Something that bothers me...

[Not-So-Logicalspren he/him]

I was just thinking about how A-Pewter enhances someone’s physical strength, speed etc. including balance.  This seems wrong to me.  It seems like balance should be enhanced by A-Tin which enhances all of the other senses.  I know it makes pewter a lot more useful (ie being able to sprint for 2 days straight without tripping), but it still seems to me that balance should be enhanced by tin, not pewter.

On a side note, I would have loved to see a savant Spook with a crazy sense of balance doing some crazy Assassins Creed type stuff.

[Karger he/him]

10 minutes ago, Not-So-Logicalspren said:

I was just thinking about how A-Pewter enhances someone’s physical strength, speed etc. including balance.  This seems wrong to me.  It seems like balance should be enhanced by A-Tin which enhances all of the other senses.  I know it makes pewter a lot more useful (ie being able to sprint for 2 days straight without tripping), but it still seems to me that balance should be enhanced by tin, not pewter.

On a side note, I would have loved to see a savant Spook with a crazy sense of balance doing some crazy Assassins Creed type stuff.

Enhancing your speed will produce better balance as a side effect as you can shift your body more rapidly.

[+Harrycrapper]

I think the combination of A-Tin and A-Pewter truly enhances balance, while separate they only partially enhance it. Balance is based on the coordination of the eyes, ears and the body's sense of where it's spatially located. So A-Tin covers the first two and A-Pewter the last one. I'd say they both enhance balance somewhat and together they really enhance it.

[Not-So-Logicalspren he/him]

1 minute ago, Harrycrapper said:

I think the combination of A-Tin and A-Pewter truly enhances balance, while separate they only partially enhance it. Balance is based on the coordination of the eyes, ears and the body's sense of where it's spatially located. So A-Tin covers the first two and A-Pewter the last one. I'd say they both enhance balance somewhat and together they really enhance it.

But knowing where your body is is proprioception, with specific sensory proprioceptors, which should also be enhanced by tin.

4 minutes ago, Karger said:

Enhancing your speed will produce better balance as a side effect as you can shift your body more rapidly.

This is an interesting thing that I hadn’t considered, but I’m still not sure if that could account for the drastic balance increases that we see in someone burning pewter.

[Karger he/him]

6 minutes ago, Not-So-Logicalspren said:

This is an interesting thing that I hadn’t considered, but I’m still not sure if that could account for the drastic balance increases that we see in someone burning pewter.

What drastic balance increases?

[Not-So-Logicalspren he/him]

1 minute ago, Karger said:

What drastic balance increases?

This could be a little bit skewed because most of the pewter burning scenes we have come from Vin while she was burning tin, but she often talks about the sense of balance that she gains when burning pewter and when she and Kelsier are running to the caves in TFE she remarks about how without pewter she would never be able to maintain that speed without tripping. 

Sorry, I don’t have my books in front of me, otherwise I’d be more specific.

[+Ark1002]

3 hours ago, Not-So-Logicalspren said:

This could be a little bit skewed because most of the pewter burning scenes we have come from Vin while she was burning tin, but she often talks about the sense of balance that she gains when burning pewter and when she and Kelsier are running to the caves in TFE she remarks about how without pewter she would never be able to maintain that speed without tripping. 

Sorry, I don’t have my books in front of me, otherwise I’d be more specific.

She also uses pewter to balance on small ledges, and I think a pole or two.

[dashardie]

I think it works the same way as F-Iron - as you increase your weight, you get a corresponding increase in strength so that you don't fall and crush your own body. In the case of A-pewter, while you get an increase in strength, you also get the corresponding increase in sensory feedback necessary to not injure yourself with the increased strength. As proprioception involves nerves and receptors that reside in and around muscles, I believe A-pewter enhances the feedback a user gets from them

[1stBondsmith he/him]

I lost my balance when I lost all nerve input from my ear. I had to learn to ignore the input from the good ear for balance. I lean heavily on vision and foot sensation for balance. The stronger the muscles in the foot, the easier it is to balance on them. It is not isolated from other senses, but strong muscles definitely help balance. A wife with Parkinson's issues has learned the same thing. We attend a boxing class together and strength in the large muscles definitely helps the balance of those who lose it neurologically.

A thought.

[Pathfinder]

On 8/6/2019 at 6:49 PM, Not-So-Logicalspren said:

I was just thinking about how A-Pewter enhances someone’s physical strength, speed etc. including balance.  This seems wrong to me.  It seems like balance should be enhanced by A-Tin which enhances all of the other senses.  I know it makes pewter a lot more useful (ie being able to sprint for 2 days straight without tripping), but it still seems to me that balance should be enhanced by tin, not pewter.

