How does F steel work

[IcedOutPenguin He/Him]

I have had this argument before, and I wonder what the answer is:

When tapping excessive amounts of speed, you move bluringly quick, but can you think at that speed or would you run into walls and trip over things, because if it speeds up your mental speed too that makes F Zinc (mental speed)(I think) obsolete. Is this true or not, because I get confused a lot regarding this.

I don't need a super long explanation just like a yes or no.

Also would this be better in cosmere Q&A?

Edited March 7, 2025 by IcedOutPenguin

[DoctaDajman]

19 minutes ago, IcedOutPenguin said:

I have had this argument before, and I wonder what the answer is:

When tapping excessive amounts of speed, you move bluringly quick, but can you think at that speed or would you run into walls and trip over things, because if it speeds up your mental speed too that makes F Zinc (mental speed)(I think) obsolete. Is this true or not, because I get confused a lot regarding this.

I don't need a super long explanation just like a yes or no.

Also would this be better in cosmere Q&A?

I think of metal speed as more of intuitive leaps. If it was within your minds power to simply know it. Look at the movie Limitless or the TV show after the same name. They aren't going through the motions of thinking in a conscious way... they simply remember and piece things together instantly based on their knowledge and prior experience. 

Steel would allow you to seemingly somewhat accomplish this to someone other than yourself. You would be wasting the speed to bullet time and think things through a bit faster. 

Zinc definately is not obsolete thanks to steel. Zinc would make connections far faster than than even steel but you wouldn't need to sit in the thinking chair and waste away conscious efforts while tapping a difficult to store attribute. 

Brandon has likened Zinc to making someone like Ken Jennings... the jeopardy king. His wiring simply makes the connections instantly. 

Really you should check out Limitless for a good rendering...

Of course this is all just my opinion and how it works based on my understanding of WoBs. 

Edit: 

Steel is Bullet time. Everything slows down while you speed up. 

From the Steel ferrings point of view tapping steel just slows the world down around them. I would recommend watching some good coriographed fights on YouTube at different speeds.  25% speed is the same point of view that a steel ferring would see if tapping 4x normal speed. 200% is the same as if they stored 50% of their speed.  

Here is a great video to play with the speeds and see what steel sees. https://youtu.be/Cn36Pb8z3yI?si=QqJ98Ukkpupz1c5T

Edited March 7, 2025 by DoctaDajman

[therunner he/him]

We don't know yet.

We had 3 viewpoints of someone tapping steel

• Sazed against Marsh, but he tapped F-Zinc there as well.
• Sazed against Kandra, but he tapped at low rates.
• Marasi, who 'tapped everything'.

F-Steel likely will be not full on bullet time, but it will certainly speed up reflexes. which fits with 'Body speed' descriptor of it.

Quote

[F-zinc]

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)

Here it is F-zinc described as perceptual bullet time

Quote

Questioner

*inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

So, zinc increases the speed of your thought. So, if he did that, he would spend eternity in a moment. And that would be, actually, a bad thing. That would basically make him look brain-dead to everyone else. So, he did occasionally speed up his thought, but that only gets you so far. It doesn't actually... like, speed of thought... you're still the same person. It feels like everything else is slowing down around you, but you don't move any faster. So, anyway. Zinc is not capable of doing that, at least, not in the way that you're hoping for it to be.

Arcanum Unbounded release party (Nov. 22, 2016)

So i think 'true' bullet time is only possible as combination of F-steel and F-zinc at once, F-steel letting you move faster, and react faster, and F-zinc letting you think and process those speeds fully. F-zinc alone lets you perceive and think fast, but not move, F-steel alone lets you move and react fast, but you won't be able to consciously do much during that.

I suspect that F-steel will be much more limited than most theorizing assumes, simply because otherwise F-steel is far more powerful than other Ferrings powers, so much so that it isn't a contest. There is a WoB stating that in short race, A-Pewter/F-steel vs A-Steel/F-Steel twinborns, A-pewter would likely win, which if F-steel was so potent, would be straight-up impossible

Quote

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)

So my assumption is that F-steel does

• Increase the speed at which body moves
• Increase reflexes to almost match that
• Increases sensoric processing speed, but not at concious level (you can see things faster, but you cannot reason about it, that is F-zinc domain)

