Shardic Efficiency

[Trusk'our he/him]

Radiants gain greater and greater efficiency with their Stormlight as they go up in Oaths, increasing their effective power. In fact, that would allow them to do some pretty interesting things not otherwise possible.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/551-youtube-spoiler-stream-7/

Questioner

What exactly does the Fifth Oath do for Radiant abilities?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Though, one of the things you should expect is the amount of Stormlight needed, as the bond attunes, becomes less and less to perform certain acts. And that allows you to accomplish things, by itself, that are pretty cool.

A little teaser: I think Kaladin could reach the moons. They're pretty close orbit, but he could reach the moons by now just with Stormlight he can carry pretty easily. 

We don't have Stormlight anymore, that is correct. If he had Stormlight, he could. Unfortunately, there is no Stormlight. 

This makes me think- is this how Shards and their Vessels work? That the more in tune they are, the more efficient and powerful they become despite having the same pool of Investiture to draw on (might even be what we saw with Taravangian when he accepted the truth of wanting to conquer the Cosmere and the Shard of Odium appearing to bond more deeply to him).

It would be a big deal in a Shard vs Shard conflict. Maybe that's one way Odium or another Shard could kill some of their competitors- pushing them into situations that cause a misalignment between the Vessel's morals their Shard's Intent (much like with Tanavast), weakening them until they can be brute-force destroyed by your own, technically equal power.

[Xanpheon]

We know that "raw" investiture - like the Mists - can be repelled under certain circumstances by investiture aligned with other intents. Vin needing to have the Hemalurgically charged earring removed before she could absorb the remnants of Preservations power is the perfect example of this - the Mists no longer enveloped her, the stronger the impact of Ruin became on the world and the stronger Ruin's intent became. It is not exactly a massive leap to extrapolate that if investiture is "charged" with an intent, that it is affected by the user's intent as a result in how easily it can be drawn upon.

Another good example of this is Kelsier taking up the power of Preservation using the jar of raw connection, in Secret History. We are shown that while - yes - he could slow down Ruin's destruction of the world in the same way as Vin did, as the connection faded - as the connection was weakened by his intent not aligning with Preservation, so too did his ability to restrain Ruin.

Finally, the Shards themselves have some rudimentary consciousness, even those shards that have been held uninterrupted since their formation. While Honor developed more, being "separate" and it's own entity for thousands of years, even with Odium we see that the Shard can be described as having it's own thoughts and ideas, in some way, and fights back or accepts the user.

All that to say - yes. I think that for a variety of reasons, the Shards and the Vessels need to be in alignment to bring forth the most power.