Windrunner VS Steel Inquisitor

[TheArcanist he/him]

Of course, this is assuming that the Inquisitor who's managed to World-Hop to Roshar isn't aware of the trick of using any magical fuel for any magical system. We know that

Vasher

can use Stormlight to fuel himself, and if Marsh has had nothing but the past four hundred years or so to work with Harmony and learn to master Allomany and Feruchemy, chances are he knows enough about Realmatic Theory to figure it out. The real question is- how would an Allomancer/Feruchemist use Stormlight?

[SmurfAquamarineBodies he/him]

Isn't there WoB that the mists are comparable to stormlight? If they are and the effects of using stormlight is comparable to how Vin was at the end then Marsh stomps every time. Because you know Vin casually exploded a palace. A PALACE.

[Moogle]

Isn't there WoB that the mists are comparable to stormlight? If they are and the effects of using stormlight is comparable to how Vin was at the end then Marsh stomps every time. Because you know Vin casually exploded a palace. A PALACE.

 

She also ended up vaporizing a short time later, so I'm not entirely sure you'd want to use that much Stormlight. Szeth mentions that he feels uncomfortably close to exploding at a few points.

Edited March 15, 2014 by Moogle

[Tempus]

The mists are similar to Stormlight in nature, not intensity. Vin exploded the palace with the assistance of Preservation - no other allomancer has demonstrated such allomantic power, not even lerasium Elend, or Vin at other times.

Satsuoni is corrct about compounding speed - it is in fact one of the effects I mentioned likely to trump anything a windrunner can bring to bear. Atium on it's own is basically a few seconds of godhood. In fact, I imagine electrum and mental speed would be effectively extended atium in ability.

[18th Shard he/him]

Windrunner stays away and Lashes Inquisitor UP. Bye bye Inquisitor.

[Sorin]

Don't you have to touch a person to lash them? And even then, could you lash someone as heavily invested as an inquisitor? 

[Robot Aztec]

zena beats szeth and kal beats szeth so zane = kal and steel inquitor > zane so steel inquitor > kal

[Moogle]

Don't you have to touch a person to lash them? And even then, could you lash someone as heavily invested as an inquisitor? 

 

Inquisitors are not very heavily Invested. Scadrial is a low-Investiture world (hence why no one glows or sparkles or makes colors more pretty). You'd have a harder time pulling on their spikes, and they likely have their personalities altered by the amounts of Investiture they get from the spikes (WoB is that any Investiture no matter how small changes your personality over time) as well as some other minor benefits (increased lifespan), but overall they should have little to no protection from Lashing.

[Acecool]

Just my quick take. The windrunner should take a majority if the inquistor does not have access to feruchemical enhanced speed. They just have to lash various objects in the direction of the inquisitor multiple times and those should pretty much turn them into bloody pulps.

 

However if they do have access to speed, it is possible the inquisitor could do a speed blitz. The way I read it, there is no upper limit to how fast a feruchemist can draw from a metalmine. It was just proportionate increase depending on how fast they drew it out. Most feruchemist didn't draw excessive amounts out because if they are in extended conflict, they would be powerless. This means the inqusitor could move at lightning speeds for a short amount of time and since they only have one opponent, there would be no need to hold anything back.

 

Just my take.

[Pathfinder]

This is going to be an unpopular opinion but here it is anyway. My problem with these vs bouts tends to be the rules are loose and easy. For magic systems like Brandon's where rules make up 90 percent of how it works, for any bout there should be hard and fast limits. If you want to judge which will win, an inquisator or a windrunner, you need to place them on as equal footing as possible. If an inquistor has atium, a windrunner should have a balancing analogue on his side. Ok, so better illustration, you referenced what Kal can do at his second ideal or so, but you also referenced Marsh when he was under Ruin's influence. So you are pitting a "teen" knights radiant, vs an inquisitor with a god backing him or her. Not very balanced. In my opinion from a scientific stand point, to adequately do a vs, if you give this nameless inquisitor  ALL the allomantic metals, coupled with compounding, then you should theoretically provide the nameless windrunner ALL of the windrunners abilities/resources, which include shardplate,

