theory Why Feruchemical aluminum medallions are impossible

[Oversleep]

I've seen many people assume that with the Survivor's/Sovereign's Spearhead avalaible it's possible to reproduce it or any medallion.

I think it's wrong. Why? While we do not know how medallions work (with them being usable by anyone and not just Soulbearers), it's fairly certain that they are unkeyed nicrosilminds. So medallion-maker stores one of his abilities by using Feruchemical nicrosil. But he has to make it unkeyed! So he has to have no Identity at the moment. As far as we know, it's possible by storing aluminum 100%.

Conclusion: It's impossible to create an unkeyed nicrosilmind containing Feruchemical aluminum as Feruchemical aluminum has to be avalaible to make the metalmind unkeyed in the first place.

It means that there cannot be a medallion granting Feruchemical aluminum. By extension, the SSpearhead does not contain that ability. So to make more medallions, we need Trueselfs and give them the SSpearhead.

Edited August 22, 2016 by Oversleep

[Pagerunner he/him]

Good catch. I've suspected that the medallions are filled with Nicrosil Compounding, so they wouldn't need to lose their ability while they're filling the medallion. This further cements it, in my mind.

[Spoolofwhool]

I don't see this. As far as I can tell, there are two main theories regarding how feruchemical strength is exhibited. Either feruchemical strength represents how efficient you store an attribute, or it is the limit that you can store at a given moment. Personally I ascribe to the first, since it seems to make the most sense to me and I vaguely recall a quote in SoS or BoM basically stating so regarding hemalurgy, which I haven't found again. Regardless of whichever theory is correct, it doesn't matter since either one could result in the storage of aluminium feruchemy, though the second would require hemalurgic addition. 

If the first is true: All you do is store is store all your identity as you would normally do, then store a part, not all, of your aluminium feruchemical ability into nicrosil. You wouldn't store as much identity as your losing, but that doesn't matter. You would be able to store aluminium feruchemically very quickly as you could store nearly all of it at a moment, keeping only a slight bit to be able to keep storing identity.

If the second is true: This is where it gets a bit more difficult. You would have to spike yourself with a hemalurgic spike with an aluminium feruchemical charge, or many, until your aluminium feruchemical strength is at least about 100%.Once you've done that, you store all your identity as normal, then store a portion aluminium feruchemical ability, with the maximum being what keeps you at 100%. This method would result in a much slower storing of aluminium feruchemical ability however, unless you spike yourself a lot.

Overall, I disagree with your idea that it is impossible. I guess though that you're operating on the premise that storing an investiture is all or nothing. However, I don't see how that is the case. Every other feruchemical attribute has its range of how much you're storing at a time, including memories. In addition, we know that there can be gradients of investiture strength. The most stated one has been allomancy, with the repeated statement that allomancers were far stronger than ones today. However, I can imagine at least a few other manifestations of investiture could be prone to lesser strength and inefficiency.

Further examples of inefficiency or lessened power of other manifestations of investiture in spoilers:

Spoiler

Stormlight Archives

Spoiler

Surgebinding requires more breath for the same effect.

Warbreaker

Spoiler

Awakening requires more stormlight for the same effect.

Elantris

Spoiler

Aondors producing less powerful effects.

Emperor's Soul

Spoiler

Forgery being harder to stick, and lasting less time than normal.

White Sand

Spoiler

Being able to control a lesser amount of sand ribbons at a time, and/or dehydrating at a faster rate.

 

EDIT: WoB that feruchemical strength changes efficiency, not limit of storage rate.

Edited August 26, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[Ari he/him]

There's a tension to being able to create an unkeyed aluminium feruchemy nicrosilmind, if we understand the process correctly.

That tension is that you need to remain strong enough as a Trueself to completely store your identity so that the nicrosilmind remains completely unkeyed. But that just means you need to be efficient (strong) enough at Feruchemy to store away your entire identity and have enough capacity to store to be able to put some of it into the nicrosilmind. Not impossible, but would require you to be a relatively strong Ferring/Feruchemist.

