Merry Christmas

[DoctaDajman]

Here's a new thought experiment for you all. 

Once upon a time I would have taken the breath. Its still a close call for me. But those unoathed living shards are something else. I can live just fine with none of these... I have been for 35 years. But dang a set of living shards just checks the rool of cool for me. My dislike for shardplate before had more to do with the healing of radiants leaving a bad taste in my mouth and the idea of hauling around dead plate and putting it on seemed awful. But living plate that I can use... even just for fun back woods stuff... too dang dope.

And if the shardblades can change shape one day (I estimate they can with the shardcast crew) then the ability to have just about any tool at anytime that I need is way too epic to pass up. 

Edited December 23, 2025 by DoctaDajman

[Trusk'our he/him]

Lerasium all the way.

More power potential with, assuming it's decently sized.

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

YES

THE ANSWER IS YES

[Guest]

merry christmas, you short little elves! im 5ft you shorties!!!

[___ He/Him]

1 hour ago, GoldenTherian said:

merry christmas, you short little elves! im 5ft you shorties!!!

Ha well I'm 5'9"!

Merry Christmas y'all

And lerasium, of course!

Edited December 24, 2025 by mippo

[Honors Spectral Image She/her]

I asked my brother whose never read any Sanderson and he said an unoathed blade and plate set I personally would take the bio chromatic breaths to help with music

I’m 6,7 jk im 5,8

[DoctaDajman]

8 minutes ago, Honors Ghost said:

I asked my brother whose never read any Sanderson and he said an unoathed blade and plate set I personally would take the bio chromatic breaths to help with music

I’m 6,7 jk im 5,8

I know the feeling. Any other time I would have gone with the breath. But the living shards, even without being radiant, are just too much fun. I want to take them for hikes and to do yard work so bad. Shardplate would make moving 4 cords of wood so much easier of a task prepping for winter.

Honestly I would get some land and just carve out my entire living situation from the hill... a shard made Hobbit hole would be epic!  

Think about the blade turning into whatever tool I need for the job. Cut a rock, turn the blade into a set of clamps to grab the rock and yoink it wherelese it needs to go next. 

[Unintelligenius he/him]

but breaths would be so cool. like making nightblood or even just doing smaller commands. plus can't you not get sick with that many breaths?

[Frustration]

The answer to this question is a whole lot different than: who would win in a fight.

This question is: which one would be most helpful to me in everyday life.

Breaths are nice and all, and at that level I'm basically immune to all diseases. But medicine is advanced enough at this point that until I'm old that's basically a non-issue outside of like Cancer or something else that breath probably wouldn't prevent.

Lerasium makes you significantly more powerful than a normal mistborn, but a lot of metals: copper, bronze, Chromium, nicrosil, are only useful if there's someone else with magic powers.

Gold, iron, cadmium, tin bendalloy and electrum are pretty niche. I could find uses for them, but they would be only a small quality of life adjustments.

Zinc and brass I feel would be unethical to use.

That leaves pewter and steel as the only two big sellers, but if I'm going for those Shardplate just has them outclassed in every way.

 

Shardplate is the only thing here that can save my life in a car crash. While pewter and steel would help Shardplate is just an "I live" button. With it I'm faster and stronger than anyone on earth, which makes physical labor a breeze.

The blade is just the icing on the cake, I'd take unoathed Shards for the plate alone.

[DoctaDajman]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

The answer to this question is a whole lot different than: who would win in a fight.

This question is: which one would be most helpful to me in everyday life.

Breaths are nice and all, and at that level I'm basically immune to all diseases. But medicine is advanced enough at this point that until I'm old that's basically a non-issue outside of like Cancer or something else that breath probably wouldn't prevent.

Lerasium makes you significantly more powerful than a normal mistborn, but a lot of metals: copper, bronze, Chromium, nicrosil, are only useful if there's someone else with magic powers.

Gold, iron, cadmium, tin bendalloy and electrum are pretty niche. I could find uses for them, but they would be only a small quality of life adjustments.

Zinc and brass I feel would be unethical to use.

That leaves pewter and steel as the only two big sellers, but if I'm going for those Shardplate just has them outclassed in every way.

 

Shardplate is the only thing here that can save my life in a car crash. While pewter and steel would help Shardplate is just an "I live" button. With it I'm faster and stronger than anyone on earth, which makes physical labor a breeze.