 

a morphing spren blade that can be any weapon/shield in a moments notice,

 

and a stormlight reservoir in comparison to the amount of allomantic resevoir you are providing the inquisitor. Keep in mind I said resevoir, not metal. This means the same amount of allomantic energy the inquisitor can access from compounding, should be analogous for the windrunner. THEN you could compare abilities and how they are used. Can the windrunner move as fast as an inquisitor utilizing the same amount of resources? Can the regenenative abilities of a windrunner withstand a hit from a compounded pewter punch, assuming the same amount of resources of a compounder with gold? In other words does stormlight heal as FAST as gold compounding with the same amount of resources? And so on. I guess what I am driving at, is in order to compare, you need controls in which to compare TO. If everything is variable, it becomes almost impossible to come to any clear conclusion at all. 

Edited May 15, 2014 by P4thf1nd3r

[Swimmingly he/him]

If we're talking pure Investiture, the Inquisitor's gonna win. Scadrian magic, at the base level, anyway, is ridiculously efficient. No glowing, no leaking wisps of energy, no sentient morphing weapons, just pure energy passed from Shard to user in a weaponized form. It's only when you start Compounding and doing ridiculous things with Hemalurgy that things get crazy, and even then, it's crazy-efficient, just with more energy pouring in. Compare Nalthis to Roshar, for instance. Totally different power levels, and the only way to introduce new Investiture into the system is through human birth on Nalthis. Roshar? Giant storm sweeps through every week and stuffs every gem, Surgebinder and Almighty knows what else full of Stormlight. Totally different metrics.

[TheArcanist he/him]

I would agree, except there's a difference between placing them on equal footing, and giving them equivalent equipment. As Roshar is a world with much higher levels of Investiture than Scadrial, then the same amount of equipment on a Knight Radiant is much more powerful than an equivalent amount of support behind an Inquisitor.

 

Also, the other thing we've got to realize is that a Surgebinger would have little-to-no chance of actually understanding how or why an Inquisitor is capable of doing what it does. We have the benefit of understanding most of the magic systems very well, and so we know what an Inquisitor's weaknesses are, but a Surgebinder would have no idea about these.

 

More importantly, if an Inquisitor has managed to world hop to Roshar, then there's one of two options for fuel for their magic. The first is the simplest, metal. The second is more interesting. If an Inquisitor on Roshar has figured out how to jury-rig Allomancy, then they've got nothing stopping them from using Stormlight like the Mists, as there's no influence of Preservation to stop Stormlight coming to them.

[Pathfinder]

I would agree, except there's a difference between placing them on equal footing, and giving them equivalent equipment. As Roshar is a world with much higher levels of Investiture than Scadrial, then the same amount of equipment on a Knight Radiant is much more powerful than an equivalent amount of support behind an Inquisitor.

 

Also, the other thing we've got to realize is that a Surgebinger would have little-to-no chance of actually understanding how or why an Inquisitor is capable of doing what it does. We have the benefit of understanding most of the magic systems very well, and so we know what an Inquisitor's weaknesses are, but a Surgebinder would have no idea about these.

 

More importantly, if an Inquisitor has managed to world hop to Roshar, then there's one of two options for fuel for their magic. The first is the simplest, metal. The second is more interesting. If an Inquisitor on Roshar has figured out how to jury-rig Allomancy, then they've got nothing stopping them from using Stormlight like the Mists, as there's no influence of Preservation to stop Stormlight coming to them.

