Lerasium Alloy Covert Ops Squad

[Aekiel2]

So I had this idea a few weeks ago about what would happen if you had a bead of Lerasium, but chose to split it into 16 pieces, alloy each of the metals to it and then feed them to various people to form a team of very specialised mistings. What would be the best combination of allomantic powers you could give to 4 people to work effectively as a team?

This assuming you don't just double up on some alloys so your entire team has A-Pewter or something and we're working with Era 3 stage technology (which is probably analogus to 1980s Earth tech with some magictech involved).

The squad I came up with was something like this:

Bruiser - Pewter, Electrum, Steel, Bendalloy

Support - Copper, Brass, Cadmium, Nicrosil

Disruption - Iron, Zinc, Chromium, Gold

Information - Tin, Bronze, Duralumin, Aluminium

 

I think this would work reasonably well for a well trained covert ops team.

The Bruiser is there to be front and centre against the various threats the Cosmere can bring to bare and go toe to toe with them. Pewter and steel are there for brute force physical combat. Electrum (assuming you don't have access to Era 1 atium itself) is for providing a modicum of precognition while in a fight that can help you avoid danger, and Bendalloy has a ton of uses all by itself.

The Support is a back lines squad member that works to manipulate the enemy through soothing. Cadmium bubbles are great for if a squad member is wounded and you need to wait for medical support from outside - the bubble slows time for the squad so an ambulance can arrive. Copper works to hide the team and to disrupt enemy information gathering (plus it interacts with other magic systems in weird ways), while nicrosil can be used for context specific things like burst Iron/Steel pushes or enhancing speed bubbles to the best they need ot be.

Disruption does what it says on the tin. I picture them as being in the thick of things using zinc and iron to mess with enemy troops and their weapons, keeping the rest of the team safe. Chromium would be used to drain enemies that are bit too Invested for the Bruiser to handle alone (where the response would be for the Bruiser to restrain the enemy while Disruption leeches them). Gold is... Gold. Someone had to have it.

Information is the key member of the team. They're the one that spots the enemy using tin and bronze, can make themselves immune to enemy Investiture using aluminium, and can burst through copperclouds with a duralumin-enhanced seeking. They're the eyes and ears of the team.

 

What combinations do you think could be fun/interesting and does changing up the purpose of the team change those combinations at all?

[Treamayne]

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4 hours ago, Aekiel2 said:

What would be the best combination of allomantic powers you could give to 4 people to work effectively as a team?

I think Steel and Iron need to go to the same person - the movement advantage of having both is significant. Ditto for Brass and Zinc - one person that can soothe and riot would be more effective than splitting those powers (like Breeze and Allrianne). 

Hope that helps

[Trusk'our he/him]

14 hours ago, Aekiel2 said:

This assuming you don't just double up on some alloys so your entire team has A-Pewter or something and we're working with Era 3 stage technology (which is probably analogus to 1980s Earth tech with some magictech involved).

. . .

What combinations do you think could be fun/interesting and does changing up the purpose of the team change those combinations at all?

I find it difficult to imagine why we wouldn't remove some of the objectively less useful Lerasium powers from the bunch- after all, that's the strength of choosing to alloy the Lerasium with mundane metals. You get to cherry-pick the abilities you want and give them to who you want.

If I were limited to 16 Misting-sized doses of Lerasium to create a crack team of Allomancers, this would be my choice:

Tank/cannon (x2)- Pewter (x1.5), tin, steel, duralumin

Support- Steel, tin, copper, bronze, bendalloy, zinc, electrum

I would make two separate "tanks" that can both take a huge amount of punishment and dish out a lot of damage, working together. One and a half doses of Pewter means they can easily more than double their physical power, already putting them over the typical modern Pewterarm and letting them at least consider some other extremely tough Invested foes. Duralumin can be used strategically on top of that, especially when you mix steel in for massive Pushes. Tin is undeniably useful for stealth missions, especially in dark or hazy conditions.

For the support I'd forgo pewter but keep steel and tin, as that's necessary to keep up with the tanks and to maintain proper clarity in dim conditions. Bendalloy can be used to crop up Speed Bubbles when needed, helping out the tanks. Copper is in a similar boat, shielding all of them from cursory Investiture detection and with practice might be used to help shield from mental-Investiture if their aluminum headgear went missing. Bronze is very useful, especially when dealing with sneaky magical beings or those with less understood powers (they wouldn't be able to tell what they do necessarily, but they could know to be extra wary). Zinc is useful for all manner of social situations, and can demoralize enemies. Electrum is the final power I'd give to support, since seeing the future, even in a limited way, is very useful.