It doesn't

• Let you think faster, so no tapping F-steel and using the 'time' to think about stuff, that is F-zinc (as we saw when Wax tapped in BoM)
• Make you stronger, so you cannot throw objects at high speeds
  • Similar to how F-Iron lets you still move (change from Era 1 actually, there Sazed was tapping F-Pewter to counteract it), but does not let you punch harder, or lift heavier items
  • So F-steel won't grant you strength proportional to your speed, you simply won't be able to throw items/move swords etc. at those speeds (likely why Bleeder was using guns in the opening of SoS)

 

Edited March 8, 2025 by therunner

[DoctaDajman]

8 hours ago, therunner said:

So F-steel won't grant you strength proportional to your speed, you simply won't be able to throw items/move swords etc. at those speeds (likely why Bleeder was using guns in the opening of SoS)

HoA ch 78 (taken from @Treamayne response to another steel topic). 

Spoiler

Sazed’s greatly increased weight crushing the kandra guard’s bones. They used stone True Bodies, but even that wasn’t enough.

Sazed released the metalmind, then began to fill it instead, making his body incredibly light. He touched his foot to the steel lock, and tapped speed. Suddenly, he was faster than any man had a right to be. He stood up even as the other four guards turned toward him in surprise.

He stopped filling his ironmind, regaining normal weight, then reached with a blurring speed to pick up the hammer of the fallen soldier. He didn’t have enhanced strength, but he had speed. He slammed the hammer down on a kandra shoulder, growing heavier to add to the momentum of his blow.

The kandra’s bones shattered. Sazed snapped his foot on the lock and tapped all of the remaining speed. He crouched, pivoting, and slammed his hammer into the knees of two kandra who were trying to attack him with their own hammers.

They cried out, falling, as Sazed’s speed ran out.

This specifies that Sazed had no stored strength, just speed alone, and he was able lift a guardian kandras hammer and use at blurring speed to shatter the stone bones of another kandra. 

 

On the subject of steel / pewter winning the sprints: 

Tapping steel increases the burn rate of allomantic metals. Pewter and steel work so well together because pewter basically offers everything steel feruchemy would need to offset any negative effects of tapping lots of steel and pewter will be burnt in faster time and larger magnitudes at the perfect rate to suppliment the Steel being tapped.  

Pewter doesnt just offer strength and speed but also an increase in balance and proprioception. Burning pewter allows the allomancer to simply understand and know their surroundings and their place among them better. 

I think that these things increased on their own by the pewter likely offsets a lot of any drawbacks from tapping steel and we also know that the drawbacks aren't readily seen until tapping very large portions of any attribute. 

I imagine steel as being able to be tapped to 2-4times speed before the drawbacks really start to be seen and by that time, anyone burning pewter is going to be getting a lot of coverage for any loss in spacial awareness and strength proportional to their increased speed. The more they tap the more power they will be getting from pewter in that same amount of time allowing them to have super flared pewter aiding their every move. 

This totally makes Brandon's statement that pewter / steel combo would out perform a steel / steel combo in the short run. The pewter will likely allow the ferring to operate as normal at far greater tapped speeds than the Steel steel compounder who would feel the effects of tapping large amounts of speed at a much earlier time. 

 

Also worth noting that tapping Speed in a setting like a large room is going to give you a lot more bang for your buck than out in an open battle field. Moving at 80mph on a basketball court would be an absolute blur compared to on a rugby pitch. However you would want more fine control in the smaller space than the larger space so that likely offsets eachother as well but certainly the awareness and other benefits from pewter would offset those downsides. 

 

Edited March 8, 2025 by DoctaDajman

[therunner he/him]

 

On 3/8/2025 at 8:29 AM, therunner said:

So F-steel won't grant you strength proportional to your speed, you simply won't be able to throw items/move swords etc. at those speeds (likely why Bleeder was using guns in the opening of SoS)

16 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

HoA ch 78 (taken from @Treamayne response to another steel topic). 

  Reveal hidden contents

Sazed’s greatly increased weight crushing the kandra guard’s bones. They used stone True Bodies, but even that wasn’t enough.

Sazed released the metalmind, then began to fill it instead, making his body incredibly light. He touched his foot to the steel lock, and tapped speed. Suddenly, he was faster than any man had a right to be. He stood up even as the other four guards turned toward him in surprise.

He stopped filling his ironmind, regaining normal weight, then reached with a blurring speed to pick up the hammer of the fallen soldier. He didn’t have enhanced strength, but he had speed. He slammed the hammer down on a kandra shoulder, growing heavier to add to the momentum of his blow.