See that is where I differ on a lot of these bouts. A lot of your points are from a narrative perspective. If those on this thread would like to do this bout from that perspective, I can respect that. Another poster has been doing vs matches in that light and has been doing an awesome job. But if this bout is to determine who would win in a fight, as posited at the beginning of those post, that its a generic inquisitor vs a generic windrunner, who have to kill each other, no rhyme or reason to it, then knowledge of abilities and how they get them have to be analogous as well. Either the windrunner has to know the full extent of the inquisitors abiltiies and visa versa, or neither can have any knowledge of how each others abiltiies function and how many abilties each other has. In addition the environment should not provide any clear advantage to either side. So it shouldn't be placed in a city with an overwhelming amount of metal, nor should it be in a location bereft of ANY metal. Also if the location is shard neutral, there need not be any conjecture on how anyone got where they are, nor how they jury rigged their system to work there, or even how efficient their system works when jury rigged. Otherwise you come into the problem of, if an inquisitor jury rigged his allomancy to work on Roshar, if according to Brandon it is very difficult, does that mean his compounding will work as well? Or would all his abilities have a handicap as result? We just don't know much about jury rigging yet, except that it is "difficult". 

[TheArcanist he/him]

I imagine Feruchemically invested Allomantic metals would still burn normally. So Compounding would still function the same. Considering Hoid is walking around doing his "is where he needs to be" trick due to Feruchemy of some kind, I suspect the Metallic Arts probably still function just fine so long as Allomantic metal purity ratios remain constant.

 

Now, the thing about Inquisitors is they really don't care about what abilities their opponents have- they will fight regardless of whatever magical abilities their opponents have, though they are capable of of strategically retreating, and when not directly controlled by Ruin they seem to have their own free will. They're also homicidal psychopaths- I don't think they're even capable of feeling fear. I think you assumed that the Inquisitor would have some knowledge of what a Surgebinder can do. My point is, I don't think they'd care.

[Pathfinder]

I imagine Feruchemically invested Allomantic metals would still burn normally. So Compounding would still function the same. Considering Hoid is walking around doing his "is where he needs to be" trick due to Feruchemy of some kind, I suspect the Metallic Arts probably still function just fine so long as Allomantic metal purity ratios remain constant.

 

Now, the thing about Inquisitors is they really don't care about what abilities their opponents have- they will fight regardless of whatever magical abilities their opponents have, though they are capable of of strategically retreating, and when not directly controlled by Ruin they seem to have their own free will. They're also homicidal psychopaths- I don't think they're even capable of feeling fear. I think you assumed that the Inquisitor would have some knowledge of what a Surgebinder can do. My point is, I don't think they'd care.

 

See that's the problem in my opinion. You imagine, you don't KNOW. You assume it will work normally, so by extension then state so will compounding. Hoid has been shown on numerous occasions to be the exception to the rule given his nature/origin. Applying what he can do to other individuals in the cosmere doesn't fit. You also assume what he does is primarily attributed to feruchemy instead of any of the other countless sources, and through that assumption state that allomancy will work fine. That completely neglects the centuries he has been alive, the knowledge he has about worldhopping, the power sources he has access to, and the means he has to employ them. To assume a inquisitor automatically has ALL of that, when we don't know exactly what THAT is, is conjecture. 

 

Another assumption. Marsh operated just fine when Ruin wasn't poking around in his head. Knowledge of another power system means adequately employing your own skills to counter it. If one knows more than the other, it is unbalanced.

 

Feel free to reply, I don't want you to feel I am closing this topic of discussion so I get the last word, but I don't want my own thoughts to derail this thread. Everyone seems to be having a fine time arguing the premise as is, so I don't want to be a spoil sport 

Edited May 15, 2014 by P4thf1nd3r

[TheArcanist he/him]

There's a few WOBs that I can't find at the moment that shows that Hoid's ability to heal and his ability to be in the right place at the right time are due to Feruchemy. More importantly, Hoid dumps a powder in his glass in WoR while talking to Shallan that has been implied, also by WoB, to be an Allomantic metal. Considering the situation, it was probably either Zinc or Brass.

 

Also, for the Inquisitor to function properly on Roshar, they'd need to know about, at the very least, world hopping. Knowledge of jury-rigging would probably be a little bit of a leap, but that shouldn't be a problem considering the above. Unless, of course, there's some Yolish form of Allomancy we know nothing about.

