Bigmikey357

I can't give this enough thumbs up. How do you think it looks if Scadrial had the home field advantage?

So I guess every Scadrian soldier becomes Waxillium Dawnshot if you give him an aluminum pistol and a pass to Roshar. Even an aluminum gnat is metalborn so he is automatically the most deadly gunslinger in the Cosmere. Meanwhile Shardplate is as strong as wet cardboard as long as it gets hit with an aluminum bullet and the literal Surges of Creation are a minor inconvenience to deal with for a Mistborn. No offense but how ridiculous does that sound? Just say you like the Mistborn books over Stormlight. That'd be more honest. As powerful as Wax is the only way he beats Jasnah is with the Bands. I'd give Kaladin about equal odds even if you gave Wax the Bands. The only people from Scadrial's magic system that can stand toe to toe with a full Radiant regardless of order is a Fullborn. Next likely is an R-Inquisitor or a Double Steel or Double Gold twin. Then it's standard Inquisitors, Full Feruchemists and finally Mistborn with Atium. Those are literally it. I don't care what type of Mistings or Ferring you throw at a 4th Ideal Radiant, a candle flame in a hurricane has a better chance. I'd be willing to change my mind if Scadrial had modern weaponry and Roshar had no way to get it. As it stands now there are at most 5 people in the entire Mistborn series that would stand a chance of beating a Radiant. Vin, Marsh, Sazed, TLR and maybe Wax. As far as armies, maybe Scadrial can mount an entire army full of Metallic Arts users. Unlikely but possible. But to rely on the regular soldiers to snap en route or once the fighting starts would be incredibly foolish. How many Mistings are worth anything in direct combat? Steel, Iron, Pewter. Everything else is either useless or strictly support. Meanwhile every Radiant on the field would be a menace, every individual with Plate is a tank, and Surges are just as much a gamechanger as post Civil War guns are.

I thought I saw a conflicting timeliness where the events of Elantris happen a couple thousand years prior to the Final Desolation but I could be mistaken. Even so, if the Iri and the Stormlight bank in Lasting Integrity are anything to go by, they've solved their location based restrictions at least somewhat. Enough to power an invasion of another Cosmere world? Maybe not now but I ain't willing to discount anything until I get Elantris Era 2. I really think we're all going to regret underestimating Nalthis one day. Their Shardic advantage should not be taken lightly. They might get smoked 1 on 1 against any of the other 3 but if everyone there is a magic user they could drown the other powers with sheer numbers.

At the request of @LewsTherinTelescope and because the Roshar v Scadrial debate is getting a bit stale, I wanted to try and etch out what it would look like with more combatants. There are issues with this line of speculation but we could try and power through them anyway. The Big 4 are of course Roshar, Scadrial, Sel and Nalthis. The obvious bottleneck is in information, and that heavily skews thinking. We have 2 Eras of Scadrial's history and 4 epic Doorstoppers of lore from Roshar. Although we've only seen half of each planet we can be relatively confident of their current abilities, likely motivation and future prospects. Based on what we've seen on page it'd be hard not to pick one of those 2 pillars to be the ultimate Victor in any Cosmere-wide conflict. Of the other 2 pillars much less is certain but the clues left in WoB's, breadcrumbs left in our premiere novels and some deep diving of the 3 texts we have at our disposal leave tantalizing possibilities. There is evidence that Sel has already solved some of the issues we know about from their local conditions as well as Roshar's little problem. Elantris predates our current Cosmere timeliness by at least 7000 years and they don't look like a culture prone to stagnation. Nalthis is even more of a mystery as we don't even know what other things we can do with Endowment. But from what we can infer, Nalthis would be the only pillar with a singular purpose since they only have to contend with 1 Shard's will. Add to that, they can bring to bear more magic users than the other 3 combined and can imbue weapons of power and you may have a thorny problem ruffling Edgli's feathers. So who wins and why?

It's not that new Vessels get a power boost upon obtaining a Shard, it’s that they are able to act outside the Intent of the Shard with a great degree of freedom, a freedom that decreases the longer the Vessel holds the Shard. Vessels who have held their power for a number of years can really only act in ways that are in line with the power, or at least cannot act outside the parameters set by the power without either a good deal of pain or an opening in their soul vulnerable to attack by another Shard.