My apologies if those terms are confusing, but inevitably they get a little convoluted when it comes to storing your capacity to use Investiture in a nicrosilmind. It's entirely possible to be strong enough to store more capacity of an attribute than you actually have, which is useful for both Trueself and Pinnacle nicrosilminds in particular.

[Spoolofwhool]

50 minutes ago, Ari said:

There's a tension to being able to create an unkeyed aluminium feruchemy nicrosilmind, if we understand the process correctly.

That tension is that you need to remain strong enough as a Trueself to completely store your identity so that the nicrosilmind remains completely unkeyed. But that just means you need to be efficient (strong) enough at Feruchemy to store away your entire identity and have enough capacity to store to be able to put some of it into the nicrosilmind. Not impossible, but would require you to be a relatively strong Ferring/Feruchemist.

My apologies if those terms are confusing, but inevitably they get a little convoluted when it comes to storing your capacity to use Investiture in a nicrosilmind. It's entirely possible to be strong enough to store more capacity of an attribute than you actually have, which is useful for both Trueself and Pinnacle nicrosilminds in particular.

Could you explain this tension thing a bit more? I don't see how your feruchemical strength would dictate whether or not you can store all your identity while still storing a part of your investiture related to storing identity. There is a WoB that states hemalurgic decay on feruchemy causes a loss of storing efficiency, which can be extrapolated to generally feruchemical strength deciding efficiency. As such, if you start storing your ability to store identity, you would just get less of a charge of identity for the amount you've lost, but since you don't really care about how much identity you have, it wouldn't matter.

[Ari he/him]

Sure. Okay, so two key things:

• We don't know the exact steps to create an unkeyed Nicrosilmind, but it needs to involve at least storing your entire identity (or at least, a "threshold" amount that leaves only enough residual identity on the metalmind that anyone can use it) in an Aluminiummind and storing your ability to use the relevant type of investiture in the Nicrosilmind. For 30 of the 32 basic divisions of the metallic arts, this doesn't prevent any problems.
• The "Trueself" (ie. Aluminium ferring) and "Pinnacle" (ie. Nicrosil Ferring) abilities are involved in the process of creating unkeyed Nicrosilminds. Therefore, in order to create these types of Nicrosilminds, ferrings need to retain some of their abilities

For Pinnacle Nicrosilminds, a feruchemist is only able to create Nicrosilminds for their feruchemical ability half as fast as they could for an allomantic ability, or any ability they've been spiked with, because they need to retain some of the investiture in order to be able to keep storing it. (that is, they effectively store half as fast because they have to keep back half of their ability to store, because if you try to entirely drain your ability to store the power, you've not actually left any Investiture to store it with. Trying any other balance ends up wasting power one way or the other and creating the Nicrosilmind even slower)

For Trueself Nicrosilminds, it's a little different. There's no "balance" to be struck, rather, there's a threshold to be cleared. A Trueself that's too weak to store enough of their identity to hit the "threshold" at which a metalmind becomes unkeyed can never make Trueself Nicrosilminds for other people, because those Nicrosilminds would still be keyed to them. However, if a Trueself were strong enough, (or had been spiked with a strong enough gift...) they might have enough efficiency in storing their identity that they could simultaneously store enough power to create unkeyed metalminds, and also have enough power left over to store their remaining efficiency in a Nicrosilmind.