 

Marsh is an exception in more ways than one. He had enough willpower to resist Ruin's influence, and therefore whatever personality twisting influences the rest of the Inquisitors, as they seem extremely, well, psychotic and severely unstable. I didn't intend to imply that the Inquisitor would understand more about Surgebinding than the Windrunner would about Allomancy, I just wished to make the point the Inquisitor just wouldn't care.

[MistLord he/him]

I'd imagine they'd be pretty matched. Lashings can only do so much, and the the pure flexibility of Allomancy is hard to be discounted - and paired with Feruchemy... Undeniably strong. 

 

Pewter essentially grants the same supernatural grace that holding stormlight grants, without any healing abilities but with enhanced strength.

Steel/Iron might be negated if the Windrunner knows about the Inquisitor's Allomantic Pulls and Pushes. In an urban setting, it would be easy to fly around using steel and iron however.

Tin will allow the inquisitor to hide and keep track of a big ball of glowing Windrunner if he ever needed a retreat.

Zinc and Brass would be good for psychological warfare.

 

Let's not even get started with Duralumin. Atium would just make it unfair. 

 

To be honest, I'm not sure why people call Windrunners overpowered or anything the like. They're fairly matched Mistborn, and weaker than a Fullborn by a long shot. 

[TheArcanist he/him]

But this is assuming that a Rosharan Windrunner has the same basic Investiture of a Scadrian Metalborn. They do not. Scadrial is a low-Investiture world which, for all its lack of magical resources, still manages to supply a very precise, efficient, and powerful set of arts. Roshar possesses much higher levels of Investiture.

 

Just holding in Stormlight creates passive healing equivalent to compounding Gold, and enables the Surgebinder to survive falls no normal human could, and act with grace, strength, and sensory precision equivalent to burning Pewter and Tin at the same time. In comparison, it required just one Basic Lashing to toss a man into the air or reorient him on the ceiling. So in regards to that, you could argue it's no stronger than a Steelpush, except that the Gravitation Surge is only limited by how much Stormlight you can hold and how much you're willing to expend on a single object. I believe Sanderson confirmed that ancient Windrunners with sufficient heating fabrials were actually able to travel to some of Roshar's moons. The only power limits Surgebinding really has is what's safe for a human to retain, and how much they Stormlight they have access to, which in a Highstorm- a common occurrence on Roshar -is effectively limitless.

 

So, if we were to pit, say, Marsh as he was at the end of HoA- with all upwards of twenty spikes -against Kaladin having spoken the Second Ideal, we'd have old Ironeyes put up against everything I just described above. The obvious next thing to do would be to figure out exactly what spikes Marsh has.

[Two McMillion he/him]

One weakness I see for the Windrunner here is that KR need to keep holding to their ideals. But that's something the Inquisitor can exploit- they can manipulate the Windrunner's emotions, which, in a prolonged engagement, a clever Inquisitor could potentially use to weaken the Windrunner's oaths.

 

The Inquisitor has something else they can use- cadmium. The Windrunner can't touch them inside the cadmium bubble, yet every time they use it they get a few minutes breathing time while the Windrunner's precious stormlight is used up. I see this as something else open to a creative Inquisitor.

 

The Windrunner's biggest advantage is certainly the blade, but it seems to me that time bubble might be a fairly effective shield against that.

[Swimmingly he/him]

I think you mean Bendalloy, Two? I don't see how cadmium would be helpful in a one-on-one fight. Unless the Inquisitor trapped the Windrunner in there with them, kept them there for fifty years or so outside time, then let them out and told them that every one they ever knew was dead or dying, and that the protracted duel in an oddly confined space had just been a distraction. Then spiked away their Nahel bond while the Windrunner wasn't looking, and told them that their spren was the Inquisitor's now. The Inquisitor would then take the harmless, grief-struck human and screaming, metalbound spren to see the graves of their close friends, supplying the requisite corpses while necessary while the former Windrunner screamed and wept from their bonds. On every level, at this point, the Windrunner would be defeated. The inquisitor could add insult to injury by spiking away their memories and installing them for viewing pleasure.