The support's main roll would be to act as a lookout, informant, director, and Slider for the team. Tanks have the obvious roll of heading in to cause damage.

Definitely sad I couldn't fit in chromium, but I suppose they could rely on Allomantic grenades since that is one of the powers far easier to use through that method rather than natural methods.

[Duxredux he/him]

Well... let's add in a few considerations. The point is to take a hypothetical bead of Lerasium giving effectively 16 units of power and divide it to enhance a squad, correct? An obvious approach would be to find existing Metalborn, particularly Ferrings and make them Twinborn or Compounders. Make someone like Wayne into an Auger.

@Trusk'our noted advantages of giving a larger dose of a single  power and it's also worth looking the other direction, considering how effective Wayne's speed bubble was with extremely weak Duralumin. Giving the squad all ¼ potency Duralumin may be well worth it. Possibly with reduced Chromium or Nicrosil when paired with Duralumin to compensate for their weaker normal burn. Having the whole squad be able to enhance or Leech when mechanized Allomancy becomes prevalent is also well worth examining.

The rest depends on the environment they're expected to operate in. Make them all Seekers, Soothers, or Rioters and they could do targeted and coded Allomantic communication. Give the Steel dose in increments to see how much the strength of Steelsight is changed. There's a considerable degree of flexibility here.

Edited March 5 by Duxredux

[Trusk'our he/him]

17 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

Well... let's add in a few considerations. The point is to take a hypothetical bead of Lerasium giving effectively 16 units of power and divide it to effectively enhance a squad, correct? An obvious approach would be to find existing Metalborn, particularly Ferrings and make them Twinborn or Compounders. Make someone like Wayne into an Auger.

Ah, that's a really good point.

One thing that comes to my mind in this situation is that you're way more likely to have loyal and trained individuals under your command as a government or other organizational entity (which I assume we are in this scenario) than Metalborn. Most agents you can readily pick from won't have the powers you want (or any at all). You want a Pewterarm/Steelrunner to give Lerasium to? The only one alive is an eight year old noble who hates [insert your organization here].

So I think it would be a spectrum. The less common their power(s), the more difficult it is to guarantee getting them and ensuring their loyalty and competency (excluding Investiture usage, which if they were born with naturally they have an advantage with).

Mistings and Ferrings themselves are generally common enough that I think you could reasonably recruit and train one of whatever type you were looking for. Twinborn could as well, but since you can't cherry pick their innate powers they very likely won't have one that's perfectly ideal (though since we have a broader range of abilities we want anyway, it's probably doable with some effort and luck).

25 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

@Trusk'our noted advantages of giving a larger dose of a single  power and it's also worth looking the other direction, considering how effective Wayne's speed bubble was with extremely weak Duralumin. Giving the squad all ¼ potency Duralumin may be well worth it. Possibly with reduced Chromium or Nicrosil when paired with Duralumin to compensate for their weaker normal burn. Having the whole squad be able to enhance or Leech when mechanized Allomancy becomes prevalent is also well worth examining.

True, fractional amounts of the enhancement metals would probably be more efficient since they work pretty well anyway.

 

[Aekiel2]

On 3/4/2026 at 3:30 PM, Treamayne said:

I think Steel and Iron need to go to the same person - the movement advantage of having both is significant. Ditto for Brass and Zinc - one person that can soothe and riot would be more effective than splitting those powers (like Breeze and Allrianne). 

I thought about that, but I think having two sets of eyes focusing on the emotional allomancy allows for dealing with a greater variety of threats. It also means that if they run into an enemy that is immune to emotional allomancy (coppercloud, aluminium hat, etc.) then you're losing 1/4 effectiveness of two members rather than 1/2 the effectiveness of one. Besides which, because both metals can basically mimic each other there's less use for having them both on one person. They can always communicate with each other to hit specific targets as well.

 

Quote

I find it difficult to imagine why we wouldn't remove some of the objectively less useful Lerasium powers from the bunch- after all, that's the strength of choosing to alloy the Lerasium with mundane metals. You get to cherry-pick the abilities you want and give them to who you want.