The kandra’s bones shattered. Sazed snapped his foot on the lock and tapped all of the remaining speed. He crouched, pivoting, and slammed his hammer into the knees of two kandra who were trying to attack him with their own hammers.

They cried out, falling, as Sazed’s speed ran out.

This specifies that Sazed had no stored strength, just speed alone, and he was able lift a guardian kandras hammer and use at blurring speed to shatter the stone bones of another kandra.

It notes he did not have enhanced strength, which also implies F-steel does not enhance strength.
He also used F-Iron to give more momentum to his blows (which is retconed by Era 2, where F-Iron converses momentum, though it could be made to work).

He is also tapping at low enough rates that the other guards are already trying to attack him.

Quote

He stopped filling his ironmind, regaining normal weight, then reached with a blurring speed to pick up the hammer of the fallen soldier. He didn’t have enhanced strength, but he had speed. He slammed the hammer down on a kandra shoulder, growing heavier to add to the momentum of his blow.

The kandra’s bones shattered.

So this passage is not evidence that F-steel will grant you greater strength, or let you move items at high speeds.

And physically speaking, it is impossible for F-steel to let you e.g. use swords/thrown weapons at ~10x the speed, because they would be effectively heavier for the wielder. There is some skin effect (e.g. clothing get protected), but if merely touching an item also granted it the same enhancement, it would be violating the very basic principle of Feruchemy (being internal) quite hard.

There can be some increase in speed when manipulating objects, but it will still be limited by your strength. Very simplified analysis follows.

Example, let's say you can exert at most ~ 400 N, that is your strength. For simplification, that means that you can accelerate your own hand (which we will estimate weight about 4 kg) with at most 100 m/s^2. If the swing distance is 1m, it takes you 0.141 second to cover that distance, and you can achieve throw speed of 14.1 m/s (if the mass of the object is negligible). If you tap F-steel, you can swing your hand faster, achieving e.g. 70 m/s swing speed when tapping 5x.

But if you hold an object in that hand, situation changes. Let's say you hold 1 kg object. Then the maximum acceleration you can exert is 80 m/s^2, which lets you cover the swing in 0.16 s, leading to throw speed of 12.8 m/s.

If you tap steel at 5x, this won't increase 5x, because of the following. You are trying to do the same action, in 1/5 of the time, which effectively means the acceleration you are trying to exert should be 5x larger, i.e. 400 m/s^2. Due to how Feruchemy works, the force you use to act on your body remains the same (you can move yourself as usual), so the strength used to achieve that acceleration in hand will be 4*400/5=320 N . That leaves you with 80 N of force acting on the ball, but because the ball weights 1 kg, the force you are acting on it, can at most achieve 80 m/s^2. Of course this is less than the 400 m/s^2 we assumed, so even the hand will be moving with less acceleration, meaning more Force will be left to act on the object.

To get actual acceleration we would solve equation that looks like F_max = m_hand*a/I_tapping + m_object*a. For F = 400 N, m_hand = 4 kg, I_tapping = 5 (tapping for 5 increase in speed), m_object = 1 kg. Re-arranging a bit we get a=F_max/(m_object + m_hand/I_tapping) = 222 m/s^2. At 1 m arc, this will be covered in 0.095 s, leading to final velocity of 21 m/s.

1 kg is right ballpark for weight of war hammer, so tapping at 5x, Sazed would wield a bit more effectively than without F-steel, but he would not be moving it at 5x the regular speed.

So tapping at 5x, does not lead to Feruchemist throwing objects at 5 the speed, but only 64% faster. The lighter the object will be (relative to hand) the closer you will get to that goal, but of course, then aerodynamics will take over.

TLDR: F-steel does not grant increased strength, and as such, wielding of external objects will be limited by baseline human strength, which will decrease the speed at which you can move them compared to theoretical boost from F-steel. You will still get some speed up, but much lower (e.g. for 1 kg object it will be only 64% increase in speed, not 500%).

@DoctaDajman As to pewter/steel vs steel/steel, I basically agree with your analysis of benefits of Pewter+steel vs steel+steel, however the WoB was explicitly about a short race where the Steel compounder can achieve far higher speeds than Pewter/Steel ferring. Awareness of your surroundings, proprioception etc. wouldn't be particularly relevant in such a scenario. The fact that Pewter/Steel would apparently win such a race (or at least Brandon assumes it would be close enough), suggests that F-steel is more limited than we typically assume.

