Why Are Allomancers So Rare?

[Savanorn he/him]

So a thought comes to me post Mistborn reread.

Why are allomancers so rare? 

Sure in the era of TFE the known abundance of allomancers was limited by knowledge, as well as socioeconomic factors such as nobles generally having fewer children. 

But by HoA it is identified that around 16 percent of skaa are mistings (more, as it is implied that Preservation didn't reveal mistings that were irrelevant). 

Furthermore it would seem that an allomancer does not need to be born to parents who are allomancers, although that likely enhancers their likelihood of inheriting allomancy. 

Fast forward to AoL and more and it seems that all the allomancers don't seem as common as they ought to be. Especially with a reduced class divide.

Edited October 15, 2016 by Savanorn
Minor clarification

[Yata he/him]

You have to remember that the 1/16 was there because the Mist Super-Snapped people with too little change to Snap by yourself (in the end they are just a bit above the Threeshold thanks to the Mist) but this probably ended with Harmony's Ascension.

He has no more need of an Allomancer Army. This mean that you have to take the Survivors (where statistically just the 7% were allomancers) and see how their offspring will recive the chance to be Allomancers.

You have also to add the inferference of Feruchemy's gene that doesn't work very well with Allomancy's genes.....and you have a new limitating factor

[Spoolofwhool]

Allomancy isn't that uncommon as AoL might portray. Here's a WoB on the matter.

Quote

KAYMYTH

Question about ratios of mistings/ferrings in a population.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Straight WoB: the numbers in the AoL MAG supplement are off. (It states the occurrence of Mistings/Ferrings is 1 in 50 people.) He said that they're not terrible, but they definitely are shown as somewhat more common than they really are. But he also said that they're not nearly as rare as people seem to think; for example, he stated that virtually everyone would know at least oneCoinshot. So there are definitely a lot of Allomancers around. And the occurrence of Twinborn would not be a normal statistical spread (alas). As folks opined before in this thread, the Terris folk do tend to keep somewhat to themselves, so there's not a huge amount of population mix. So Twinborn will be rarer. I did point out that there had to be some mix, else we'd be seeing full Feruchemists around, and to that he mostly just smiled and looked mysterious. As he does. And then he proceeded to trounce me in a game of Magic

 

Edited October 15, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[Savanorn he/him]

5 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Allomancy isn't that uncommon as AoL might portray. Here's a WoB on the matter.

 

Ah neat. That makes more sense.

 

11 hours ago, Yata said:

You have to remember that the 1/16 was there because the Mist Super-Snapped people with too little change to Snap by yourself (in the end they are just a bit above the Threeshold thanks to the Mist) but this probably ended with Harmony's Ascension.

He has no more need of an Allomancer Army. This mean that you have to take the Survivors (where statistically just the 7% were allomancers) and see how their offspring will recive the chance to be Allomancers.

You have also to add the inferference of Feruchemy's gene that doesn't work very well with Allomancy's genes.....and you have a new limitating factor

Hmm. I thought at least a part of this would be counteracted by Harmony making Snapping easier. There's really two aspects to detecting an allomancer; they need to have the genes, but they need to be snapped. 

Wait, 7%? How did you get that figure?

[Eki]

16 minutes ago, Savanorn said:

Wait, 7%? How did you get that figure?

I think Yata meant 1/16, but that's closer to 6%. However, the Mists force snapped 16%, not 1/16.

[cometaryorbit]

Yeah I think a lot of this comes down to a "threshold" of actually being an Allomancer. Apparently everybody on Scadrial has "the seeds of the Metallic Arts" but until Lerasium got introduced into the population, Allomancy was very rare - possibly limited to Mist-Snapping around the time the Well filled (was Alendi Mist-Snapped?)

During the FE the Allomantic strength inherited from Lerasium burners led to Mistborn, but the Inquisitors limited the genes' spread.

By Era 2 the genes are distributed broadly, but the strength has decreased... especially as most of the Allomancers died in the Catacendre.

48 minutes ago, Savanorn said:

Hmm. I thought at least a part of this would be counteracted by Harmony making Snapping easier. There's really two aspects to detecting an allomancer; they need to have the genes, but they need to be snapped.

Well, in terms of their actually being noticed, three factors - genes, Snapping, and then them actually being exposed to their metal. Mistings outside the eight 'basic' metals (and Atium & possibly Gold in the Ministry only) would never have been noticed in the FE era. And some Skaa mistings with subtler powers like Tin or Copper, limited to just picking up trace metals, might have Snapped and never been noticed, if they were far from the Ministry's Seekers or were Smokers. (though Spook's being a Tineye got noticed...)