The blade is just the icing on the cake, I'd take unoathed Shards for the plate alone.

Straight up, a car accident is exactly where my mind settles as well when thinking durability. (I think maybe that scene from the movie Due Date with the car accident just is imprinted in my mind and survive unharmed from a car accident is like the pinnacle of luck and durability for me.  Plus I see to many sad traumas from car wrecks... I wish everyone could have plate for that). 

The only downside I see to plate is the weight. Although this has had me thinking for some time... if windspren are capable of flight on their own, and capable of moving even as plate... if you had a set of living windrunner (or skybreaker) plate do you think the spren could fly/float enough to make them effectively weightless? 

I love plate but I dont dig the idea of crashing through my floor into my basement if I summon it and am suddenly weighing near a ton. 

In other thoughts... living plate would basically make me the juggernaut which would be cool. 

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

Lerasium would just be impractical, feruchemy or bust, ya know?

I feel like breaths would be useful, but not as useful as plate and blade.

I would feel kinda bad about 'not exercising because you can lift anything instantly' thing, but besides that, plate and blade are just goated.

Although making them invis would be a must.

Breaths does have pitch perfect and perfect color eyes and glowing going for it, but awakening would be far too impractical to use, and life sense is the only real useful buff.

Yeah, prob plate and blade.

[Myst He/Him]

I voted Lerasium… but I think I want Plate and Blade… having a sword would just be cool. I’d dull the blade, and be able to have an amazing practice sword, plus I could make it fit any regulations for tournaments or whatever(assuming I practice and get good) the plate I wouldn’t have much use for… except for maybe as a better snow coat, because I hate wearing those, but shardplate would regulate heat.

plus there’d be an intelligent Spren plus some other Spren who have to listen to me(they don’t have to obey, but they get to listen to my nonsense)

Also, I’m 5’9

[Ink and Embers Any pronouns]

I went for lerasium, as I wouldn't use plate and blade (I'm not a very combatty person). Breaths would be useful but would run out if I Awakened too much; metals may be difficult to source but I'd maybe be able to find a small amount with effort. To me, it would also be the most versatile option. 

[alder24]

Breaths, I'll always choose Breaths because I love Awakening the most of all Invested Arts in Cosmere. Being a Mistborn is super cool and powerful, but I don't need most of those fancy powers that much in my day to day life. Shards are certainly awesome, if you need to fight. Except for some situational uses, they would just sit in the corner and collect dust. Breaths on the other hand are always useful. 1000 Breaths not only gives me immunity to most diseases, it gives me life sense, perfect pitch and color recognition and allows me to automate most of my day to day tasks. I can also use Breaths to store memories, just like in Copperminds, so I can either use them to perfectly recall certain moments, or to forget them (I can reread Cosmere for the first time once more). Breaths are such a versatile and practical choice that I'll be using them all the time and when not in use, they still provide me huge benefits just from Heightenings. 

[Guest]

Merry Christmas eve you respectfully sized people of the shard : )

[Akimikoisthecutest]

12 hours ago, GoldenTherian said:

Y'all I'm 11. Stop hating and let me cook

Two things here. First of all, basic internet safety, don't tell people where you live or how old you are.

Second 

Edit: Yes I know that they say the same thing. 

Edit 2: I have no idea why Chaos's name is highlighted. Don't ask.

Edit 3: I don't mean this in any harsh or reprimanding way, I just want to keep you safe. I've joined forums when I wasn't a 13 year old and it was not a great experience.

Edited December 24, 2025 by Akimikoisthecutest

[Schizoposting]

I'd take the breaths, for the life extension; given that it's half of what's needed for immortality, it would probably extend my lifespan by many decades if not by centuries. Which is a lot more valuable in my opinion than being able to fly or having a spren buddy.

[Returned he/him]

Lerasium for me, all the way. The variety of powers it grants, and the ease of using them, offer lots of potential applications. Even if we're just talking about iron, steel, pewter, tin, zinc, brass, cadmium, bendalloy, duralumin, and aluminum that's a lot of flexibility and options right at my fingertips just by getting metals that are commonly found. Subtle or loud, with tons of choices which radically expand what I can do and how I might do it.

