Windrunners: a bit overpowered?

[Moogle]

As mistborn are invested, I doubt you could lash them directly unless you had "much" more investiture than they did.  For a fair comparison, I think you have to assume similar levels of investiture. 

 

Mistborn have barely any Investiture, though. Scadrial is a "low-Investiture" world, according to WoB.

 

As further evidence, Mistborn do not glow or have any other environmental effects, unlike those using Breath and Stormlight.

 

Also, TLR was able to Push on Vin despite her burning metals at the time. We know that to Push Shardplate you'd need Duralumin or the Well.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Moogle

[Pathfinder]

As mistborn are invested, I doubt you could lash them directly unless you had "much" more investiture than they did.  For a fair comparison, I think you have to assume similar levels of investiture. 

Didn't Kal lash himself to a shardholder during the duel with Adolin and Renarian? He lashed himself to the shardholder so he went legs first full tilt, cracking the shardholders plate and Kal's legs.

Edited May 2, 2014 by P4thf1nd3r

[kaiadam]

Well, we have Szeth who mentions that plate hampers with his surge abilities so a windrunner isn't very likely to be wearing plate.  But if he were, you'd just aim the coins at the visor slits.

 

By higher endurance, I mean that a mistborn should be able to keep flying around as long as he has metals, whereas a windrunner's out of juice once stormlight is gone.  From my impressions, stormlight is significantly scarcer than available metals that you carry around.

 

And while default stormlight healing is very powerful, it has to take some time and/or have a limit to the amount of damage it can heal, otherwise all radiants must be functionally immortal.  I claim that a mistborn with sufficient time would be able to do enough damage to either outpace the healing speed or exhaust the available stormlight.

 

I concede that I forgot about reverse lashings, however, if all it does is give an object a large gravitational pull, a misborn burning atium would be able to see that effect in advance and be able to plot a course to slingshot the coins to the accurate location, just like Nasa did with several space probes, slingshotting them using the gravity of Jupiter to give them an even higher speed.

 

Finally, regarding the windrunner lashing himself to the mistborn - I admit that proves a worry.  The only solution I can come up with off the top of my head is to push various coins at the windrunner, resulting in either enough damage to stop the pursuit or it comes down to which is stronger, a lashing or a push.  @Pathfinder the phrasing used was that he lashed him that direction: "Kaladin jumped to put his feet towards the Shardbearer and Lashed himself that direction many times in quick succession".

 

Ultimately I guess my argument relies on the presence of Atium, which more or less grants the user invincibility and unerring accuracy, the limited availability of stormlight, and the abundance of metals.

 

Edit: So I googled that it takes around 3000 newtons of force to crack ribs, so maybe 5000 newtons to crack leg bones.  Given that Kaladin is probably around 80-100 kg, we're looking at 60 m/s^2 of acceleration using all the stormlight he could muster.

 

On the other hand, Vin/Elend were able to ironpull several tons of metal in opening the lord ruler's caches.  Even if we're just talking 1 ton of metal, they would be able to exert ~10k newtons worth of force, which is at least comparable if not straight up stronger than lashing.

Edited May 2, 2014 by kaiadam

[hoser he/him]

Mistborn have barely any Investiture, though. Scadrial is a "low-Investiture" world, according to WoB.

 

As further evidence, Mistborn do not glow or have any other environmental effects, unlike those using Breath and Stormlight.

 

Also, TLR was able to Push on Vin despite her burning metals at the time. We know that to Push Shardplate you'd need Duralumin or the Well.

Whatever.  When I assume that one or the other is "much" more invested, then it becomes like one side is invested and the other side is not, effectively a foregone conclusion and not a very interesting discussion.  

 

Didn't Kal lash himself to a shardholder during the duel with Adolin and Renarian? He lashed himself to the shardholder so he went legs first full tilt, cracking the shardholders plate and Kal's legs.