These problems can of course be solved by using Nicrosil compounders to produce the relevant Nicrosilminds once you've started up production the hard way, but you still need strong Trueselves and Pinnacles making medallions in order to get started. And of course, to ever get started you either need a full Feruchemist or to go around spiking a few people to be reasonably strong in both the Trueself and Pinnacle abilities.

edit: Sorry for the doublepost, I was trying to work a quote into my post after the fact and it didn't work, lol.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Ari

[Ari he/him]

26 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Could you explain this tension thing a bit more? I don't see how your feruchemical strength would dictate whether or not you can store all your identity while still storing a part of your investiture related to storing identity. There is a WoB that states hemalurgic decay on feruchemy causes a loss of storing efficiency, which can be extrapolated to generally feruchemical strength deciding efficiency. As such, if you start storing your ability to store identity, you would just get less of a charge of identity for the amount you've lost, but since you don't really care about how much identity you have, it wouldn't matter.

Actually, let's make this even clearer.

Let's say we have a Trueself who we've spiked with the abilities of a Pinnacle. They have 2.0 efficiency (or "strength" if you prefer) in Aluminium Feruchemy, and 1.0 efficiency in Nicrosil Feruchemy.

Our Feruchemist wants to make a metalminds that will let anyone else give away their powers to anyone ungifted. So they get a two-ring medallion ready. They store off all the necessary identity in a side metalmind that's not relevant, and then start storing their ability to store investiture. How fast can they store? Assuming there aren't any hidden multipliers, they need to put 0.5 of their ability in the metalmind, and leave 0.5 for themselves in order to be able to keep storing, in effect storing as if they were half as efficient as a Pinnacle. If they store any faster, there's less "leftover" Pinnacle investiture to go into the metalmind, so it paradoxically gets slower. That's the "tension" for Pinnacles.

Now, when they want to make the Trueself part of the metalmind, they don't have to balance out their Pinnacle abilities anymore. But, there's a "threshold" for how fast they need to be able to store Identity in order for the metalmind to actually stay unkeyed. If that threshold is 1.5, then they can only store 0.5 of their ability as a Trueself, because they need to keep back 1.5 of it to dump Identity into their side metalmind fast enough that there's none left keying the Trueself Nicrosilmind to them.

However, let's say the threshold is a bit lower, like 0.8. Then the Trueself can actually store up to 1.2 of their ability in the Nicrosilmind, and they're instead limited by their ability with feruchemical Nicrosil, because they can only store Investiture with 1.0 efficiency. So they're left with a 1.0 ability to dump Identity into their dump Aluminiummind.

Now, if you assume that the Threshold for unkeying a metalmind is 1.0 and Trueselves never naturally get over 1.0 efficiency, then yes, the OP is half-right. An unspiked Trueself or even Full Feruchemist would never be able to create an unkeyed Trueself Nicrosilmind. But if you spiked them with additional efficiency with feruchemical Aluminium, then they would be able to. So whatever the constants are for the threshold, it's absolutely possible to start producing metalminds that let other people produce metalminds. (which you can then pass to a Nicrosil compounder to mass-produce them)

[Spoolofwhool]

First note, you keep using Pinnacle, and by context you are referring to nicrosil feruchemy, but nicrosil ferrings are Soulbearers not Pinnacles, so I'm not sure why you're using that term. Pinnacle Ferrings store Determination in electrum.

The issue I see is that we're divided on what feruchemical efficiency means. If I understand you, you are saying it is a limit to how much you can store at a time. So at 100% efficiency you can store all of the attribute at a moment, but at 50% efficiency you can only store 50% of the attribute at a time. My opinion, is that is efficiency has to do with the loss:store ratio. So at 100% efficiency, if you lose X amount of attribute for T time, you would have a metalmind which has X amount stored and can be tapped for T time. However, at 50%, the ratio is 2:1, so you if you lose X amount of attribute for T time, you would only have a metalmind which has X/2 amount stored, but can still be tapped for T time. That is what I was getting at from the WoB I quoted earlier. 

Now how I think this applies creating the medallions. When you store investiture for a feruchemical ability, you're losing efficiency for that ability. So if full feruchemist starts storing half their pewter feruchemy into a nicrosilmind, then they would be at 50% efficiency for pewter storing until then. If they store nicrosil feruchemy, they could store anywhere from 1% to 99%, but at 1% they would be at 99% efficiency, so would be effectively storing 0.99% efficiency charge and at 99% they would be at 1% efficiency, so would be effectively storing 0.99% efficiency. Most efficient would be 50% storing for 25% actual stored.

