cometaryorbit

Yeah, it's definitely still worth reading. There's way more to the ending. And it's a great book. (I had been partially spoiled on one part of HoA beforehand but it took me in a *completely wrong direction* in speculating so I was just as surprised as if I hadn't been.)

I wouldn't be surprised if a Bondsmith could potentially create Splinters with the right "starting material", kind of like how Nightblood is basically a Splinter made out of Breaths, but the problem IMO is that Rosharan Lights... evaporate. Even if not used they don't stay around forever. I think you'd need a more persistent form of Investiture, like Breaths, to make a Splinter. Maybe they could do it in the right spot on the Cognitive Realm, like in a place where spren are born, though? But even then they might be relying on the "natural" process there... I still don't think that a Bondsmith could create a new type of Splinters (like Honor making the Honorblades or Endowment making Divine Breath) with Rosharan magic alone. New individual spren of a known type, maybe possible under the right circumstances, but we don't know the process enough to say. I'm not sure if they can manipulate Identity and Intent enough to make a Splinter anyway, though. Awakening has a lot of Intent and Command built into it. I am not sure (Radiant-style) Surgebinding is as flexible that way, and creating a new Identity may be a bit beyond their powers, which are really focused on Connection.

Ok, this all got started when I looked at Vin's coppermind page and noticed that it said " Born: 1005 FE Died: 1025 FE". I thought "hmm, wasn't Vin supposed to be 21 when she died? This doesn't look right" That rapidly opened a gigantic can of worms. I looked at the reference for her death year, but it just pointed to the HoA chapter where she dies. Doesn't say where 1025 comes from. So I started to try to work it out myself. FE Calendar: Assumption 1 We know the Well takes 1024 years to refill. It fully refills near the end of WoA, so this must be 1024 years after TLR's Ascension. The new Final Empire map is dated 1021, and it still calls the nation "the Final Empire" and still has Tremredare as a Dominance capital. So this is a pre TLR death map, which supports the FE Calendar beginning with TLR's Ascension if 1021 is around the time of book 1. If Year 1 of the FE Calendar began exactly 1024 years before the Well refills, then WoA ends at the beginning of Year 1025. Working forwards from that, "one year has passed" between end of WoA and beginning of HoA. So HoA should start early in 1026. The book covers about a year, so Vin's death should be either very late in 1026 or early in 1027. Working backwards from that, "one year has passed" between TFE and WoA, and each book covers about a year*. So WoA begins early in 1024, and then TFE ends early in 1023 probably. TFE covers more than a year, so it probably begins in 1021 and the new map is as of the beginning of the book. That's consistent, so this might actually be correct. 1021 (middle to late?): TFE begins. Vin is recruited from Camon's crew by Kelsier. 1022: Most of TFE's events 1023 (very early?): End of TFE - Vin kills TLR, Elend is declared king. 1024: Most of the events of WoA. The Siege of Luthadel. 1025 (very beginning): The very end of WoA - Ruin escapes the Well. 1026: most if not all of the events of HoA 1026 (very end) or 1027 (early): the very end of HoA. Vin and Ati die, Sazed Ascends. One Slight Problem Vin's age. Vin is 21 when she dies, but according to the WoA annotations 18 when she marries Elend. But not much time passes between the wedding and the end of WoA - just their short journey outside Luthadel, Vin's high-speed return, the final battle, and Vin going to the Well. So a simple "1 year between books + 1 year for HoA" won't work, because Vin needs to have 3 birthdays in that time. And Vin is 21 by the middle of HoA, so it can't be as simple as her turning 19 immediately after the wedding and turning 21 immediately before her death. Though given that she was 17 at the end of TFE, she probably *is* not far from her 19th birthday when she gets married. But that's not enough by itself to make the time work out. Either "one year has passed" between books has to be somewhat more than one year, or the early chapters of HoA have to cover at least a full year. *BUT* ...Chaos pointed out on the Discord when I brought this up that the annotation saying Vin is 18 at her wedding is probably simply wrong, because it's incompatible with book evidence which takes priority. In that case, it really is one year between books, and the above timeline still holds. Year Zero Another problem with the above analysis is that theoretically TLR could have started the FE Calendar with Year 0, not Year 1. I find this unlikely, but it's possible. In which case all the years should be reduced by one; the Well refilling begins Year 1024 not 1025. We also don't know when their calendar puts New Year's Day. If it wasn't defined by TLR taking the power, then Year 1 might not have been a full 365 days, and the Well might refill during 1025 rather than starting 1025. Still, Era 1 Scadrial's calendar was not synchronized with the seasons, so New Year's probably isn't defined seasonally. So starting with the Well is likely the best assumption. So version 2 under the assumption that they started with year zero: FE Calendar: Assumption 2 1020 (middle to late?): TFE begins. Vin is recruited from Camon's crew by Kelsier. 1021: Most of TFE's events 1022 (very early?): End of TFE - Vin kills TLR, Elend is declared king. 1023: Most of the events of WoA. The Siege of Luthadel. 1024 (very beginning): The very end of WoA - Ruin escapes the Well. 1025: most if not all of the events of HoA 1025 (very end) or 1026 (early): the very end of HoA. Vin and Ati die, Sazed Ascends. Digression: Scadrial Seasons are Broken (and we should just ignore them) If Scadrial's Era 1 orbit is half the distance from the sun of its Era 2 Earthlike orbit (0.5 AU) it's astronomical year will only be about 120 days, so each season will be about a month long. If it's 0.6 AU the astronomical year will be ~170 days and seasons will be about 42-43 days long. This clearly doesn't fit what we see in the books, especially WoA. (Realistically, given seasonal lag and the effects of the ash, I think a year this short would make seasons barely noticeable, probably not distinct enough to name.) So evidence from seasonal changes in the books is probably not useful. At this point I brought the issue with the dates up on the Discord coppermind channel. Chaos pointed out that the WoA annotation should probably be ignored, and Stargazer confirmed that Vin is 15 at the beginning of TFE but 17 by Chapter 22, 20 in HoA chapter 3 but 21 by HoA chapter 30. Chaos also pointed out that the leatherbounds might have changed things. Not really a conclusion I think assumption 1 is likely better because it makes the 1021 map as of the beginning of book 1, but who knows. Help Please Does anyone with the leather-bounds know if any of this was changed for the leatherbounds? Especially Vin being 17 in TFE ch22, 20 in HoA ch3, and 21 in HoA ch30?