Breaths are also very intriguing but are less immediately flexible, and at the 1,000 Breath mark I'd worry about loss to Awakening mishaps. Since, in the real world, I can't just get more Breaths the risk of permanent loss is high, especially as the biggest day-to-day benefits for me require having at least X of them within yourself. The limits of Awakening are poorly defined, though, and the chance to research it and push the limits might really expand what it can do. It would be interesting, if nothing else. Potentially very flexible and variably subtle, but not enough so to edge out lerasium for me.

Unoathed Plate and Blade are awesome but limited in what you can do with them. Durable armor and a magic sword are great but outside of direct combat they seem kind of limited. The armor is bulky and weighs ~2,000 lbs which makes it impractical for a lot of things (few cars can accommodate that much weight in the driver's seat, relatively few doorways will be large enough to pass through, you can't sit in a chair to take a break, etc.). It also only delivers its benefits if you're wearing it, so you're either wearing it all the time (which I would not be excited about) or you're counting on your native perception and reaction speed in summoning it to guard your life. Still very cool to find in your Christmas stocking but not very subtle ever and relatively inflexible.

Edited December 24, 2025 by Returned

[DoctaDajman]

4 minutes ago, Returned said:

Lerasium for me, all the way. The variety of powers it grants, and the ease of using them, offer lots of potential applications. Even if we're just talking about iron, steel, pewter, tin, zinc, brass, cadmium, bendalloy, duralumin, and aluminum that's a lot of flexibility and options right at my fingertips just by getting metals that are commonly found. Subtle or loud, with tons of choices which radically expand what I can do and how I might do it.

Breaths are also very intriguing but are less immediately flexible, and at the 1,000 Breath mark I'd worry about loss to Awakening mishaps. Since, in the real world, I can't just get more Breaths the risk of permanent loss is high, especially as the biggest day-to-day benefits for me require having at least X of them within yourself. The limits of Awakening are poorly defined, though, and the chance to research it and push the limits might really expand what it can do. It would be interesting, if nothing else. Potentially very flexible and variably subtle, but not enough so to edge out lerasium for me.

Unoathed Plate and Blade are awesome but limited in what you can do with them. Durable armor and a magic sword are great but outside of direct combat they seem kind of limited. The armor is bulky and weighs ~2,000 lbs which makes it impractical for a lot of things (few cars can accommodate that much weight in the driver's seat, relatively few doorways will be large enough to pass through, you can't sit in a chair to take a break, etc.). It also only delivers its benefits if you're wearing it, so you're either wearing it all the time (which I would not be excited about) or you're counting on your native perception and reaction speed in summoning it to guard your life. Still very cool to find in your Christmas stocking but not very subtle ever and relatively inflexible.

I can see that. But the blade and plate are now living. You can summon them into existance when needed or wanted. The car just has to carry you and you can be protected at an instants notice right?  Totally worth imo. 

As for the breaths. You and @alder24make great points. The passive effects of breaths are always useful and always on. How great would it be to enter the Fantasia scene with the mops cleaning the house except I get to control those mops!  

Being a mistborn would be epic and fun. But life is good without it. I like the protection of plate too much and if I need extra strength I would rather power armor that lifts a car for me than pewter that helps me lift less and has the downside of potential pewter drag dangers. 

[Returned he/him]

1 hour ago, DoctaDajman said:

I can see that. But the blade and plate are now living. You can summon them into existance when needed or wanted. The car just has to carry you and you can be protected at an instants notice right?  Totally worth imo. 

Definitely a fair perspective, and I'm not anti-Unoathed Plate and Blade-- I would not say that choosing that option is a bad choice. My concern with it though is that the just-in-time Plate summoning requires you to have the time and reaction speed to do it when it's needed. If you are involved in a high-speed car crash the impact might literally happen before it is physically possible to process the sensory input that indicates it will happen. And even then a high-force impact could overwhelm the Plate, such as Dalinar being buried in the rockslide trap in Oathbringer, though I think it would be a pretty exceptional car crash that would kill someone in Plate. If you're wrong and summon the Plate unnecessarily then you've ruined the car, and possibly caused an accident when there would not otherwise have been one! It would make this sort of reflex summoning expensive, since it's almost guaranteed that a person will be mistaken in determining that they need it right now at least sometimes, but if you don't summon the Plate as soon as you think you might need it then you've lost its life-preserving-in-an-emergency benefits.