I think the Scadrian specific Godmetals can be pushed and pulled allomantically because they are a part of the magic system, in a way they built the magic system and so could not be exempted from it as other Godmetals are. That's my headcannon until Brandon comes up with something better.

@The Technovore There is no doubt that Stonesinew is or should be at the top of everyone's list. That being said, our respective lists don't vary much. I tend to think Feruchemist is a better opponent for a Radiant than a Mistborn, but a Mistborn could beat a Feruchemist. It's almost rock paper scissors for me. I didn't want to add guns because then you gotta add Fabrials and Soulcasters in particular are some broken objects. Then again to each their own. Last, the list is just in general. The power list is quite a bit more complicated when we start contemplating specifics within powersets. It's why I put Unchained Bondsmith and Fullborn at the top, one has every power, the other can snatch every power.

A Gold misting is really just a regular dude so of course Shardbearer gonna smash. Even the random dude with a Shardblade is going to mow down a lot of Mistings. I was mostly thinking of the more martial users of Allomancy, the Atium misting, the coinshot and lurcher, the Thug, maybe a Tineye with a Sniper rifle. Mostly my list is about innate ability, not tools. Guns even the playing field somewhat, as do certain Fabrials including medallions. But once a tool is introduced both sides can use them to a greater or lesser degree. That's the entire purpose of tools after all.

Honestly field effects as a side effect of extreme Feruchemy usage seems right to me. It would explain the limited strength increase Wax experiences when tapping Iron too, though I'm at a loss even attempting to explain it mathematically. My issue is that most of the extreme applications aren't going to be much useful in a fight. Maybe a Feruchemist could actually move at Mach speeds but that's overkill for something that burns through their reserves like napalm on kindling and hurts them in ways only F-Gold can combat. Maybe F-Iron can store enough weight to unbalance the planet or make a black hole but who exactly would the guy be fighting to make that necessary? All the Metallic Arts applications (save Maybe Hemalurgy) are better used for space age types of uses. Store F-Iron to assist in escape velocity. Tap F-Steel for speedier interplanetary travel. Bendalloy and Cadmium bubbles for Aburrcurie Drive mechanics and Supraluminul travel. Why even fight one on one when you have that type of tech. That isn't to say that a Feruchemy user as a whole would not be a dangerous opponent for anyone. Sazed holding a city gate against a rampaging army mostly by himself would put paid to that notion. In fact I believe that a war band Feruchemist is even more dangerous to a Radiant of any level than a Mistborn would be. So after RoW here's my new Heirarchy of Power between Scadrial and Roshar: Fullborn Unchained Bondsmith Full Radiant/Ruin Modified Inquisitors Full Feruchemist (w/Armor)/4 Ideal Radiant/ Regular Inquisitors/Fused 3 Ideal Radiant/Mistborn/ Regal Battle applicable Twinborn Regular Singers/Shardbearers 2 Ideal Radiant/ Koloss 1 Ideal Radiant/ Mistings Random dude with a dead Shardblade.

Kaladin and Syl were exploring different applications of shape-shifting. Remember she was exploring surgical tools and how she might possibly become something like a scalpel for Kal. They may be something akin to Green Lantern rings but you have to get the spren to understand what you are trying to accomplish, thus making an extra step. Living Blades are underutilized I agree, but that's because they are perfectly suited for the warfare practices on current day Roshar. Nobody has needed them to do more or thought about ways to make what is essentially a God weapon be anything more. But I suspect that interaction with the greater Cosmere will change things significantly. Just wait until s Radiant has to combat someone with guns...

Minor quibble. I'll withdraw my statement until I can further review. You may very well be correct in this.

Era 2.

Rules changed since Harmony took over.