Moving on to storing identity. There wouldn't be a limit on how much aluminum feruchemy you could store, as long as you still had a little. The stored identity isn't important, so you can just store 99% of their aluminum feruchemy ability. Then you'll just be losing 100% of your identity while only storing 1%, but get a fairly effective rate on storing aluminum feruchemy ability.

Hope this makes sense. Yes, aluminum and nicrosil feruchemy storing would still be more difficult than others, but it would still be possible, if it follows the efficiency of storage, instead of some hard limit on how much can be stored. Not sure how that came about and the WoB seems to imply differently.

[Ari he/him]

 

34 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

First note, you keep using Pinnacle, and by context you are referring to nicrosil feruchemy, but nicrosil ferrings are Soulbearers not Pinnacles, so I'm not sure why you're using that term. Pinnacle Ferrings store Determination in electrum.

The issue I see is that we're divided on what feruchemical efficiency means. If I understand you, you are saying it is a limit to how much you can store at a time. So at 100% efficiency you can store all of the attribute at a moment, but at 50% efficiency you can only store 50% of the attribute at a time. My opinion, is that is efficiency has to do with the loss:store ratio. So at 100% efficiency, if you lose X amount of attribute for T time, you would have a metalmind which has X amount stored and can be tapped for T time. However, at 50%, the ratio is 2:1, so you if you lose X amount of attribute for T time, you would only have a metalmind which has X/2 amount stored, but can still be tapped for T time. That is what I was getting at from the WoB I quoted earlier. 

Now how I think this applies creating the medallions. When you store investiture for a feruchemical ability, you're losing efficiency for that ability. So if full feruchemist starts storing half their pewter feruchemy into a nicrosilmind, then they would be at 50% efficiency for pewter storing until then. If they store nicrosil feruchemy, they could store anywhere from 1% to 99%, but at 1% they would be at 99% efficiency, so would be effectively storing 0.99% efficiency charge and at 99% they would be at 1% efficiency, so would be effectively storing 0.99% efficiency. Most efficient would be 50% storing for 25% actual stored.

Moving on to storing identity. There wouldn't be a limit on how much aluminum feruchemy you could store, as long as you still had a little. The stored identity isn't important, so you can just store 99% of their aluminum feruchemy ability. Then you'll just be losing 100% of your identity while only storing 1%, but get a fairly effective rate on storing aluminum feruchemy ability.

Hope this makes sense. Yes, aluminum and nicrosil feruchemy storing would still be more difficult than others, but it would still be possible, if it follows the efficiency of storage, instead of some hard limit on how much can be stored. Not sure how that came about and the WoB seems to imply differently.

Thanks for the correction on Ferring types, I get confused on some of the less obvious Ferring names sometimes, don't ask me why I thought Pinnacle was right there.

I was assuming it was storage speed as opposed to efficiency, but functionally it amounts to a very similar thing, with the difference that if you have enough power to go over 100% efficiency, you no longer store any faster. That WoB is incredibly low quality, and I'd be very concerned that when Brandon agrees that "it" is leaky, he's talking about the Spike leaking Investiture, not the Feruchemist themselves. In fact, I'm reasonably sure I've seen a WoB that said storage speed is what feruchemical strength translates to. (Theoryland is now not responding for me at the moment, so I can't look up a reference just yet, but I'm very sure that that description could be applied to the strength of a spike)

You're right of course that functionally using half of your storage ability as a Soulbearer and putting half into the metalmind results in a quarter speed charge.

Your description of identity works only for efficiency. That's where it's relevant whether you're interpretting that low-quality WoB right, or whether my memory is right that it's actually storage speed that Feruchemical strength modifies. If it's storage speed/bandwidth, then it actually becomes highly relevant to how you make Trueself Nicrosilminds, and it would work how I outlined in my post.