Obviously there are a lot of situations in which the Plate will protect you really effectively and from a wide variety of things (and better than Allomancy could), but my perspective is that if we're just assuming you'll have the foresight and notice to summon the Plate in time then using pewter + steel + iron to escape instead will be almost as good in an awful lot of situations, plus you get the versatility of full (and extra-powerful) Allomancy in all other situations.

Edited December 24, 2025 by Returned

[The Stick]

I would say definitely the breaths. The resistance to diseases and lifespan are both great. Sure, we have modern medicine, but common ailments are still very annoying, especially if you don't go to a doctor for them. The color and music talents would both be much appreciated by me, since I am not amazing at either. I just think breaths are the most useful in practical life.

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

Here's a few arguments:

I believe Lerasium is the wrong choice. All the other stuff has no extra cost (batteries included) but lerasium mistborn needs you to get all these other metals (batteries not included). And with not having Feruchemy? That just seems like a waste.

I quite like both Unoathed and Breaths, but feel that Breaths just dont have all that much. Sure, they are way more pratical, but Unoathed is just an extra strength buff.

I would be fine with either (and might actually like Breaths more but idk) but I would hate to get lerasium over the others, if I were to choose.

[Returned he/him]

2 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

I believe Lerasium is the wrong choice. All the other stuff has no extra cost (batteries included) but lerasium mistborn needs you to get all these other metals (batteries not included). And with not having Feruchemy? That just seems like a waste.

To each their own, but I find this surprising. A few minutes on Amazon (or similar) could get you years' worth of most of the metals to use with your Mistborn powers for very little money and delivered within a day. Some, like cadmium and bendalloy, are going to be harder to come by. But you can't ever get an additional Breath. I certainly didn't think that Vin's Allomancy seemed like a waste!

Is it more that you need to explicitly do something regularly (swallow the metals) to have the Allomancy available? I can see that as a downside compared to the other two, which have no requirement like that. Procuring the metals seems trivial so I'm not sure I'm getting the complaint.

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

51 minutes ago, Returned said:

But you can't ever get an additional Breath

Where do you find someone loosing breath?

51 minutes ago, Returned said:

Is it more that you need to explicitly do something regularly (swallow the metals) to have the Allomancy available? I can see that as a downside compared to the other two, which have no requirement like that. Procuring the metals seems trivial so I'm not sure I'm getting the complaint.

It's a combonation of things. The others can just do most things more effectively, and most of the Metalic Arts that i loved were Feruchemy. Temporal metals cost too much, Iron, Steel, and Pewter are just worse Shardplate, Zinc and Brass feel unethical, Copper and Bronze are useless without other invested people, duralumin is just a buff, and aluminum and the other enhancement metals are just useless. This leaves Tin with being the only real upside over any of the others, and Breaths and Plate are just way more versatile.

55 minutes ago, Returned said:

I certainly didn't think that Vin's Allomancy seemed like a waste!

Because you wanna know who needed all of those buffs and could afford them at that moment? Vin.

When will any combat abilities be useful to us when Plate is just so much better?

[Returned he/him]

4 hours ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

Where do you find someone loosing breath?

Permanently by losing an object that Breath is stored in, by misplacing it or possibly it being destroyed. Temporarily by having enough Awakened objects at once that you lose that Heightening. At 1,000 Breaths using even one to Awaken something will cost you your life sense until you reclaim it. Otherwise you're right and if you got the Breath gift and chose never to Awaken anything you'd securely have your aura recognition and perfect pitch, color recognition, and life sense indefinitely.

4 hours ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

Because you wanna know who needed all of those buffs and could afford them at that moment? Vin.

When will any combat abilities be useful to us when Plate is just so much better?

A modern person could easily afford to have Vin's buffs available to them, I think. But more broadly I'm not thinking of only combat potential-- I would rather have the ability to do other things besides (or in addition to, if we're imagining an action-packed setting) fighting and killing, so that's not as big a draw for me as the primary value in one of the powers. And even then the metals would be useful in a fight, if not as much as Plate in many situations, and unless you're facing someone in Plate themselves Allomancy is pretty great.

Edited December 25, 2025 by Returned