Are lurchers useless?

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

I think the issue with Lurchers is that their best performance requires a lot of settup. Imagine doing home defense as a noble born an iron misting, you can have anchor points to zip to, have some of them rigged so that a push or pull done the wrong way will break the figure so as to disadvantage a potential mistborn foe, and neutralize most forms of effective ranged attack against your allies. Sure, you are not as good at offense as a coinshot, but if you are the house head or in line for it then you don't want to be personally going out to assassinate people anyway.

Also, you can grab your stuff quicker while going out. I would love to be able to yank my keys and wallet over to me while getting out for the day. Further, I can imagine applications where being a lurcher is actually rather nice for the act of love making, but I will simply permit others to imagine the full richness of this potential.

[Lesser spren]

I think lurchers will become a lot more prevalent once almoantic grenades become more common. Also we shouldn't forget a the variety their non- combat uses are. In a city full of metal an well-trained lurcher can slingshot themselves just as well as any coinshot, a lurcher standing on something metal (such as a train) can anchor themselves better than any skimmer, a lurcher could steal the boxings from right out under your nose before a lesser pickpocket could even close. Let us not forget the greatest feats of the survivor's life included burning Steel and iorn. Iron is a phenominal allomantic metal if you just have the imaginiation for it.

Edited May 19 by Lesser spren

[SheepAreFluffy]

One thing I've wanted to see pretty much since I first read The Final Empire is an exploration of how the direction of motion isn't the same as the direction of force. Think orbital mechanics. The earth is always being pulled towards the sun by gravity, but that doesn't mean that we go flying straight into the sun. Rather, we have enough sideways velocity that the gravity is only enough to bend our path and put us in an orbital path.

Imagine a highly-skilled lurcher who can do similarly with projectiles. She fights alongside her friends and colleagues, pulling any bullets or steelpushed projectiles that are aimed at them, but instead of pulling them hard enough to hit her (or her shield), she instead deflects them, has them slingshot around her, and then stops pulling with exact timing to fire them off in a direction of her choosing.

[Nitpicking]

17 hours ago, SheepAreFluffy said:

... but instead of pulling them hard enough to hit her (or her shield), she instead deflects them, has them slingshot around her, and then stops pulling with exact timing to fire them off in a direction of her choosing.

Reaction time good enough to time bullets? Wax can't do that and he's a near Savant with Pushing.

Edited May 23 by Nitpicking
typo

[SheepAreFluffy]

1 hour ago, Nitpicking said:

Reaction time good enough to time bullets? Wax can't do that and he's a near Savant with Pushing.

Pair it up with feruchemical zinc in a twinborn, then.

[Nitpicking]

You don't want to give your hypothetical Lurcher feruchemical steel (which is what I think you'd need to use allomancy at high speed)? The opposite of a Crasher like Wax, burning iron but storing in steel.

[SheepAreFluffy]

16 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

You don't want to give your hypothetical Lurcher feruchemical steel (which is what I think you'd need to use allomancy at high speed)? The opposite of a Crasher like Wax, burning iron but storing in steel.

My assumption was that feruchemical zinc for mental speed would be more useful, for things like reaction time and being able to quickly calculate or judge the trajectories needed. That said, I don't remember what the exact abilities of f-steel and f-zinc are or if we've ever had them explained to us in full, so maybe you are right and steel would be the more useful one. But either way, I want to use feruchemy to improve reaction times.

[+robardin he/him]

On 12/25/2025 at 1:49 PM, Shatter said:

They will soon be wearing Level 1 body armour soon (which should protect them), now that Scadrial has entered the modern era.

Eh, I think even in Era 2, at least in highly developed cities like Elendel, Lurchers start to become more interesting, as it becomes normal to always be surrounded by metal heavier than a person is, and often extending overhead. Now, instead of being at risk of Pulling some dangerous metal towards yourself at high speed, you’re always able to Pull yourself towards or against something big and metal, as hard or lightly as you wish.

Talk about always being able to catch the train or bus! LOL!

Like, growing up and living in New York City, it would be as easy, maybe even easier to up and sling around town as a Lurcher as to “fly” like a Coinshot, because standing on the sidewalk with no change in your pockets you can afford to lose, you might not have any metal to Push off of below you close by (find a manhole cover? Jump up onto the hood of a car?), but Pulling up would be free and easy, using a lamp post, fire escape, etc. Like Spider-Man!