Actually, it would need to go the other way. We have 330-340 (Scadrian/regular) years to work with between HoA and WoK, and 300 years between the Manywar and Warbreaker... if the Manywar is at the same time as HoA that puts Warbreaker only 30-40 years before WoK. If the Nalthis side of the timeline expands it won't work at all (Vasher won't be on Roshar in time). It would work much better if the 300 years since the Manywar was rounded up from, say, 260 years (allowing Warbreaker to be 70-80 years before WoK).

Aren't there contradictory WoBs on burning hemalurgically charged metals? IIRC we have "it would splice your spiritual DNA" and "you'd have to burn a spike that killed you and stole your power".

Basically it gets crazy once you start alloying the metal of combined (Honor+Devotion+Ruin+Invention) with the metal of combined (Dominion+Odium+Preservation+Autonomy+Whimsy) or stuff like that.

I think he probably knew but saw no reason to tell the Inquisitors (he didn't need them to know, and wouldnt want them to have an extra tool if he was removed) but that's pure speculation.

Metals may be crystals, but not all crystals are metals, and I don't think TwinSoul's aether crystals were metallic. I agree each type of Investiture should have a single solid form - Silajana isn't going to also have an aethermetal, and Ruin doesn't have a solid Investiture form other than atium. TLM seems to imply that Sazed can't just automatically make atium and lerasium - harmonium has to be split first - even though he contains both Shards.