He lashed himself in the direction of an uninvested person wearing Shardplate and ignoring him. I think an invested person (with faster reflexes!) in a one on one duel might have been able to get out of the way.

 

Well, we have Szeth who mentions that plate hampers with his surge abilities so a windrunner isn't very likely to be wearing plate.

The Radiants in Dalinar's visions don't seem to have this limitation, so it is presumably based on his using an Honorblade and would not apply to the typical Windrunner. 

Edited May 2, 2014 by hoser

[Pathfinder]

Well, we have Szeth who mentions that plate hampers with his surge abilities so a windrunner isn't very likely to be wearing plate.  But if he were, you'd just aim the coins at the visor slits.

 

By higher endurance, I mean that a mistborn should be able to keep flying around as long as he has metals, whereas a windrunner's out of juice once stormlight is gone.  From my impressions, stormlight is significantly scarcer than available metals that you carry around.

 

And while default stormlight healing is very powerful, it has to take some time and/or have a limit to the amount of damage it can heal, otherwise all radiants must be functionally immortal.  I claim that a mistborn with sufficient time would be able to do enough damage to either outpace the healing speed or exhaust the available stormlight.

 

I concede that I forgot about reverse lashings, however, if all it does is give an object a large gravitational pull, a misborn burning atium would be able to see that effect in advance and be able to plot a course to slingshot the coins to the accurate location, just like Nasa did with several space probes, slingshotting them using the gravity of Jupiter to give them an even higher speed.

 

Finally, regarding the windrunner lashing himself to the mistborn - I admit that proves a worry.  The only solution I can come up with off the top of my head is to push various coins at the windrunner, resulting in either enough damage to stop the pursuit or it comes down to which is stronger, a lashing or a push.

 

Ultimately I guess my argument relies on the presence of Atium, which more or less grants the user invincibility and unerring accuracy.

 

Although yes Szeth mentions this, he refers to HIS abiltiies affecting SOMEONE ELSE'S shardplate. During Dalinar's vision, there was a knight radiant in blue shardplate that "fell" from the sky, and then "flew" off. I believe that implies that the blue shardholder was a windrunner

 

This is true, i think the knight radiant would need to finish the fight faster than the mistborn would need to.

 

From what I have seen, the only limit on the speed of healing from stormlight is how severe the wound is and how much stormlight you have. If you heal a grievous wound very fast, you drain a lot of stormlight. But with enough stormlight I feel enough situations have been shown they all wounds heal incredibly quick.

 

That would be a clever response to the gravitational pull, but not sure it would be enough to win the fight

 

 

@Hoser but the Shardplate was invested which I believe counts for this discussion. 

[PorridgeBrick he/him]

Well, we have Szeth who mentions that plate hampers with his surge abilities so a windrunner isn't very likely to be wearing plate.

By higher endurance, I mean that a mistborn should be able to keep flying around as long as he has metals, whereas a windrunner's out of juice once stormlight is gone. From my impressions, stormlight is significantly scarcer than available metals that you carry around.

And while default stormlight healing is very powerful, it has to take some time and/or have a limit to the amount of damage it can heal, otherwise all radiants must be functionally immortal. I claim that a mistborn with sufficient time would be able to do enough damage to either outpace the healing speed or exhaust the available stormlight.

I concede that I forgot about reverse lashings, however, if all it does is give an object a large gravitational pull, a misborn burning atium would be able to see that effect in advance and be able to plot a course to slingshot the coins to the accurate location, just like Nasa did with several space probes, slingshotting them using the gravity of Jupiter to give them an even higher speed.

Finally, regarding the windrunner lashing himself to the mistborn - I admit that proves a worry. The only solution I can come up with off the top of my head is to push various coins at the windrunner, resulting in either enough damage to stop the pursuit or it comes down to which is stronger, a lashing or a push.

Ultimately I guess my argument relies on the presence of Atium, which more or less grants the user invincibility and unerring accuracy.

