing a steel push shouldn't be able to kill a man the same way as A-nicrobursting a steel user can. 

Edited November 16, 2024 by Lewis Nethur