Yeah it's not clear who "they" who love Discord are. I'm not sure a cold war in which one side has an interventionist double-Shard on its side would stay a cold war, though. I doubt whatever happens with Discord will let him actually fully use his powers for long - they're just too overwhelming for the plot, imo. Even with metal blindness limiting him, I think a Shard could still find ways to stop a nuclear attack for example (the metal objects are brightly glowing so details can't be seen, but he could still see *where* the missiles were and could hit them with 500mph winds or something).

Mistborn powers, or Fullborn powers? Huge difference. Definitely learn limits of my powers and practice with them first. What I did from there would depend on ahaf metals I could get*. I'm not a fighter by nature. I don't think I could keep them completely secret from everyone - I'm inherently bad at keeping secrets and sooner or later if I used the powers someone would notice something. However, not fighting would mean I'm mostly using internal powers, especially Feruchemy, and the ones I'd want to use the most in everyday life aren't really externally visible (f-brass, f-zinc, f-copper, possibly f-tin and f-bronze). So if I just used them for quality of life To do anything useful to others with the powers (say help after disasters or clean up contaminated areas) I'd have to reveal them to *someone*. So it's kind of a dilemma. Well, I guess ...depending on how powerful zinc compounding is... maybe I could use zinc compounding (plus a little f-copper?) to become a super inventor and invent lots of things that would help people, without revealing that it came from anything but genius. Still, I'd need finances for that... The big temptation would be to use emotional Allomancy to get money, but that's soooooo unethical. And it'd be a doubly bad temptation in a world where no one knew it was a possibility - it'd be really powerful. And useful in almost everything (though I'm too socially blind to use it well). That's the scary part. (I'd probably have to avoid airplanes, since I'd certainly put some metalminds in my body permanently - especially gold). *If this is modern Earth, not Scadrial, it might be very hard to get the right alloys for some powers (Allomancer's pewter is not the same composition as usual pewter, for example). That's a pretty big limitation ... having Iron but not Steel keeps me from doing a lot of the classic Mistborn tricks, Pewter Allomancy is quite powerful, Duralumin is a major power boost. And of the 8 pure metals, copper and chromium don't do anything without other Allomancers around. Aluminum is essentially useless. Gold is philosophically/personally interesting but gold doesn't have much practical use. So the useful Allomantic powers I'd be left with are tin, iron, zinc, and cadmium. And zinc is ethically iffy and cadmium is fairly narrowly useful. Also, no atium, so no Fullborn immortality. So it would be very useful to try to find a way to get the right alloys, at least for those with known composition (pewter, electrum, and duralumin iirc?) The Feruchemy situation is better because none of the powers rely on having others with powers around. Tin, iron, copper, zinc, gold, cadmium, and chromium all havr useful powers, though we don't know muxh about chromium. Aluminum's usefulness is iffy. Also, experimenting with alloys should be way safer with Feruchemy, so it might be possible to get useful bronze, steel, brass, and bendalloy. (With sufficient money to get them custom made in various compositions.) But with Gold Compounding not having bendalloy doesn't lose you much on the Feruchemy side.

Yeah, I think the implication is that pure atium jumps straight to the full Spiritual Realm expansive future-possibilities vision, not just shadows of the next second or two. I think Era 1 atium spikes were atium electrum not pure atium. The Inquisitors' experiments only discovered stealing Temporal Allomancy, not the wildcard steal-anything effect.

I agree Kelsier's top speed would likely be higher than Vin's due to stride length (he's a lot taller), but probably not by much since her Allomantic strength is slightly greater. I think the Final Empire is roughly the size of the contiguous US or a little smaller, but the Central Dominance is only a small part of it. 350 miles from Luthadel at the center to another location in the Dominance would mean its at least 700 miles in diameter (350 miles radius) which puts it significantly larger than Texas and about half the size of Mexico.