If you're right and it's efficiency, then Oversleep has something of a point, and by default a Trueself can never create an unkeyed Nicrosilmind of their ability, because they need all 100% of their efficiency to drain away their Identity, assuming 100% is the correct threshold for unkeying a metalmind. You could get around that by spiking yourself up to 190% efficiency or something similar, which like with the storing speed, would mean you could store all 100% of your identity and still have 90% ability-to-store left over, which you could then put into an unkeyed Nicrosilmind. This is why I was using simple numbers and not percentages anyway, because it gets confusing talking about having the ability to store 190% of your identity, even if technically it makes a certain amount of sense.

That said, it would be extra confusing if you're right, because Feruchemists can elect to store less of an attribute they have, and they're not modulating their efficiency when they do that, they're actually keeping a percentage of that attribute for themselves. ie. they store 25% of their health. If Feruchemy varied by efficiency, it wouldn't make sense than when you store health more slowly, you don't get as sick as you would when you store it very fast.

[Spoolofwhool]

8 hours ago, Ari said:

If you're right and it's efficiency, then Oversleep has something of a point, and by default a Trueself can never create an unkeyed Nicrosilmind of their ability, because they need all 100% of their efficiency to drain away their Identity, assuming 100% is the correct threshold for unkeying a metalmind. You could get around that by spiking yourself up to 190% efficiency or something similar, which like with the storing speed, would mean you could store all 100% of your identity and still have 90% ability-to-store left over, which you could then put into an unkeyed Nicrosilmind. This is why I was using simple numbers and not percentages anyway, because it gets confusing talking about having the ability to store 190% of your identity, even if technically it makes a certain amount of sense.

That said, it would be extra confusing if you're right, because Feruchemists can elect to store less of an attribute they have, and they're not modulating their efficiency when they do that, they're actually keeping a percentage of that attribute for themselves. ie. they store 25% of their health. If Feruchemy varied by efficiency, it wouldn't make sense than when you store health more slowly, you don't get as sick as you would when you store it very fast.

I'm slightly confused over this part. In the first paragraph, you say, "If you're right and it's efficiency," which implies that you're talking to me about my opinion on this regard, but then you start talking about how it's about thresholds, which isn't what I was talking about at all. 

I'm not really sure what you're talking about in the second paragraph. Either I'm just dumb, or slow because I just woke up, or I'm just not understanding it. I don't know what you mean when you say "they're actually keeping a percentage of that attribute for themselves". 

Also, I don't see how the efficiency and storage speed are functionally the same.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[Ari he/him]

In terms of "how much of an attribute ends up in a metalmind," efficiency and storage speed being the delta variables doesn't make much difference. (the difference really is whether you keep what's not being stored for yourself or not) Whichever one you have more of, you still see a larger store at the end than you normally would. You'd only notice the difference if you could accurately quantify the amount you had stored and the amount you tapped from a metalmind.

Now that theoryland is working again, that WoB is definitely about spikes losing their power, not about Feruchemy. (ie. so you'd end up being a weaker Ferring from being spiked with a spike that was left outside a body/blood, because it had been "leaking" investiture) I've been scouring Theoryland for a comment on what stronger feruchemists do better than weaker ones, but I haven't found a good WoB answering that. I'm sure he's tweeted or posted on Reddit or something about what benefit stronger Feruchemists get, but I haven't found it yet. I'm like 90% sure that feruchemists can naturally modulate how much of an attribute they store up to a given limit, and that being stronger extends that limit, but I can't find the answer in writing.

I went through his most recent reddit AMA too and actually found a question asking exactly this, but it was the one thing in that post he didn't answer, lol.