[Yata he/him]

@Savanorn as @Eki said I extrated the 7% from 1/16....But indeed I was wrong, fraction is 16% (1% for every Metal the Mist chose to snap). I am sorry for the confusion

This take the "Allomancer popolation" among the Originators to quite 10% (1/3 of the Originators was Terrismen)

EDIT: as Savanorn reported later, the Terrismen was 1/5 of the Originators not 1/3

Edited October 16, 2016 by Yata

[Savanorn he/him]

7 minutes ago, Yata said:

@Savanorn as @Eki said I extrated the 7% from 1/16....But indeed I was wrong, fraction is 16% (1% for every Metal the Mist chose to snap). I am sorry for the confusion

This take the "Allomancer popolation" among the Originators to quite 10% (1/3 of the Originator was Terrismen)

 

Ah no problems yata.

I thought it was 1/5?

[Yata he/him]

On 16/10/2016 at 9:49 AM, Savanorn said:

I thought it was 1/5?

And you have right...this isn't really a good day to me.

This means that 12,8% of them were Statistically allomancers but to be honest I think is less than this theoryc number, many of them were used to fight and died (almost all the seers for example)

Edited November 4, 2016 by Yata

[Kaymyth she/her]

On 10/15/2016 at 10:23 AM, Spoolofwhool said:

Allomancy isn't that uncommon as AoL might portray. Here's a WoB on the matter.

 

I have to confess, I always get inordinately tickled when one of the rare WoBs I've managed to gather gets referenced. 

[Spoolofwhool]

6 minutes ago, Kaymyth said:

I have to confess, I always get inordinately tickled when one of the rare WoBs I've managed to gather gets referenced. 

When you're new to the shard and find Theoryland with all its WoBs... well, reading makes afternoons seem shorter.

[Kaymyth she/her]

2 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

When you're new to the shard and find Theoryland with all its WoBs... well, reading makes afternoons seem shorter.

Heh.  I remember those days.  So young...so innocent...so many questions to read...

Then you get through them all and you realize that you have many theories, but no more evidence to scrape together, and the wait between books seems to stretch out into eternity.

[goody153]

On 10/15/2016 at 11:23 PM, Spoolofwhool said:

Allomancy isn't that uncommon as AoL might portray. Here's a WoB on the matter.

 

Quote

Straight WoB: the numbers in the AoL MAG supplement are off. (It states the occurrence of Mistings/Ferrings is 1 in 50 people.) He said that they're not terrible, but they definitely are shown as somewhat more common than they really are. But he also said that they're not nearly as rare as people seem to think; for example, he stated that virtually everyone would know at least oneCoinshot. 

They're actually not rare, saying that everybody knows at least 1 coinshot would be like everybody knows at least 1 person who is physically attractive enough to enter modelling agencies. 

[Spoolofwhool]

8 hours ago, goody153 said:

They're actually not rare, saying that everybody knows at least 1 coinshot would be like everybody knows at least 1 person who is physically attractive enough to enter modelling agencies. 

Yes, that is what I said. Oh, are you replying to the topic with the exact same answer I posted?

[Revan Kholin he/him]

You have to realise that Allomancy back in TFE mostly came from inheritance, but because theres preservation in the people of Scadrial there is still a chance without inheritance but the way Brandon explains this makes it look like there's less than it actually is. In the AoL tho its even more as its evident that theres a lot of coin shots, however twinborn is not since you need both allomantic and feruchemical genes which usually don't work out together. 

[goody153]

16 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Yes, that is what I said. Oh, are you replying to the topic with the exact same answer I posted?

I was actually quoting you.(since it was the first time i've read that WoB you posted) Wait did i mistaken and not quote you ? 

[Spoolofwhool]

6 hours ago, goody153 said:

I was actually quoting you.(since it was the first time i've read that WoB you posted) Wait did i mistaken and not quote you ? 

You quoted me, but I'm just curious why you're just repeating what I said.

[goody153]

3 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

You quoted me, but I'm just curious why you're just repeating what I said.

I'm repeating the WoB but added a comparison to it (the every person knows 1 model ) i also forgot to add an opinion about if specifically every person knows a coinshot specifically not just any allomancer that would mean allomancers in general must be really common if everybody knows a single 1 of the specific 18 mistings.