Szeth isn't a Windrunner. We've seen visions of Radiants in the past wearing Plate and functioning just fine. And I don't think they'll run out of Stormlight anytime sooner than the Mistborn will run out of the extremely fast-burning atium, especially since each ideal seems to grant better Stormlight use and it's a very popular theory here that Plate is an artificial Stormlight battery.

And it shouldn't be too hard to just Lash themselves higher than Mistborn can reach, hover without using much Stormlight, and drop/Lash spheres at the Mistborn so they run out of atium.

Sure, you can beat stormlight healing. But that is very hard when Windrunners wear plate, can move incredibly fast (likely faster than a Steelpush), and can redirect your coins.

For reverse lashings, that wouldn't work. A Windrunner will just react to it flying for them and redirect it, and the Mistborn can only pull it back to themselves and try again since Steelpushes can only push from their center of mass.

And Lashings should beat pushes unless they're a Duralumin push. The reason Feruchemists can beat Mistborn is that they can change their weight around and resist pushes. Manipulate gravity directly, and you've got that on steroids.

Edited May 2, 2014 by PorridgeBrick

[kaiadam]

Fair point on the windrunner/plate thing.  On the other hand, any damage to plate similarly exhausts stormlight as we see Kaladin being drained in the arena with a cracked plate helm on his hand, so it's similar to healing - the idea isn't that you one shot the windrunner but wear him down enough that he's unable to use his powers anymore.  And a powerless windrunner in plate that's exhausted of stormlight is effectively a sitting duck, right?  I feel it'll just come down to a fight of attrition.

 

Why wouldn't slingshotting coins work? Remember, we're talking an Atium user against a non-user, the mistborn would be able to predict the reaction of the windrunner to the slingshot and still up with the coin on target.  If anything, it's the atium in the matchup that's overpowered as heck.

 

The way I see the fight going is that the mistborn turtles while the windrunner can be either defensive or offensive.  For the sake of discussion, I think we can agree on that normal metals will outlast stormlight which will in turn outlast atium.  So the windrunner's goal is to outlast the atium and go on the offensive against the mistborn without atium which will most likely give him the win, or to bull through and count on plate/healing to keep him up against an atium mistborn.  The latter will most likely result in a loss, and I'm not sure how you can force the mistborn to use up his atium without going on the offensive, however.  Hovering and plinking away can be defeated by something as simple as a roof, imo.

Edited May 2, 2014 by kaiadam

[Pathfinder]

Fair point on the windrunner/plate thing.  On the other hand, any damage to plate similarly exhausts stormlight as we see Kaladin being drained in the arena with a cracked plate helm on his hand, so it's similar to healing - the idea isn't that you one shot the windrunner but wear him down enough that he's unable to use his powers anymore.  And a powerless windrunner in plate that's exhausted of stormlight is effectively a sitting duck, right?  I feel it'll just come down to a fight of attrition.

 

Why wouldn't slingshotting coins work? Remember, we're talking an Atium user against a non-user, the mistborn would be able to predict the reaction of the windrunner to the slingshot and still up with the coin on target.  If anything, it's the atium in the matchup that's overpowered as heck.

Sorry to have sounded vague, I didn't mean to imply the practice wouldn't, I meant it may not be decisive enough to win the bout. 

 

Edit: the sling shotting. Sorry literally out the door, so post is a bit rushed

Edited May 2, 2014 by P4thf1nd3r

[Patrick Star]

 

The Radiants in Dalinar's visions don't seem to have this limitation, so it is presumably based on his using an Honorblade and would not apply to the typical Windrunner. 