[SmurfAquamarineBodies he/him]

Then turn the ex-Windrunner into a Koloss and force it to go rampaging through small towns using it's old friend to kill innocents in their thousands. If it's possible they could then, just before the Koloss died, re-Awaken them and tell them about the lives they took. Then kill them.

[TheArcanist he/him]

Swimingly, you're a scary, scary guy.

 

In any case, we should determine exactly what kind of spikes Marsh has if we're going to pit him against, say, Kaladin at the Second Ideal. We know Marsh by the end of Hero of Ages had upwards of twenty spikes implanted in various parts of his body, but we don't know what the majority of those spikes did other than a rough outline of the basic nine for the Inquisitors. This is what we know.

 

- Eye Spikes: One of these is Allomantic Steel, the other Allomantic Iron. The Inquisitor, needing to see, quickly become a Savant in both.

 

- Sternum: A Steel spike doubling the base strength in Allomantic Steel.

 

- Linchpin Spike: This is unconfirmed as far as I know, but the most logical place I could find for the Pewter spike that granted the Inquisitors Feruchemical Gold healing.

 

- Rib Spikes: Four Bronze Spikes, one Iron Spike. The Bronze Spikes granted Allomantic Brass, Allomantic Zinc, Allomantic Copper, and a second dosage of Allomantic Bronze. The Iron Spike probably granted Allomantic Pewter, because what would an Inquisitor need with Tin? Maybe they changed it up, Inquisitor to Inquisitor, I don't know.

 

Now, we also know Marsh is compounding atium like Rashek was, so I can assume that at least two of his other eleven Spikes are atium armbands like Rashek's. What we need to determine are what other powers Marsh had gained in his servitude to Ruin, both Allomantic and Feruchemical, because there's another nine spikes I can't account for.

[Cstryon he/him]

So how many spikes did Marsh have total? We don't have a for sure answer on that do we? Also, what has he collected after HoA that we don't know about.

I like what you listed Arcanist. And I fully agree with the linch pin being Feruchemical gold... Maybe that's just standard to keep inquisitors alive?

Can spikes only hold one power? My question bwing, if I had a sufficient enough sized spike, would I be able to steal all four physical allomancy powers?

Sorry kind of a tangent, but if spikes did one power only, than we could try to figure based on everything we've seen Ironeyes do, and that the coppermind says he has upwards of 20 spikes, we'd know what powers he has.

We can be sure he's basically mistborn, we know he can Feruchemical gold heal (maybe even compound but I doubt that, he seemed to still feel pain, and didn't heal as fast as miles) and we know he can compound age.

So just to get those powers... How many spikes do we need?

[TheArcanist he/him]

Well, from my count above, Marsh needed eleven spikes to gain the desired Allomantic and Feruchemical powers of your average Inquisitor. The basic nine, and then two arm bands like Rashek's to be able to burn atium and compound it. What we need to do is find out what metals the Inquisitors didn't need. I'm fairly certain they didn't use Tin, Gold, or Electrum. They knew about Aluminum, but I doubt they'd waste a perfectly good Mistborn to gain it. They found out about Duralumin thanks to Vin, but I don't know how they found any Duralumin Gnats to kill.

 

Also, we know for certain that no one knew about Chromium and Nicrosil, because the Scadrians only found out about it after Sazed tipped Spook off after the Final Ascension, and Cadmium and Bendalloy weren't part of the typical Allomantic table until after the Final Ascension, when they replaced Atium and Malatium.

 

Now, all we need to do is go back through Hero of Ages and see what powers Marsh used.

 

EDIT: I know with great confidence, according to his combat abilities in Hero of Ages, that Marsh at least has Feruchemical Steel and Duralumin (somehow).

Edited May 16, 2014 by TheArcanist

[Moogle]

I think you mean Bendalloy, Two?

 

Not to speak for him, but he probably meant bendalloy and cadmium. Cadmium creates a much larger bubble than bendalloy, so you could get the Windrunner stuck in the space outside your bendalloy bubble but inside the cadmium bubble and then let their Stormlight run out. I doubt it'd be that effective, but it could work.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Moogle