On a side note, I would have loved to see a savant Spook with a crazy sense of balance doing some crazy Assassins Creed type stuff.

Although not the balancing you speak of, Spook does use his savantism to "sense" and hear when and how swords are swung at him to dodge them. So you could kind of say Assassin Creed stuff like when you get surrounded, and counter everyone seemingly effortlessly. 

[Not-So-Logicalspren he/him]

On 8/8/2019 at 9:40 AM, 1stBondsmith said:

I lost my balance when I lost all nerve input from my ear. I had to learn to ignore the input from the good ear for balance. I lean heavily on vision and foot sensation for balance. The stronger the muscles in the foot, the easier it is to balance on them. It is not isolated from other senses, but strong muscles definitely help balance. A wife with Parkinson's issues has learned the same thing. We attend a boxing class together and strength in the large muscles definitely helps the balance of those who lose it neurologically.

A thought.

I did not know this, and that is super cool! Human bodies are amazing!

[cometaryorbit]

On 8/6/2019 at 6:06 PM, Not-So-Logicalspren said:

But knowing where your body is is proprioception, with specific sensory proprioceptors, which should also be enhanced by tin.

This is an interesting thing that I hadn’t considered, but I’m still not sure if that could account for the drastic balance increases that we see in someone burning pewter.

I am not sure that the balance enhancements from pewter are a proprioception thing. It's also described as improved "grace" etc (in HoA scenes when people are looking at Spook and wondering if he's really become a Thug). I figured it was an effect of improved speed and "dexterity", making little corrections to keep your balance more quickly and more precisely. This seems to be on the subconscious level though so there probably isn't any way to know short of a WOB.

[Dancer]

The real question is can you store balance in a tinmind. That will give us a more clear idea on which allomantic metal is boosting balance. 

[Bigmikey357 he/him]

I would say balance is more of a muscle memory thing. The senses obviously have something to do with that, mostly in the acquisition of those skills IMO. A-Tin boosts all the senses all at once so burning both metals would improve the performance of both of them. Spook shows us how effective that combination is.

Sometimes I wish allomancy let you use paired metals instead of the one or everything model. Like if you were an emotional misting you could burn zinc and brass, or a sensor misting could burn both copper and bronze, a speed misting burns chromium and bendalloy, ect. 

[Pathfinder]

8 hours ago, Dancer said:

The real question is can you store balance in a tinmind. That will give us a more clear idea on which allomantic metal is boosting balance. 

It is possible to store more than the standard five senses:

 

BartimaeusTrilogyFan

Can Feruchemists store more than the five ‘traditional’ senses, and does Allomantic tin enhance more than the traditional five senses?

Brandon Sanderson

More is possible.

/r/books AMA 2015 (May 17, 2015)

[Dancer]

Quote

 

  On 8/12/2019 at 4:31 PM, Dancer said:

The real question is can you store balance in a tinmind. That will give us a more clear idea on which allomantic metal is boosting balance. 

It is possible to store more than the standard five senses:

 

BartimaeusTrilogyFan

Can Feruchemists store more than the five ‘traditional’ senses, and does Allomantic tin enhance more than the traditional five senses?

Brandon Sanderson

More is possible.

/r/books AMA 2015 (May 17, 2015)

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Say could you store perfect color recognition or perfect pitch in a tinmind.

Edited August 13, 2019 by Dancer

[Quantus he/him]

On 8/11/2019 at 11:25 PM, cometaryorbit said:

I am not sure that the balance enhancements from pewter are a proprioception thing. It's also described as improved "grace" etc (in HoA scenes when people are looking at Spook and wondering if he's really become a Thug). I figured it was an effect of improved speed and "dexterity", making little corrections to keep your balance more quickly and more precisely. This seems to be on the subconscious level though so there probably isn't any way to know short of a WOB.

This is my thought as well.  The Balance enhancement is more along the lines of the getting a marksmanship bonus: Pewter grants more precise muscle control to achieve whatever your goal is.  There is a sensory aspect (internal balance, eyesight, etc) but that alone wont actually let you balance on a spearpoint or shoot a fly off somebody's ear; within the normal sensory limits the precise muscle control is the more critical thing.  In the case of a "Sense" of balance, it wouldnt surprise me at all if you could store one in Tin given that you can Store Bronze allomancy-sense, Awakener's Lifesense, and other such things, so long s the feruchemist considers it a Sense that can be increased/decreased so the proper Intent is there.