@Publius No textual evidence, just psychology and supposition. Miles Hundredlives is a bit of a special case as he's been double Gold his entire life and was a Gold savant. He no longer even felt pain he was using Gold so much, it would have been damn difficult to budge his identity in any way. But these new double Gold constructs presumably won't have that type of resilience. This would not be a painless process and I can imagine that if I were the one being constantly spiked I ain't trying to go through that process ad infinum. Plus we know from TLR that the Spiritweb is always recording. For example it always knew his real age and it was becoming harder and harder for him to effectively hold back that age magically. So my thoughts are that even if the hole is patched perfectly the web will still remember that it was wounded. But this discussion really makes me wonder how encisors work. @VeryNiceName I think it was only 2 spikes. It could have been 3. But IIRC he only wore one at a time because 2 or more would have opened him up to Harmony and his control.

@Publius I can see your argument and it seems plausible but not exactly practical. It seems to me you could achieve these goals much simpler with medallion tech. You'd probably prefer Hemalurgy because nobody except the spiked person can use the powers granted but the logistics of using that much hemalurgy is rather daunting and messy. You have outlined the steps already. Getting the human material is going to be a huge challenge in the first place. But say you do so. There's going to be some diminishing returns involved, probably after the first half dozen times you do it. There will also be losses, lots of them. You gonna have the people you most want to utilize be some of the most violent protesters. You need a way to guard your operation or get a bunch of metalborn to buy into the scheme. But even waving away that obstacle you're losing 3 of 4 people to make one super soldier with compound healing and one extra power. No mistborn, they don't exist in nature anymore. You could of course make one but then you get an Inquisitor and that's going to be extremely difficult to control, or you get a completely new Hemalurgic construct with unknown strengths and more importantly, weaknesses. Or maybe you can make new Bands, but that's something only Kelsier knows how to do and I'm just not seeing him share the secret. And as far as using him to go attack Roshar, that's even more unlikely unless it's his program. I can't see Marsh, the only guy with any Atium left, even doing that.

Except in terms of Compounding, Feruchemy is not stackable, at least not in the way being proposed. I guess Wax is who one would choose as a counter example as he constantly stores weight only to release it in multiples of force. But the thing is he is only storing his own weight, not anything magically enhanced. Amazing tricks and techniques but ultimately it's his own stuff. For the hypothetical A-Pewter F-Steel twin, the allomantic portion of the speed increase cannot be stored in the steel metalmind because that just isn't what steel stores. It only stores speed from the person, but the power of Allomancy specifically does not come from the person. What that ultimately means is that as long as you're flaring pewter you can move closer to your normal speed while storing speed but even then you're only storing a trickle at a time. I say flaring because a normal pewter burn doesn't really increase a person's speed all that much. The reaction time is what increases dramatically. Even the scene where we see Kelsier and Vin doing the pewterdrag run they weren't going but maybe 2-3 times as fast as a normal person. What made them able to cover such huge distances wasn't so much speed but the fact that they never had to stop or slow down, for hours on end. If it were stackable in such a manner that would break the magic system completely. Compounders already strain the system to its absolute limits. So basically it takes years of storing to get as much speed as say Sazed used to make his run across Luthadel. It took months of speed storage for Paalm to pull her tricks in SoS and she had none left by the end of that book. So the hypothetical agent spends a couple months to a year being slow. Knowing how long it takes to rebuild the reserve, why oh why would he try to reach supersonic speeds in a fight? 27x as fast as the fastest human ever would likely get the job done against anyone he's fighting, but even if he had that much speed stored up then he just wiped his entire reserve for one strike. It's a trick that could only work maybe once a year. 3 times as fast can probably get the job done just as well and you still have enough to maybe fight another day.