Most of a Shard's power isn't in physical form. A Shard's total power level is insanely high. Just part of Preservation's power was sufficient to move a planet, which is an incredibly colossal amount of energy. Technically creating the metal is a tiny bit of the Shard's power put into the Physical. It is still part of the Shard, but that power (Investiture) is "committed", frozen into physical form, and can't be used for something else. However, it's a tiny fraction. It only mattered for Preservation and Ruin because they were originally exactly equal and perfectly balanced, so that comparatively tiny amount invested in humans' souls (Preservation) and atium (Ruin) made the balance imperfect. You can get a whole six foot Shardblade out of a regular Radiant spren, a tiny bead of atium isn't really that much Investiture. The lerasium wasn't a significant chunk of Preservation. His power in the Physical Realm was more in the Well and mists. The Well was a huge amount of power (enough to move a planet!) and the mists seem to have been a significant amount of his power as well. (A small amount of Ruin 'mist', as black smoke, shows up in WoA. But it's tiny in comparison to Preservation's mists.) All sixteen Shards were originally equal, but some have more of their power 'committed' to something in the Physical, and some are outright Splintered. Not just dead Vessel like Ati/Ruin, Leras/Preservation, Vin/Preservation, but actually the Shard itself broken apart so the Investiture now has separate Intent and so on. This happened to Devotion (creating seons and half the Dor), Dominion (creating skaze and half the Dor), and Honor (contributing to the Investiture that creates spren on Roshar, though spren existed way before - they were less numerous though).

I disagree... there's nothing in the body to make it able to move. Connection alone doesn't provide that. There's nothing to make the nerves, muscles, etc react to signals being hacked-in from the Bondsmith's brain. Maybe with really advanced Bondsmithing you could hack something with the Stormlight flowing from the Bondsmith to the corpse and kind-of replacing Breath... but it would be very temporary, since Stormlight doesn't stay around. The impressive/useful thing about Lifeless is that they last and can just wait for orders with very little maintenance- just occasionally topping up the ichor-alcohol, they don't need food or sleep or anything. With Stormlight rather than Breath you'd lose that advantage. I guess I'd say one of the key weaknesses of Surgebinding relative to some other magic systems like Awakening or Hemalurgy is that 'active' effects are inherently temporary. If you heal someone with Regrowth they stay healed once the Stormlight runs out, or if you transform something with Soulcasting it stays transformed... but it's just a mundane object afterwards. You can't Invest things in a lasting way like Awakening an object or Hemalurgy-ing extra strength into a human to make a koloss. The other general limitations, I'd say, are senses (and likely a lesser degree of internal powers in general, though the base benefits of holding Stormlight are very good) and range. There are a few ranged Surgebinding powers, but it seems rare Surgebinding is still probably the most powerful magic system (unless you're in Arelon, at least) but it has definite limits. It's a confusing scene, but I do think he was doing something specific to reassembling the temple - he still pushed them, but he was using some form of Adhesion to help, I think.

Yeah. And it might even be multiple smaller blades combined macahuitl style, just all bunched at one end of a haft rather than arranged along its length. (The Mistborn Adventure Game art seems to show them as more like macahuitls, but that's not canon).