It's more like to agree to your point but tbh i would've just quoted your WoB but this forum for reason can't quote nested-quotes(quote within the quote) from other people(i don't know why every damnation forum allows this except here) so i just ended typing it instead.

Edited November 6, 2016 by goody153

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, goody153 said:

5 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

You quoted me, but I'm just curious why you're just repeating what I said.

I'm repeating the WoB but added a comparison to it (the every person knows 1 model ) i also forgot to add an opinion about if specifically every person knows a coinshot specifically not just any allomancer that would mean allomancers in general must be really common if everybody knows a single 1 of the specific 18 mistings.

It's more like to agree to your point but tbh i would've just quoted your WoB but this forum for reason can't quote nested-quotes(quote within the quote) from other people(i don't know why every damnation forum allows this except here) so i just ended typing it instead.

Fair enough. Yeah, that's a curious thing that everyone knows at least one coinshot. I'm guessing though that because coinshot is probably, at this time period, the most useful and obvious when used power, coinshots in general are a more common occurrence than other mistings. As such, overall they might not be that common as the public knowledge distribution isn't uniform, but definitely, chances are that every person knows at least 2-3 mistings including a coinshot.

 

[Kaymyth she/her]

On 11/6/2016 at 11:49 AM, goody153 said:

I'm repeating the WoB but added a comparison to it (the every person knows 1 model ) i also forgot to add an opinion about if specifically every person knows a coinshot specifically not just any allomancer that would mean allomancers in general must be really common if everybody knows a single 1 of the specific 18 mistings.

It's more like to agree to your point but tbh i would've just quoted your WoB but this forum for reason can't quote nested-quotes(quote within the quote) from other people(i don't know why every damnation forum allows this except here) so i just ended typing it instead.

There are also hints in the books that some powers are more common than others.  It's flat-out stated at one point that Steelrunners are rare, the implication being that other types of Ferrings occur more often.  This may well also extend to Allomancy, which could mean that there is a disproportionately high number of Coinshots compared to certain other types of Allomancer.

Granted, this is mostly conjecture, but it is a definite possibility.

[JUQ he/him]

Now, I had an idea about this. Harmony made Spook Mistborn. This implies that he can give people Metallic Arts, and, by extension, take them away. Now, if you were Harmony, would you really want some uber-powerful person messing up your careful system? Remember, even some of Harmony's followers, such as Wax, aren't entirely controllable. Now what if someone else became Mistborn or Ferborn? I'm guessing that Harmony either makes people who are born Mistborn into Mistings instead, or prevents people from being Mistborn (likewise with Ferborn and Ferrings).

However, that raises an interesting point. Brandon said that the second trilogy will be about a SWAT team that takes down a Mistborn. Does this mean that Harmony will get completely 'distracted' by the end of The Lost Metal?

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, JUQ said:

Now, I had an idea about this. Harmony made Spook Mistborn. This implies that he can give people Metallic Arts, and, by extension, take them away. Now, if you were Harmony, would you really want some uber-powerful person messing up your careful system? Remember, even some of Harmony's followers, such as Wax, aren't entirely controllable. Now what if someone else became Mistborn or Ferborn? I'm guessing that Harmony either makes people who are born Mistborn into Mistings instead, or prevents people from being Mistborn (likewise with Ferborn and Ferrings).

However, that raises an interesting point. Brandon said that the second trilogy will be about a SWAT team that takes down a Mistborn. Does this mean that Harmony will get completely 'distracted' by the end of The Lost Metal?

Yes, the power of shards can be used to directly change someone's spiritweb, like Harmony making Spook a mistborn, Rashek turning himself into a mistborn with the WoA or lerasium changing Elend. I don't think Harmony would deliberately interfere with the powers like that. He's stated already that he has a non-interference policy, and doing something like that would definitely violate how the society would be evolving. In any case, we already know why mistborns and full feruchemists are not being born; their powers are interfering with each other and weaking in general with bloodline, leading to only the birth of mistings and ferrings. 

Chances are that in Era 3, the mistborn antagonist will be born from a plan to consolidate allomantic bloodlines, or through hemalurgy, in which case it's not a real mistborn and Brandon is just messing with us. That, or some other method of turning someone into a mistborn. I think it can be safe to say though that by that point, naturally, without any eugenics, no mistborns would be born since the gene would be too dispersed.