Just for fun, really. I find working with limitations more interesting that cherry-picking the most optimal case, because otherwise the logical solution is just to make a Mistborn and be done with it.

 

On 3/5/2026 at 1:38 AM, Trusk'our said:

If I were limited to 16 Misting-sized doses of Lerasium to create a crack team of Allomancers, this would be my choice:

Tank/cannon (x2)- Pewter (x1.5), tin, steel, duralumin

Support- Steel, tin, copper, bronze, bendalloy, zinc, electrum

I would make two separate "tanks" that can both take a huge amount of punishment and dish out a lot of damage, working together. One and a half doses of Pewter means they can easily more than double their physical power, already putting them over the typical modern Pewterarm and letting them at least consider some other extremely tough Invested foes. Duralumin can be used strategically on top of that, especially when you mix steel in for massive Pushes. Tin is undeniably useful for stealth missions, especially in dark or hazy conditions.

For the support I'd forgo pewter but keep steel and tin, as that's necessary to keep up with the tanks and to maintain proper clarity in dim conditions. Bendalloy can be used to crop up Speed Bubbles when needed, helping out the tanks. Copper is in a similar boat, shielding all of them from cursory Investiture detection and with practice might be used to help shield from mental-Investiture if their aluminum headgear went missing. Bronze is very useful, especially when dealing with sneaky magical beings or those with less understood powers (they wouldn't be able to tell what they do necessarily, but they could know to be extra wary). Zinc is useful for all manner of social situations, and can demoralize enemies. Electrum is the final power I'd give to support, since seeing the future, even in a limited way, is very useful.

The support's main roll would be to act as a lookout, informant, director, and Slider for the team. Tanks have the obvious roll of heading in to cause damage.

Definitely sad I couldn't fit in chromium, but I suppose they could rely on Allomantic grenades since that is one of the powers far easier to use through that method rather than natural methods.

Putting that aside, I do like your ideas here. Doubling up on the tank builds and alloying those metals to be a bit more powerful than the others is a nifty idea and makes the combat side of the team a lot stronger.

I do think that cadmium is a viable replacement for bendalloy here, depending on what kind of organisation they're working for. If it's the government then being able to keep people in a slow bubble while the cavalry arrives isn't a terrible idea. If it's more of a Ghostbloods type organisation though, then bendalloy is the better choice.

I will note that guns and kevlar make pewter a bit less useful than it was in Era 1, but duralumin can cover for that in a pinch. Does help for maintaining stamina through long combats too.

 

21 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Ah, that's a really good point.

One thing that comes to my mind in this situation is that you're way more likely to have loyal and trained individuals under your command as a government or other organizational entity (which I assume we are in this scenario) than Metalborn. Most agents you can readily pick from won't have the powers you want (or any at all). You want a Pewterarm/Steelrunner to give Lerasium to? The only one alive is an eight year old noble who hates [insert your organization here].

So I think it would be a spectrum. The less common their power(s), the more difficult it is to guarantee getting them and ensuring their loyalty and competency (excluding Investiture usage, which if they were born with naturally they have an advantage with).

Mistings and Ferrings themselves are generally common enough that I think you could reasonably recruit and train one of whatever type you were looking for. Twinborn could as well, but since you can't cherry pick their innate powers they very likely won't have one that's perfectly ideal (though since we have a broader range of abilities we want anyway, it's probably doable with some effort and luck).

True, fractional amounts of the enhancement metals would probably be more efficient since they work pretty well anyway.

 

I really like the idea of purposefully recruiting Ferrings and Mistings to bump up the pool of powers beyond the original Lerasium bead. Being able to create compounders is a huge advantage, and you can try to pick out those Ferrings that are most useful for the team.

[Trusk'our he/him]

17 minutes ago, Aekiel2 said:

Just for fun, really. I find working with limitations more interesting that cherry-picking the most optimal case, because otherwise the logical solution is just to make a Mistborn and be done with it.

Fair enough. I will say though, unless Lerasium is way more efficient when creating a Mistborn than a Misting, it would probably be better to still give a Mistborn multiple alloys of Lerasium since you could given the most useful powers and double up on them but remove the less useful ones (enhance pewter, steel, and bendalloy, remove aluminum, cadmium, nicrosil for example).

That said, a team of Allomancers can do things one individual cannot. Especially in a fight, having multiple members gives an enormous advantage over a single individual so long as they coordinate. 