[Oversleep]

@Ari, there you go:
 

Quote

Kurkistan

How exactly does hemalurgic decay work for Feruchemy? Is it like a leaky tube or something, or?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah yeah. (Here misunderstanding and thinking that the questions about the power of the Feruchemy itself, not storing/tapping metalminds)

Kurkistan

So they try to store 10 units of health and only 9 gets through, or?

Brandon Sanderson

Hemalurgic decay meaning someone who has been spiked is less powerful? That Hemalurgic decay] or the Hemalurgic decay when a Hemalurgic spike is left outside of blood?

Kurkistan

Less powerful. So like the Inquisitors are less powerful Feruchemists so they had to spend longer storing: so _why_ did they have to spend longer storing?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah they lose a little bit, its a leaky Youre there, exactly. It just doesnt quite its not as efficient: its [an] efficiency thing.
source

 

[Ari he/him]

Yeah, I saw that, it was the one Spool was linking. The issue is it looks a lot like he's gotten stuck on spikes losing efficiency and I'm not sure he's understood the actual twist to the question that Kurk was asking about what benefits a stronger Feruchemist gets as a result of having a more strongly charged hemalurgical spike. The thing is, I know he's answered a straight question on this (ie. where he didn't get confused about the wording previously) and I recall the answer being different, but that's the only WoB even tangentally related to this subject that I can currently find. I could be misremembering I suppose, but usually for this kind of answer I'm not, so it's driving me crazy that I can't find it written down, lol

edit:

For instance, this Wob suggests that Feruchemy never goes below 100% efficiency.

Quote

And this is more towards the whole physics stuff, but is Feruchemy really balanced? If it gives diminishing returns, wouldn't this end up as a net loss of power?

Brandon Sanderson (20 October 2008)

It doesn't diminish. Or, well, it does—but only if you compound it. You get 1 for 1 back, but compounding the power requires an expenditure of the power itself. For instance, if you are weak for one hour, you can gain the lost strength for one hour. But that's not really that much strength. After all, you probably weren't as weak as zero people during that time. So if you want to be as strong as two men, you couldn't do it for a full hour. You'd have to spend some energy to compound, then spend the compounded energy itself.

In more mathematical terms, let's say you spend one hour at 50% strength. You could then spend one hour at 150% strength, or perhaps 25 min at 200% strength, or maybe 10min at 250% strength. Each increment is harder, and therefore 'strains' you more and burns your energy more quickly. And since most Feruchemists don't store at 50% strength, but instead at something like 80% strength (it feels like much more when they do it, but you can't really push the body to that much forced weakness without risking death) you can burn through a few day's strength in a very short time if you aren't careful.

 

Edited September 18, 2016 by Ari

[Spoolofwhool]

That WoB suggests it, but at the same time it could also be taken to be just referring to the theoretical values of how Feruchemy. In theory, Feruchemy would have that 100% efficiency. In any case, I still see in my WoB that he is understanding the meaning behind the question at the end, since he's talking about efficiency, which wouldn't have to do with hemalurgic decay of the charge. Overall though, I agree that what feruchemical strength means is unclear, and it would be nice if we could ask Brandon for a clear answer regarding it.

[cometaryorbit]

I think that the WOB means that a normal Feruchemist who stores 50% health gets 50% in the goldmind and 50% kept to stay alive while storing. An Inquisitor with Hemalurgic-decayed Feruchemical gold (at say 80% of normal strength) who stores 50% health gets 40% (80% of the 50% he attempted to store) in the goldmind, 10% wasted, and 50% kept to keep them alive.

On 9/18/2016 at 5:36 PM, Ari said:

For instance, this Wob suggests that Feruchemy never goes below 100% efficiency.

 

I think that's right for Feruchemy by itself. Feruchemy gained through Hemalurgy is less efficient, though.

I don't think there is any such thing as "Feruchemical strength" the way there is Allomantic strength --  Vin is a stronger Mistborn than Kelsier and Elend is stronger than Vin, but all natural (non-Hemalurgic) Feruchemists' powers are identical.