Edited March 9, 2025 by therunner

[+robardin he/him]

On 3/8/2025 at 2:29 AM, therunner said:

We don't know yet.

We had 3 viewpoints of someone tapping steel

• Sazed against Marsh, but he tapped F-Zinc there as well.
• Sazed against Kandra, but he tapped at low rates.
• Marasi, who 'tapped everything'.

F-Steel likely will be not full on bullet time, but it will certainly speed up reflexes. which fits with 'Body speed' descriptor of it.

We also see a few other clear examples of someone tapping a steelmind:

• TLR when fighting Vin and Marsh in his throne room, when he moved impossibly fast, "moving with a speed as if to make the fury of a tornado's winds seem sluggish. Even within a full pewter flare, Vin couldn't outrun him"
• The Inquisitor with a back protector that Vin an Elend fight outside of Vetitian, "Lord Fatren's" city at the beginning of HoA, that "moved with a sudden jolt of speed. Its form became a blur, ... moving inhumanly fast -- faster than any Allomancer should have managed"
• Paalm/Bleeder tapping speed using a spike created from the murdered Steelrunner in SoS, while trying to escape after being caught imitating Governor Innate (but it runs out)
• Even better, earlier in Ch. 16, we also had a Wax/Wayne vs. Bleeder scene where Wax surprised her by "canceling out" her steelmind speed by being in one of Wayne's bendalloy speed bubbles, who had been playing dead.

The last part is the most illustrative, as we don't see many first-person POVs for tapping a steelmind but we do see a lot of Wayne using his speed bubbles to do things like change disguises faster than anybody can notice, right in front of them.

So that would mean that tapping a steelmind could do the same thing, if there were enough stored (in fact, there is a much higher limit to the "bandwidth" one can get of an attribute from tapping vs. how much more you can get by Allomantically flaring a metal, right?)

 

[therunner he/him]

56 minutes ago, robardin said:

We also see a few other clear examples of someone tapping a steelmind:

• TLR when fighting Vin and Marsh in his throne room, when he moved impossibly fast, "moving with a speed as if to make the fury of a tornado's winds seem sluggish. Even within a full pewter flare, Vin couldn't outrun him"
• The Inquisitor with a back protector that Vin an Elend fight outside of Vetitian, "Lord Fatren's" city at the beginning of HoA, that "moved with a sudden jolt of speed. Its form became a blur, ... moving inhumanly fast -- faster than any Allomancer should have managed"
• Paalm/Bleeder tapping speed using a spike created from the murdered Steelrunner in SoS, while trying to escape after being caught imitating Governor Innate (but it runs out)
• Even better, earlier in Ch. 16, we also had a Wax/Wayne vs. Bleeder scene where Wax surprised her by "canceling out" her steelmind speed by being in one of Wayne's bendalloy speed bubbles, who had been playing dead.

The last part is the most illustrative, as we don't see many first-person POVs for tapping a steelmind but we do see a lot of Wayne using his speed bubbles to do things like change disguises faster than anybody can notice, right in front of them.

I meant POV example of someone tapping F-Steel, all these others are from other people, not directly from the person tapping.

• TLR could be tapping other attributes, so we cannot make definite statements on F-steel.
• Ditto for Inquisitor
• Paalm/Bleeder is not human, and we know Kandra can alter their physiology, so theoretically she could alter her biology to deal with heightened speed, and e.g. still reason and act as usual.

 

[DoctaDajman]

16 hours ago, therunner said:

Paalm/Bleeder is not human, and we know Kandra can alter their physiology, so theoretically she could alter her biology to deal with heightened speed, and e.g. still reason and act as usual.

So much this. 

@robardin Using any Kandra as an example is similarly to using a known liar or bigot in the fictional world hoping it will be a reliable source of information. Just think about the lies someone like Ruin told making people with spikes go a bit nuts. Vin has us as readers believe her brother is talking to her for more than a book before realizing it was all a manipulation. 

Kandra are bad examples of anything powers related because they can break the rules of all of the powers and they can adjust physiologically for nearly anything. This is what makes them awesome and fascinating to read about though. 

The only thing you can rely on from a kandra is the fact that their entire existance is based on deceiving people and they were made to be able to break the rules... which ironically is why they made the contract to begin with. 

Kandra post era 1 are even more unreliable because they have no true set of self imposed rules to even follow anymore.