Ok, I completely disagree there. Breaking into a Hemalurgic construct is more controlling it like it was part of you... thats a Connection thing. But controlling Hemalurgic constructs doesn't give them abilities they don't already have. Koloss are already super strong before TLR or Vin takes control of them. A corpse doesn't have the ability to move or act. If you break into a corpse... it still just lies there inactive. Awakening puts new Investiture and a Command into a corpse so it's not a corpse anymore. I think a Bondsmith could absolutely take control of a Lifeless that already exists, but not turn an inanimate corpse into a Lifeless. (Not sure if they could hijack a non-Lifeless non-Nightblood regular Awakened object. Unlike Lifeless, the Awakener can take their breath back, so this might involve Identity not just Connection. ) The WoB is vague enough that thus probably isn't provable without more books. But I disagree. I think this is more "authority as Honor's successor" stuff*, control of Oaths and such, and maybe the ability to manipulate / reestablish the limits Honor put on Surgebinding. Making Splinters is more of a Shardic ability, and I don't think a Bondsmith (at least on Roshar and working with Rosharan magic) can get Investiture in the right form to do it. Light is inherently temporary. Maybe if Dalinar or Navani got 2000 Breaths they could use Connection to forge a Divine Breath equivalent Splinter out of them, but I don't think they could do that stuff with their native Investiture only. I think you'd have to introduce another magic system like Breath/Awakening or Feruchemy with permanent-storable Investiture. At least short of hypothetical space era Investiture-conversion technology. *and I think it is Stormfather Bondsmith only, Navani and Ishar won't get that. (Though they will get the general "unchained Bondsmith" tricks like seeing Connection and, at least for Ishar, opening a perpendicularity - it's called Honor's Perpendicularity so I'm not sure if Navani as the Sibling Bondsmith could do it or not, Ishar uses an Honorblade which is pure-Honor). I was more thinking of inducing pain without physical harm. Stonewards might be able to ignore pain in themselves (idk, I think Taln felt his torture but Heralds on Braize might not have access to their Surges) but probably not affect the sensation of pain in others. Adhesion to bind pieces together + Tension to add stiffness making the binding permanent once the Stormlight was gone. It's a weird scene and really feels more like Adhesion + Cohesion, I think those two Surges (Cohesion/Tension) weren't fully developed when OB was written. I think Dalinar is more... pulling the stones together with his Surges and so he can lift them easier to go where they need to go. I don't think it's a pure multiplication of physical strength that he can use for just any purpose, if he'd turned around and punched someone during the process I don't think his punch force would have been boosted (though his body might have been hardened by Tension reducing the risk of harming himself).

I think it was more than 12 hours. Which makes me wonder how fast they were really going, 15 hours at even 20 mph = 300 miles, if they were going 25 mph 375 miles... how big is the Central Dominance?

Well it does say "they will love him for it". It's not IMO definite that Discord will be a bad thing overall. Current Sazed doesn't want it, but he's already compromised by his Shards, and anyway his pre-Ascension personality was a better fit for Harmony anyway. I think Discord would definitely be a bad thing *for Sazed* (it would mean he'd lost his original human personality to the Shards) but not automatically a bad thing *for Scadrial*. Shard names are generally... charged, more positive or negative than the raw concept really has to be (Preservation not Stasis, Ruin not Entropy, Honor not Binding, etc.) Discord could be a force of creative tension and productive competition instead of one of destructive entropic chaos. Or it could be a protective force in a way Sazed really isn't now, destroying in order to protect. A Sazed more willing to use his Ruin side could have prevented most of the Era 2 problems by smiting the early Set members, for example. In an universe with hostile Shards out there, a more interventionist Sazed might be a net positive. Of course, encouraging Sazed to just smite people is probably not a great thing. But I think a lot of Wax's arc is about Destroying to Protect being a potentially valid thing in some circumstances, though incomplete or invalid in other circumstances (Marasi represents the other side imo).

Sure but we at least knew the planets existed before we named them. Not anything about what was *there*, but at least their existence. It is indeed interesting IMO because before TLM I don't think we had any evidence that people from the Basin had gotten that far out. (Torinost, Hathsin, etc are Era 1 names so not ones the Southern Scadrians would have given.) They're probably not inhabited, sure, but it does show the Basin people at least have a general idea of the Geography that far north, which I would not have expected pre TLM. Yeah, I'm surprised you can still see the Ashmount scars. I would have thought Harmony completely reversed TLR's changes... it seems not.