I was just checking in on the forever thread and saw something that intrigued me, mainly the thought of an Atium Shardblade. We all know by now that Atium is a Godmetal, super useful to all the Metallic Arts and hideously expensive because of its rarity. But let's say someone were to get enough Atium to forge a Sword. What would its properties be? And would those properties outweigh the benefits of just burning it? Here's my thoughts. If you used it as a Sword only I think it'd be terrible. I get the impression that it's a soft metal so it's likely to fail against simple steel. It would more than likely stop the soul cut of a Tanavastium style Shardblade and might even be able to take a couple hacks from Nightblood but it would not stop their momentum. That sword breaks in the face of any type of force used against it. Also that Sword, being a part of the Metallic Arts, can also be effected by the Metallic Arts unless you do the Nightblood thing and carry it in an aluminum sheath. Pull it out against a Mistborn at your peril. However I don't think it'd be useless altogether if fashioned correctly. Say instead of a Sword, make it a dagger with said aluminum sheath. I believe that if the user can swing the thing with Intent it has the potential to be a hell of a hazekiller weapon. If you can bury that pigsticker anywhere into a magic user you snatch all their power in one go, permanently. Even if you cannot take the power for yourself, simply depriving it from a magical opponent makes them normal. For most magic users, thats synonymous to useless or just plain dead. Then discharge what the knife snatched into whomever you choose later. It would have to be a punch dagger, slashing attacks would not do the trick IMO. I think the perfect use for such a weapon is in the hands of a trained Magic User as a weapon of last resort. A mistborn has a better use for the metal but a Radiant or Awakener can't burn the stuff anyway. And you can create a magical ally with it, a controllable one. Cause that ally knows that they only have power as long as you wish it. Pull the dagger, lose the power and the guy probably dies from the wound to boot. Anyone else got some opinions of applications of such a weapon?

@Gisaku75 fine, broke neck or broken skull, the point is the head is still attached. A cannonball would leave no skull at all, the fragments could possibly be found dozens of feet away. Find a steel bat and hit a mountain with it. The steel will dent and break before the mountain does. I disagree that a duraluminum fueled pewter punch is in any way stronger than a plate assisted punch from a Radiant. To say they are about the same is generous in my opinion. The couple of times we've seen of the pewter duraluminum combo does not support the assertion. Powerful but not one punch obliterates the countryside. Maybe a Fullborn or Pewter compounder could generate the type of force you seem to imply but not a Mistborn. @Frustration already referenced the size differential between actual size and what you think the size of a Chasmfiend is. Chasmfiends are flesh and blood but they are also oh, I don't know, maybe 10 or twenty times the weight of a semi truck. That carapace takes several people hours and large hammers to Crack if one doesn't have Shardblade handy. Again I must reiterate, don't send Vin up against that with the expectation that she could slay it solo.

1. She may have killed the thing but she didn't punt its head 30 yards or something. The kick basically broke its neck. No matter how imposing, Koloss are still only flesh and blood. 2. A Thunderclast is solid stone. Even with Pewter and Duraluminum her leg would break way before any harm would come to it. 3. Not even a Radiant with Plate is trying to go for punching matches with one of those. That's what the Shardblades are for. 4. Decapitation of a Thunderclast wouldn't kill it. It's spirit animated stone, no brain stem or spinal chord to speak of. There are only 2 ways to kill one. Chop it into little, unthreatening pieces or dismiss the animating spirit. 5. Chasmfiends are way more than 4 times as large as an elephant on average. 6. Confidence is one thing, but you seem to be trying to get Vin killed if you really think she could solo a Chasmfiend. I guess if you think that, a Radiant would be no problem huh.