 

No, they interfered with Kaladin's.   Remember the shardhelm boxing glove?  It repaired itself by sucking Kaladin's stormlight

[PorridgeBrick he/him]

Oh, sorry, I read your slingshotting coins bit wrong. However, remember that wherever the Radiant lashes the coins to will likely be fairly far off the path between him/her and the Mistborn. The slingshot will only be able to slightly redirect, since no one's going to waste more Stormlight than they need to and a slingshot affect needs a lot of gravitational power. And if the spot they're lashed to is farther away than the Windrunner is, there's no hope of a slingshot, since a total reversal would take even more gravitational power.

Edited May 2, 2014 by PorridgeBrick

[kaiadam]

I only dabbled in physics in college so I can't guarantee that this is correct, but in the absence of an event horizon, isn't it theoretically possible to plot a trajectory to anywhere you want in any given gravitational field, no matter how uneven/bumpy the space/time is?  It'd be like a game of mini-golf but atium's pretty amazing at working around that ...

 

I understand that you can't slingshot off of anything, I was just thinking of Kaladin's trick with the arrows -> shield, just making a massive pull on the shield right next to him makes a prime slingshot target.  But if he were to try to pull the coins off to one side, the mistborn would be able to correct for the additional gravity field and keep the coin on track.

 

Anyway, I'm just attempting to show that a mistborn vs windrunner fight isn't as one sided and cut and dried as the OP believes it to be.

[PorridgeBrick he/him]

Mistborn can only push in a straight line from their center of mass, so if it goes off course they can't correct it. They can only do that in they planned for a trajectory that would still hit despite a redirection. But the thing is, atium doesn't predict reactions to your reactions. That's how Vin beat Zane. If a Mistborn throws some wild trajectory, the Windrunner can react and redirect that. And as for the physics of it: to redirect a coin takes energy. If the energy is too little, as in a weak Reverse Lashing, the redirection won't be that much. For a slingshot, you'd need a big reversal in the coin's momentum, which means the Reverse Lashing would have to put a ton of energy into redirecting that coin. You only need to redirect it a little: why would the Windrunner waste that much?

[Chrono she/her]

I've also noticed that some Orders seem very disadvantaged in combat compared to others. But, we have to remember Jasnah's quote. For every Radiant on the field, three more were scholars, engineers, and dignitaries. Now, her statistics might be off, but the principle is very sound. You don't want just soldiers on the battlefield. You want combat engineers, combat medics, military strategists, logicians, quartermasters, what have you. Without any of those things, an army falls apart. Heck, even without scholars, the Knights Radiant could have fallen due to not understanding the weaknesses or strengths of the enemy.

 

As a plus, each supposedly non-combat oriented KR can double as one in a real crisis. Lightweavers can distract their enemies and kill them. Truthwatchers, same thing (except they can create the illusions as cover while they heal themselves or others). Edgedancers can slide around their enemy and heal allies. Elsecallers can transport supplies and such while Soulcasting the ground into water or something. Willshapers and Stonewards can manipulate the forces inside of atoms to do basically whatever they want. *Insert technically correct description of their surges here.*

 

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that not every tool fits the same situation. An army without any support besides fighters is absolutely screwed. Anyone who's played any RPG ever knows that. 

[hoser he/him]

Although ..

@Hoser but the Shardplate was invested which I believe counts for this discussion. 

Three points:

• Kaladin did not lash himself to Relis or his Shardplate.  He lashed himself in that direction.
• An invested opponent could dodge and Kaladin would miss, unless he re-lashed himself. 
• Relis being uninvested (therefor slower) and ignoring him, did not dodge, so lashing in the direction worked.

   

[Mailliw73 he/him]

When did this become a Mistborn vs. Windrunner thread?

 

I honestly see combat advantages for each and every order. Yes, some may be better fitted for other roles or less suited for combat, but I don't see any of the orders that would not make formidable warriors. The Truthwatchers are probably the least suited for combat, in my opinion, but they still could fight if they wanted or was necessary. But with Palah's attributes of learned and giving, i don't think many Truthwatchers would want to be much of fighters anyway.

[PorridgeBrick he/him]

When did this become a Mistborn vs. Windrunner thread?