Yeah, it's not that the duralumin literally purifies the raw/slightly alloyed electrum, just gives enough power to overcome the limits. Theoretically a sufficiently strong Allomancer could do it with electrum + duralumin, though that might take beyond-Elend strength. Wigginns What would a Hemalurgic spike granting atium do for an Allomancer already able to burn atium? Does it function similarly to bronze, granting enhanced atium-ing? Along this line of thought, would enhancing electrum burning via spike be of any advantage? Brandon Sanderson A spike of something you have would enhance your ability, giving your more strength. With atium, more strength makes for a minimal edge--the length you can push out the atium shadows. However, there's a certain breaking point where you kind of crack the whole system, peer straight into the [Spiritual Realm], and kind of have a "It's full of stars" moment. Electrum could reach this same moment, potentially, though there's more interference to fight through. Extra strength in electrum isn't going to be terribly useful up to that point. Alsadius Is that what happened when atium was burned with duralumin? Brandon Sanderson Yes. Footnote: In his original response Brandon mistakenly said burning atium and duralumin would cause the Allomancer to peer into the Cognitive Realm, rather than Spiritual Realm. He has since confirmed that this was a mistake. /r/books AMA 2015 (Aug. 1, 2015)

I agree. Trellium = bavadinium, and Brandon is using Sazed to confirm that. They started with the term trellium since they didn't at first know what Shard was behind Trell.

I don't see how. Can you explain? Breath sticks to things and is inherently 'life-giving', and it responds to Command. Stormlight (and probably Towerlight and Lifelight as well?) tends to evaporate (even Voidlight does, just slower... it's still not permanent like Breath). I don't think there's any way to animate a corpse by pushing Stormlight into it. I also don't think you can tell Stormlight to animate something - it's not Command responsive like Breath, unless you add some other magic like a Dawnshard, IMO. I suppose one could argue that Lifelight might have similar life giving properties to Breath, so maybe the Nightwatcher's Bondsmith could get temporary Awakening like effects... but that's going well beyond the data, and anyway one of the things that makes Awakening useful/powerful is the near permanence of what it can create - Breath doesn't go away on its own like Light. Powerful as Bondsmiths are, they aren't actually Shards. Honor made the Honorblades by voluntary self-Splintering, essentially, like Endowment making Divine Breath. That's a Shard ability - making Splinters of themselves - which Dalinar shouldn't get even if he has the "authority over Oaths and Radiants" that Honor used to have. Now the Stormfather can create honorspren, who are Splinters, so maybe Dalinar could ask the Stormfather to make Splinters. That's not really *Dalinar's* power though, it's the Stormfather's. Also, it sounds like Honor gave or taught that ability to the Stormfather when preparing for his death. So I don't know if we can assume that the Stormfather could make Honorblades, or any other Splinter type except honorspren, or that the Nightwatcher or Sibling could make spren at all. (Normal sapient spren have a way to reproduce from Investiture or something, but if that's limited to their own kind, it probably doesn't apply to the unique ones?) I don't think Illumination covers everything covered by the RL electromagnetic force. In RL physics pressure and friction and things being solid are all fundamentally derived from electromagnetic interactions... but Adhesion and Abrasion and Cohesion and Tension are separate Surges. I don't think Illumination can get at electrons inside atoms/molecules, it's traveling waves like photons or sound. Illusions can replicate a real thing more perfectly than the Lightweaver's knowledge of it, through Connection, sure (though that's a bit odd bc Lightweavers have photographic memories so shouldn't they be able to get the pores and tiny hairs right anyway? Maybe it just means that the photographic memory is itself Connection based). But they still need to know what they're replicating. A Lightweaver, even with Bondsmith help, can't just make an illusion of "whatever is in that dark cave over there" and thus gain night vision. Illusions don't *detect new things unknown to the Radiant or their spren*. Fabrial science is a different magic system than Surgebinding. I don't think Radiants get alerter effects or painrial effects or whatever. Lifting the stone was part of an Adhesion plus probably Tension rebuilding, it's not just a blanket strength increase. Dalinar couldn't put 2000 pounds of force into punching someone, Sazed in full koloss bulk mode at the end of WoA could.