Since the only limit to storing is the amount that would kill you (or 100% for things like Identity) and there is no limit to tapping, there's no way for there to be a variable strength unless Hemalurgy introduces inefficiency to the process.

[Yata he/him]

25 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I don't think there is any such thing as "Feruchemical strength" the way there is Allomantic strength --  Vin is a stronger Mistborn than Kelsier and Elend is stronger than Vin, but all natural (non-Hemalurgic) Feruchemists' powers are identical.

Actually Vin isn't a stronger allomancer than Kelsier, she was just extremely skilled and intuitive with its use....but this is off topic.

Indeed I think you have right about the "Feruchemical Strenght" or to be more precise about the lack of it....but we have not pratical proof. Once I thought "Feruchemical Strenght" was about "how much I may store" but of course if people like Wax may store at 100% it have to be wrong.

BUT there is no way to figure if a Ferring storing an attribute recive an equal Feruchemical Charge than some other Ferring....It's hard to compare this kind of thing, more from an in-world PoV

[cometaryorbit]

3 minutes ago, Yata said:

Actually Vin isn't a stronger allomancer than Kelsier, she was just extremely skilled and intuitive with its use....but this is off topic.

Yeah she is. Her extreme skill/intuition makes a greater difference, but Kelsier comments on it in the first book (after their Pushing contest lesson, IIRC) and Ham comments on Vin's exceptional allomantic strength early in book two (when she spars and does that pewter-powered super-jump 7 feet straight up).

Quote

Indeed I think you have right about the "Feruchemical Strenght" or to be more precise about the lack of it....but we have not pratical proof. Once I thought "Feruchemical Strenght" was about "how much I may store" but of course if people like Wax may store at 100% it have to be wrong.

BUT there is no way to figure if a Ferring storing an attribute recive an equal Feruchemical Charge than some other Ferring....It's hard to compare this kind of thing, more from an in-world PoV

There's no word for word explanation that this is exactly how it works... but I think it's a necessary conclusion from what we do know:

-the rate of tapping isn't bounded (WOB, and Sazed may mention it too)

-the rate of storing is bounded by how much you can store and survive (WOB), and you can store to zero identity or essentially so (from BOM)

-outside of Hemalurgy, you don't lose anything, even though some of the energy is spent to tap at high rates (WOB, and Ars Arcanum comments about its end-neutral nature)

That still allows for differences in skill, though - maybe a more skilled Skimmer can determine more exactly the percentage of his weight he's storing, or a more skilled Archivist can more precisely pick out specific memory-bits to store. But differences in "power' don't seem to have a place to go.

[Voidus]

Easy work around, store your feruchemical aluminium ability in a keyed metalmind so only you can tap it, create another metalmind that is unkeyed, using the Feruchemical aluminium from the first to store your identity while you store your natural ability.

[Spoolofwhool]

6 hours ago, Voidus said:

Easy work around, store your feruchemical aluminium ability in a keyed metalmind so only you can tap it, create another metalmind that is unkeyed, using the Feruchemical aluminium from the first to store your identity while you store your natural ability.

This does operate under the assumption that it is possible to tap and store the same attribute at the same time. We haven't seen anything which refutes or supports that theory, but if it is possible, and the measure of feruchemical strength is efficiency, then I have a theory for practically infinite feruchemical strength for a full feruchemist using a single hemalurgic spike.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

7 hours ago, Yata said:

Indeed I think you have right about the "Feruchemical Strength" or to be more precise about the lack of it....but we have not practical proof. Once I thought "Feruchemical Strength" was about "how much I may store" but of course if people like Wax may store at 100% it have to be wrong.

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

That still allows for differences in skill, though - maybe a more skilled Skimmer can determine more exactly the percentage of his weight he's storing, or a more skilled Archivist can more precisely pick out specific memory-bits to store. But differences in "power' don't seem to have a place to go.

I have a semi-different view on it, which kinda (dis)agrees with both of you.