@AirsickAviar I'm going to have to disagree about how powerful you believe that duraluminum is. It's a game changer but it's nowhere near a 3000x force multiplier. 10x? Sure. Maybe even 20x. I could see that. But ascribing that sort of power to them would mean that Vin could drink a vial, go up to a Thunderclast or Chasmfiend and punch a hole right through them without any ill effects. You do realize that the fall that killed Gavilar would not have killed a Radiant right? You do also realize that the punch he delivered to Szeth would have killed him if he did not have Stormlight healing? You keep pointing to Vin slaughtering Cett's troops in like 10 minutes but she had a couple things going for her. They were unprepared. They all had a crapload of metal on them thus giving her an entire arsenal of weaponry to use. She was fighting in an enclosed space,, thus limiting the number of opponents that could face her at one time. And she had duraluminum, mostly an unknown weapon at the time. She got her butt kicked when she faced someone who could use duraluminum too. But whatever, what she accomplished in that building was impressive. Scary even. Dalinar was doing the equivalent of that massacre 2 to 3 times a week for 6 years on the Shattered Plains. His battle strategy was to jump a 30 to 40 ft chasm, land and hold off an entire army who'd love nothing better than to topple him and steal his Shards for minutes at a time while his army positioned themselves behind him. Vin killed a lot of people. Dalinar, even Sadeas would laugh out loud at her body count. Adolin would be too nice to chuckle. Mistborn have a ridiculous amount of skill and with practice can do some truly remarkable things. But they'd have a hard time fighting an unenhanced human with Dead Plate and a Dead Blade and no healing factor and no Surges. I would expect them to eventually win that fight but I don't think it'd be a walk in the park. If I'm the Mistborn I'm not trying to go head up with a 4th Ideal Radiant for love or money. Reason why? Because even if I could win I could not expect to not take damage. I'd be lucky if my opponent broke my arm or leg or something. I could heal from that though it'd take awhile (less time burning pewter but it's not like I'm fighting again tomorrow) . Nothing but a Radiant healer is going to be able to heal a Shardblade deadened limb. Personally I think that with all the skills a Mistborn possesses, using them to go head to head against a Radiant is a waste of resources. Plus Mistborn are so rare that any loss of one is nearly irreplaceable. Lose a Radiant, another one is coming down the pipeline. I know it's fun to look at these match-ups in terms of head to head duels but really there are far easier ways to kill a Radiant than what I've seen proposed on this and other threads. Sure if you take the least battle talented Radiant and pit him against a Mistborn veteran of 100 battles with full knowledge of surges, guns and aluminum armor plus medallions so he can compound and an Atium kicker I bet he could win quite often. But if you have to buff one side to the point of ridiculousness just to have a chance against the other then really, who is the more powerful foe? And besides, how many of those super soldiers would you expect to be able to field? IMO the best way for a Metallic Arts user to kill a Surgebinder is to murder him before they even know they are in danger.

And the Radiants heal. Say your Mistborn does all this fighting and maneuver, lines up the perfect shot, tries to execute. The spren sends a warning or even reacts on it's own and that strike either completely misses or just clips the Radiant. Maybe the warning isn't in time and the Mistborn delivers a strike that would kill most people. Well unless he completely pulped the skull or decapitated him that Radiant survives. They may have a hard time but they are still combat effective. A mistborn can hold off a Second Ideal Radiant pretty handily in most cases, no magical soul severing weapons, no armor, nacient surges and limited healing. Living Shardblade at 3rd takes more consideration, more care, but the healing is faster, the Surges are stronger, and Stormlight grants a bit more vitality, maybe not as much as a pewter burn but more than merely human base. But that 4th Ideal, that Living Plate and Blade combo? You may be confident enough to pit a Mistborn against someone in a quarter ton of non-magically reactive (no steel pushes etc al) armor that makes one nearly as dexterous and quick as any Thug, whose every punch might as well be duraluminum fueled for the damage inflicted on the guy getting punched. I'm betting on the guy who has all that and needs only one opening to destroy his opponent's ability to fight at the very least. @BenduLuke Iron burns at about 1500°C. There is no way any human body can even reach such a temperature without every fluid in their body explosively combusting. Chemical burning and Allomantic burning are not the same, not by a long shot.

Duraluminum is a boss magnifying ability. A run-of-the-mill Mistborn could likely kill a 2nd Oath Radiant and give severe problems to a 3rd Ideal. But as strong as it is I don't think it beats Plate. And the main strike against that Mistborn is that without a healing factor their attack must be either instantly lethal or crippling. The thing about a 3rd Ideal Radiant is that they have at least one attack that's instantly lethal if it lands, 2 or 3 for some Orders. A 4th Ideal Radiant has 2 attacks that are instantly lethal or crippling, without any reference to their Surges. We've seen dead Plate punches kill people. Every time a Radiant levels up the Mistborn loses their margin for error. Radiant makes a mistake? Most things they can heal from and learn from. Mistborn makes a mistake? They may come out of it with a dead limb at best. Most times they end up just dead. Good point about Medallions making a big difference. Problem is that they are unkeyed, meaning anyone can use them regardless of connections with a Shard. Get the Medallion, gain the ability. I can't imagine a total victory by a Scadrian army even if every troop they had ran on the Medallion tech. Same problem with guns if you can get them to work on Roshar. Any buff you give to Scadrial can be just as easily be given to Roshar after one or 2 battles. It takes longer for Scadrians to duplicate Rosharan advantages with the Spren. Nobody is jumping from no oath strength to 5 Ideal advantages in days or even months. Scadrial loses their advantages much more quickly than Roshar, at least on Roshar.