I don't really think it's fair to count synergy effects as the Bondsmith's own power, but even given that, I don't think they can replicate anything... there are some things that IMO are not within the scope of Radiant-style Surgebinding at all. (Now, it's arguable that the "bound other Surges" principle could let a Bondsmith copy random powers, but we know nothing about that and it probably has significant limits if it even works that way at all -- it could just be a working-with-spren-to-make-ancient-fabrials type thing. Though the WoB about stealing Nightblood's powers suggests that there probably is some such effect.) Many of the internal powers of Allomancy / Feruchemy are probably not able to be replicated, though Stormlight can substitute for some (holding stormlight has effects roughly similar to f-Gold and a-Pewter, though with less strength boost it seems, and removes the need to breathe like f-Cadmium). But things like Wakefulness, Warmth, some Senses, the extreme Strength from Feruchemical Pewter... I don't think so. Even if Bondsmiths have a way to hack access to other Surges ("bound other Surges") I don't think these internal effects are possible in Surgebinding. I think @alder24s right that Awakening cant be replicated either. A Bondsmith could by WoB steal Nightblood's powers, but couldn't Awaken a sword or a zombie army for themselves. Some of the Heightening passive effects probably can't be replicated either, like perfect color recognition. I'm not convinced emotions are really a Connection thing. Connection is Spiritual, emotional allomancy is Cognitive. Some emotions- those directly related to how you feel about another person - could be manipulated probably. But I don't think Bondsmithing can just stoke fear or increase tiredness or whatever like Rioting can. Same for memories, I think Bondsmiths are more limited in Cognitive stuff than you suggest. -- Enhanced taste and touch strike me as beyond Lightweaving too, as neither is waveform based. And I don't think Lightweaving can fully replicate improved sight and hearing either. the Lightweaver has to know what they're creating or have a link to someone who does. even in synergy with Dalinar the information for the map is still coming from the Stormfather. Lightweaving doesn't let you just see new things. You can't Lightweave someone Perfect Color Recognition or perfect pitch unless the Lightweaver already has it and knows what colors/pitches the subject of the illusion should be perceiving. (Assuming illusions can even do that, I'm not sure someone without Perfect Color Recognition or perfect pitch could be made to notice those things in an illusion anyway.) While Bondsmiths unchained can see Connection, I think some unusual sensory abilities are also beyond their capabilities - like the 'passive' nature of enhanced life sense (Bondsmiths probably have to try to see Connections, it won't warn them of someone sneaking up) and I'm not sure Connection sight can fully replicate Seeking either. (The Bondsmith might be able to see an Allomancer's Connection to Preservation strengthen while burning metals, but I doubt that could distinguish between tin and pewter.) -- Range is also probably a limit. I don't think a Bondsmith could shoot lightning like a stormform Regal. Dalinar's perpendicularity can Invest spheres he isn't actually touching but I think that's more an effect of the perpendicularity itself - I don't think he can pick and choose what to Invest at a distance the way a top level Awakener with Audible Command can. -- It also seems that Bondsmiths generally don't get Shardblades. -- Bondsmiths are surely the most powerful non-Shard/Dawnshard beings in the cosmere, but their powers aren't a strict superset of all other powers. And for non Honorblade Bondsmiths, the oaths themselves are probably the greatest limit on their power. Rashek could go conquer the world with his power, Dalinar couldn't.

Yeah, feruchemical Fortune is probably less "random events around me happen to favor me" and more "my gut instincts work out really well".

Moash had zero powers when he killed Leshwi. Fused healing is quite limited compared to Radiants - a hit to the gemheart is instant death - so anyone with a blade could potentially kill one. A Fused (especially the ones with more combat relevant powers) has a huge advantage against a normal human, but they don't get the "invulnerable to normal harm until out of Investiture" status Radiants do. 1 v 1 the Fused will nearly always win... unless they get overconfident like Leshwi. A Heavenly One can fly away from regular humans easily, and hitting a gemheart with arrows would probably be near impossible. But if the Fused is stuck in a close fight - either a brand without mobility powers or refusing to flee - its gemheart will eventually get hit. Magnified Ones with super carapace probably do better. There's still two Brands we haven't seen yet, though. Those might be super powerful.