 

Now, what I would say to make the challenge a little more locked into hard mode is if there was no Lerasium, only a Mistborn that was captured and had their powers stolen by sixteen separate spikes.

Now you must use only one type of power per setup, you can only get up to four for any individual, and you must take into consideration Spiritweb damage on your agents.

[Frustration]

9 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Fair enough. I will say though, unless Lerasium is way more efficient when creating a Mistborn than a Misting, it would probably be better to still give a Mistborn multiple alloys of Lerasium since you could given the most useful powers and double up on them but remove the less useful ones (enhance pewter, steel, and bendalloy, remove aluminum, cadmium, nicrosil for example).

That said, a team of Allomancers can do things one individual cannot. Especially in a fight, having multiple members gives an enormous advantage over a single individual so long as they coordinate. 

 

Now, what I would say to make the challenge a little more locked into hard mode is if there was no Lerasium, only a Mistborn that was captured and had their powers stolen by sixteen separate spikes.

Now you must use only one type of power per setup, you can only get up to four for any individual, and you must take into consideration Spiritweb damage on your agents.

I have for a long time been of the opinion that assuming equal amounts of lerasium, one which was pure and the other alloyed with Steel would make the coinshot 16x stronger with Steel than the mistborn.

 

 

Honestly I'd make a set of near mistborn, all of whom have Steel, pewter, a tiny amount of tin and copper and electrum(barely enough to be a difference) bronze, duralumin, and Chromium.

Certain individuals within the group would get:

1. Iron, and a larger dose of pewter and steel.

2. Zinc and brass

3. A larger dose of copper

4. Nicrosil, and a larger dose of tin

5. Bendalloy

6. Cadmium + grenades

 

The idea for this team is covet-ops. Get in and get out before the enemy can mobilize. If they need to they can through hands with some heavyweights from the cosmere, but that should be a last resort option.

Edited March 7 by Frustration

[Trusk'our he/him]

45 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Honestly I'd make a set of near mistborn, all of whom have Steel, pewter, a tiny amount of tin and copper and electrum(barely enough to be a difference) bronze, duralumin, and Chromium.

The tin being weaker is somewhat understandable since you could still technically get a little boost and see through the Mists, but copper's ability primarily is in countering Seekers and Cognitive manipulation- it should be overpowered with little difficulty unless you Invested a near-average amount, I'd think. Electrum is already kind of weak, only showing you up to a few seconds in the future. . . unless you just want to counter other future sight, I assume?

[Frustration]

13 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

The tin being weaker is somewhat understandable since you could still technically get a little boost and see through the Mists, but copper's ability primarily is in countering Seekers and Cognitive manipulation- it should be overpowered with little difficulty unless you Invested a near-average amount, I'd think. Electrum is already kind of weak, only showing you up to a few seconds in the future. . . unless you just want to counter other future sight, I assume?

Lerasium unto itself is powerful. The bead Elend had, which couldn't have been that large as he could swallow it while unconscious, so pill sized, made him multiple times stronger than an Inquisitor who had at least two steel spikes and might have been a coinshot before hand. Taking just a fragment of that to alloy with a metal would require next to nothing for noticeable results.

We don't need everyone to have copper to block detection, only one individual. The copper they have is just to prevent emotional manipulation, which seeing Wax(which may or may not have been copper in TLM) should be just fine even with small doses.

Electrum on its own would require too much training to be worth it, we just want it to fight atium or other similar abilities.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Lerasium unto itself is powerful. The bead Elend had, which couldn't have been that large as he could swallow it while unconscious, so pill sized, made him multiple times stronger than an Inquisitor who had at least two steel spikes and might have been a coinshot before hand. Taking just a fragment of that to alloy with a metal would require next to nothing for noticeable results.

We don't need everyone to have copper to block detection, only one individual. The copper they have is just to prevent emotional manipulation, which seeing Wax(which may or may not have been copper in TLM) should be just fine even with small doses.

Electrum on its own would require too much training to be worth it, we just want it to fight atium or other similar abilities.

All good points. 

Now, in this scenario if we're not doing 16 regular Misting doses, are we doing double that in raw power, maybe triple? Cause that also changes things a lot.

I'm gonna have to update my list I think. I'd be half tempted just to make a 48x Pewterarm, but I suspect a lot of brute force will go to waste due to their limited mass (unless they're a Skimmer to begin with).

Edited March 7 by Trusk'our