I got a scenario where a non-Mistborn metal user can beat and kill a surgebinder one on one. Get a Leecher with an aluminum knife. Come upon the guy unsuspecting. Jump on his back and start leeching while simultaneously stabbing with the knife. Hold on for dear life until the guy dies. I've said it before and I'll say so again. As powerful as the various types of Metallic Arts users are, their talents are best suited for covert killing. Nobody except a Fullborn has any business trying to go head up against any Radiant above oath 3. A 4th Ideal of any order is going to be nearly impossible for the Metallic Arts user to take out. The Mistborn is versatile and kinda durable but cannot heal. A Full Feruchemist can do a lot of things including healing, but those attributes have to be husbanded because they take a lot of time to refuel. Any prolonged battle looks worse and worse for the Feruchemist. Twinborn like Wax and Wayne aren't exactly common and of the myriad amount of combinations only a few are going to be of any real use in combat against a Radiant. Guns help quite a bit but are going to be of little utility in a 1 v 1 magical duel against Radiants. Only compounders, and that of certain kinds of metals at that, are going to do you much good. Steel, Gold, maybe brass (the one that stores heat) can have any tangible use against most Radiants. The margins get better when we talk about Scadrial vs Roshar. Until we can get Stormlight off world the battle has to take place on Roshar. Anyone Scadrial sends would not only be Cosmere aware but would have much better intel on the enemy and local conditions than Roshar does. The Tech gap is pretty wide, although not as wide as some other posters would suggest. The military strategy gap favors Roshar, plus they are fighting on the defense and have rapid troop movement so that's problematic. And Roshar is set up to jump their technological progress by leaps and bounds cause of the greatest group project up at Urithiru. Scadrial would slaughter any open field army with their guns but they'll have to take any fortresses by subterfuge. And any Radiants taking the field will have to be hit at distance else they touch down and kill a couple hundred people at a time. I know there are more than a few of you who want to give Scadrial every advantage and deny Roshar even the stuff they excel at just to give the Metallic Arts users a victory or so it seems. Crazy thing is Radiants aren't invincible and there are definitely some things even a misting can do to take out a Radiant. But all I see in what people propose is the Scadrian, against all odds and sense, go into the teeth of all the Radiants strengths and come out the other side not only victorious but mostly unscathed. They mostly ignore the greatest advantages of the Metallic Arts in order to get into a pissing match with Surgebinders. They do this despite the fact that they don't even do this when facing their most powerful metalborn. If a hazekiller squad tried to go head up against Mistborn in the same manner as people propose Metallic Arts users fight Radiants then they'd never succeed. In my opinion the very best way to kill a Radiant would be to neutralize them before they know they are in any danger. If that first cannot be achieved then the next best way is to keep hitting them from distance and wear them down. Anything after that lowers your survivability exponentially so you would have to do it like the Parshendi did it, throw a bunch of bodies at the problem and expect most of them to die. A different mix of Allomancers and/or Feruchemists tailored to each Order of Knights.

How about things you cannot do in one magic system. For example, you cannot do any type of illusion with any Scadrian magic system, but we've seen instances of it in both Roshar and Sel. You can kinda do it on Nalthis but in that case it seems to be more body modification. See Royal Locks.

I believe that most abilities performed by investiture can be duplicated by multiple magic systems, and we've seen plenty of examples in the accumulated texts so far and more to come I'm sure. However I do believe in the uniqueness of magic systems as well. I believe that each individual magic system has at least one ability about it that can only be accomplished using that magic system. Or maybe an ability that could be duplicated in others systems but the cost in Investiture to do it is extremely high. This is hard to judge because we don't know the absolute limits of any magic system in the Cosmere quite yet.