Fun ways of countering epic's weaknesses

[Lord Bookwyrm he/him]

Could we use stuff from other serieses to kill epics? For example, if you were a lightweaver, you could make an illusion of dogs in front of conflux to exploit his weakness or use your lightweaving to manipulate uv light rather than visible light to make nightwielder solid. Similarly, you could soothe someone's fear while someone is burning nicrosil while touching you while they're trying to kill steelheart. Since they aren't afraid of him, they can kill him.You could riot prof's sense of failure. A seer (atium misting) could burn atium to counter fortuity's power, making  his power useless, making him become a normal human with heightened dexterity and totally killable.

[Sheridan_rd]

Yup, having investitures would definitely help kill Epics.

But learning there weakness is still 90% of the plan.

Besides, the Reckoners would think you were an Epic too, if you Light weave, Riot, etc.  Sadly!

[Lord Bookwyrm he/him]

Good point

[StrikerEZ he/him]

Also, while it would work by using Cosmere-based powers to fight Epics, the Reckoners isn't Cosmere, so no one would ever be able to actually test it in-world.

[TheKittyOfAtlantis]

I'm not familiar with all of the Cosmere magics under discussion, but there are probably Epics with powers that have similar effects in the Reckoners 'verse. There are definitely illusionist Epics who could create the image of a dog... although I wonder. Would the illusion of a dog provoking Edmund's fear of them be enough to activate his weakness, or would Edmund's powers/Calamity/whatever be able to tell that it's not a real dog? For that matter, if a dog was near Edmund but he was not aware of its presence, would it affect his powers? I don't think this was explored in the books. Since it's based on fear, you would think that the Epic's perception and emotional response would be what matters, but then wouldn't Epics' powers be affected just by imagining their weaknesses?

Anyway! We don't see any in canon, but it's easy to imagine that there could be mind-manipulating Epics who could suppress a person's fear and enable them to harm Steelheart, or force Prof to think about his past failures. An Epic with precognition or danger sense could potentially be countered by another Epic with a similar power. 

Of course, as Sheridan_rd pointed out, most of these ideas would still require the attacking Epic to know their target's weakness. Unless you have some special technique like a checkmate that reliably works against all Epics with a certain type of power, or you can find a loophole in how their powers work, identifying their weakness is pretty much always going to be the most important step in defeating an Epic of any appreciable power.