 

I honestly see combat advantages for each and every order. Yes, some may be better fitted for other roles or less suited for combat, but I don't see any of the orders that would not make formidable warriors. The Truthwatchers are probably the least suited for combat, in my opinion, but they still could fight if they wanted or was necessary. But with Palah's attributes of learned and giving, i don't think many Truthwatchers would want to be much of fighters anyway.

I'd give that to Edgedancers. At least Truthwatcher's have lasers and invisibility. Edgedancer just slide around. But your last sentence applies to them too, so the point doesn't matter too much.

[DSC01 he/him]

Don't underestimate Edgedancers. They can increase friction too, which could be a tremendous advantage in a fight. They don't need to get a hand around something to wrest it from their enemies hands; they just need to lay a finger on it to get a good grip. A really big Edgedancer could just barely get his hands on an enemy and throw them around. Plus, while we only see Lift manipulating friction between herself and surfaces she is touching, it may be that Edgedancers can learn alter friction at a distance. An enemy with sure footing could suddenly find the ground as slippery as ice.

[Gabriele she/her]

Well, compared to a quasi-immortal dragon shapeshifter who lives in a flying fortress from where he can send magic laser beams at his enemies, if he doesn't prefer to badassily fight and trap them in his magic sword for eternity, Kaladin seems pretty normal to me.

Edited May 3, 2014 by Gabriele

[aenfear he/him]

Well, compared to a quasi-immortal dragon shapeshifter who lives in a flying fortress from where he can send magic laser beams at his enemies, if he doesn't prefer to badassily fight and trap them in his magic sword for eternity, Kaladin seems pretty normal to me.

 

Well, I think it's unfair to compare Kaladin to Rake. I mean, Rake is "a little" older than Kal.

[Observer]

I can't help but wonder if the Horneater's logic steps from the Knight Radiant's philosophy. For ever warrior the Rocks have on the field, they have how many at home exactly? Three?

[Aleksiel]

I can't help but wonder if the Horneater's logic steps from the Knight Radiant's philosophy. For ever warrior the Rocks have on the field, they have how many at home exactly? Three?

 

Correct. Only the fourth sons and below could be warriors according to Rock, which sort of fits Jasnah's statistics of having three non-combat Radiants for every Radiant warrior.

[Thyrllann he/him]

I'll just leave this here (from the in-world Words of Radiance)

 

“When Simol was informed of the arrival of the Edgedancers, a concealed consternation and terror, as is common in such cases, fell upon him; although they were not the most demanding of orders, their graceful, limber movements hid a deadliness that was, by this time, quite renowned; also, they were the most articulate and refined of the Radiants.”

            -Words of Radiance, ch.20 p.12

[Emphasis mine]

 

While at first glance the Edgedancers seem to not be the most combat-oriented of orders, they did seem to have a growing reputation for deadliness. Also, the fact that each order had access to Shardblades (we cannot assume that just because Dalinar can't have one, all the Bondsmiths were Shardless) would lead you to assume that all the orders could function in a military capacity.

[Levian]

Why does everybody all of a sudden think Illumination lets them shoot laser beams?  Was this ever implied anywhere? 

[Kobold King he/him]

Why does everybody all of a sudden think Illumination lets them shoot laser beams?  Was this ever implied anywhere? 

 

It has been theorized that since Lightweavers are capable of altering waveforms (light and sound), they might be capable of producing the specific wavelengths necessary for a laser beam to form.

 

As far as I know it's never been implied anywhere else, but it has become a popular theory on the forums it seems.

[Moogle]

Why does everybody all of a sudden think Illumination lets them shoot laser beams?  Was this ever implied anywhere? 

 

Teft notes that there are Radiants who could "command the sunlight".

 

 

Teft nodded. “They sure could. And make stone melt by looking at it. And move great distances in a single heartbeat. And command the sunlight. And—”