How much you can store is limited by death, to put it bluntly. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a difference in the amount stored. Though I cannot find it at the moment, I remember hearing that a sick person could store less health than a healthy person. As such, a healthy person stores to the same mortality limit as a sick person, but the healthy person technically stored more.

So for what you said Yata, since we have a fixed limit(death), how much you store should be viewed from a different angle. Not where you end, but where you start. A skinny and a heavy person both store 100% of their weight, and even though tapping it would have the same effects for each (doubling their weight), to the uninformed observer, such as a scale at the doctor's office, the heavier person stored a larger amount of weight. It's a largely convoluted explanation, but it's what I got while I'm still tired
Skill differences probably could do the things you describe Cometary, but that treads the line towards Savant type of thinking rather than strength, so I wont go into it. Practice makes perfect should hold true even for magic.

[Yata he/him]

9 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Yeah she is. Her extreme skill/intuition makes a greater difference, but Kelsier comments on it in the first book (after their Pushing contest lesson, IIRC) and Ham comments on Vin's exceptional allomantic strength early in book two (when she spars and does that pewter-powered super-jump 7 feet straight up).

Relevant WoB:

Quote

QUESTION

We were talking about Kelsier, and how he was much more powerful than most Mistborn, and how Vin was slightly more than most Mistborn ?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Why were Vin and Kelsier more powerful?

QUESTION

I know why Kelsier, but why Vin?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Vin was not more powerful. Vin just took to it very naturally. She was highly skilled. It was very instinctive to her, but Elend was actually more powerful than she was, if you count just raw power. Vin just knew her stuff. Beyond that Vin is a rare individual that for reasons I have not explained yet, was able to draw in the mists for a little extra boost at times. And there are other characters you have seen do this.

About the Feruchemical Strenght, I will avoid to say more because we had not actual any kind of proofs.

And about the Ability to Store/Tap the same metal at the same time is one of the Question I have to do to Brandon when He came here next month (I have a theory is the Full Feruchemist's Perk but it's really dictate by the need of find a perk to them, nothing really worty)

[cometaryorbit]

Hmmm. That's interesting. Brandon does mention the mist-burning thing, though, and Sazed's last epigraph says that that's why Vin was unusually strong:

Quote

Vin was unusually talented and strong with Allomancy, even from the beginning. I believe that she must have drawn some of the mist into her when she was still a child, in those brief times when she wasn’t wearing the earring.

That WOB sure does sound like it means Vin is normal-strength, but I think Sazed-as-Harmony's epigraphs are meant to basically be "solid" statements on how the magic works.

[Oversleep]

14 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I think Sazed-as-Harmony's epigraphs are meant to basically be "solid" statements on how the magic works.

He has been wrong before, though. Like how he said that he believes that "death is always involved in the transfer of powers via Hemalurgy" and that is definitely not true.

I'll write another post tomorrow about that whole thread since it has gone ways from the original topic.

[cometaryorbit]

1 minute ago, Oversleep said:

He has been wrong before, though. Like how he said that he believes that "death is always involved in the transfer of powers via Hemalurgy" and that is definitely not true.

Eh... maybe? We know from WOB that there is theoretically a way to do Hemalurgy without killing... but we don't know what is involved. It might be complicated/a magic system hack. I think Hemalurgy in its normal, "canonical" form is indeed always fatal.

It might be like saying "Returned have to eat a Breath every week or they die". Technically not quite absolutely true... we know there's a hack to get around it... but it's true enough for most purposes.

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

11 hours ago, Oversleep said:

He has been wrong before, though. Like how he said that he believes that "death is always involved in the transfer of powers via Hemalurgy" and that is definitely not true.

I'll write another post tomorrow about that whole thread since it has gone ways from the original topic.

Sazed also doesn't necessarily mean the same thing when he says "strength" as Brandon does, or as we do. So the statements aren't necessarily contradictory.