Trusk'our

Lol, fair enough

I think like four people did, actually

But since the slowing of time comes from drawing lots of Investiture to one place all at once, wouldn't that not affect the Fullborn too much? It feels more like a Speedbubble, speeding up a zone with all who are inside rather than personal speed, which would limit its usefulness as a counter to F-steel since it would proportionally speed up the Fullborn too once they got close enough.

Well... huh. Not a lot, I'll say that now. Perhaps Szeth with Nightblood while being fueled by Dalinar's Perpendicularity and after swearing the 5th oath of the Skybreakers could do it. Maybe. He'd have to contend with Rashek's F-steel though, which is no laughing matter. Realistically though, it would be better to set him up to kill him. Rashek isn't exactly the most stable guy due to Ruin's influence and 1,000 years of wear and tear though, so perhaps someone clever who had access to a lot of resources could set up a trap to kill him, such as Jasnah, Hoid, or Kelsier, though I don't think that's the kind of answer you're looking for.

We know that Kelsier is trapped on Scadrial due to his Connection. However, I think that if he were to use a Trellium spike on himself he might be able to Worldhop due to Autonomy's nature. After all, Trellium spikes try to repel other sources of Investiture making it seem likely that this is an inherent property of Autonomy's Investiture. In fact, I think that Autonomy's plan for dealing with Harmony was to Invest Scadrial heavily enough that her Investiture shoved Sazed out of the picture. In light of that, allowing a Sliver to travel off-world seems almost trivial by comparison. Beyond that... SA spoilers

A fair argument. Perhaps Trellium spikes seal up some cracks in the Spiritweb, but not all of them? That would mean that having enough spikes (or being a Kandra, as they are more vulnerable to begin with) would still leave you open to direct control. True, but from what we've seen so far no one can forcefully control someone else unless the Spiritweb of the person who is having influence exerted on them is cracked open wide enough. Otherwise, Ruin would have been able to control a lot more people, seeing as how he had the entire weight of a Shard behind him and had Connection to them. This means that if Trellium does work by sealing the Spiritweb, it cuts off a fundamental requirement for outside influences seeking to control the Hemalurgist; it won't matter how powerful the individual trying to take them over is, they simply won't be able to wriggle enough Investiture into the Hemalurgist's Spiritweb to exert the necessary influence to control them. That could be the case. I had not considered Intent being necessary to control a Hemalurgist before, but that does make sense based on Cosmere mechanics. If Trellium doesn't end up working the way I think it does, I think that this explanation would be sufficient to explain why Entrone wasn't controlled by that one Allomancer (sorry, I can't remember her name).

I recently made a post talking about using Rhythms to program powers into Hemalurgic spikes made from non-Allomancers. I'm now wondering if perhaps one could change the actual Intent of the Investiture within the spikes, thereby changing the Connection from Ruin to another Shard. After all, we've seen in RoW that you can use Voidlight to fuel a Radiant's powers if they have a sufficient Connection to Odium, so the powers inside the spikes should be left unmarred. I think that this would work as another work around if you wanted to prevent Ruin specifically from taking control of you since Marsh and the Kandra weren't vulnerable to Autonomy's control, but those that were Connected to her via Trellium spikes were; Connection matters just as much as having an open soul if a Shard wants to control a Hemalurgic construct. It would also be cool to see if Trellium could be alloyed with another Godmetal to disConnect it from Autonomy, but still have Hemalurgic spikes made from the new metal protect from other outside influences.

Fair point. I wonder how effective a Radiant Sprenblade would be at countering Nightblood since they feel pain? I would venture to guess that it wouldn't be pretty, even if they managed to deflect Nightblood once or twice.

Personally, I don't think that Hoid's use of Emotional Allomancy detracts from Jasnah outmaneuvering Ruthar. As Hoid himself mentioned, there are no fair fights, and the smartest thing to do is to use the tools you have at your disposal. Plus, you'd have to ask why he wouldn't use that ability when he had the opportunity to so and aid Jasnah's cause. I can see where you're coming from though, and I can respect your opinion

I was under the impression that Nightblood was oversized as well since it was originally made for a Returned's proportions. Plus, Nightblood creates a mini explosion of power when it strikes a Shardblade, which would bring another factor into play. I honestly think it would be really funny to see an Indiana Jones themed scene play out someday in the Cosmere where someone is wielding Nightblood and tries to kill someone else with it, and then their opponent just pulls out a pistol and shoots them. Big Shardblade swords beat little swords because of reach, but guns beat big Shardblades because they have even greater reach.

Oh boy, another one of these questions I would say that it's going to depend on, well, a lot of factors actually, but here's a few I think are going to be of primary concern. How skilled are both at using their powers? Bondsmithing is a lot less "hardwired" than the Fullborn's portfolio, which does give them quite a bit of versatility, but it also means that it's very difficult to use their powers effectively if they don't have a good understanding of the mechanics I would think. How much knowledge of Worldhopping and Realmatics does each individual have? Bondsmithing's effectiveness would especially hinge on their personal knowledge of Cosmere mechanics. How does the Bondsmith have a Blade? Is it an Honorblade, or have they managed to manifest their Spren like Dalinar did during OB? When you say "infinite metals", I'm assuming you mean that they just carrying enough on them that running out during the fight isn't going to be a factor? Otherwise, infinite duralumin plus infinite other metals would mean you basically become a Vessel (but perhaps only briefly) due to the influx of an entire Shard of Adonalsium. Are we talking about a Lord Ruler level of Allomancy on the Fullborn's part, Lerasium level power, or watered-down level Allomancy? Does the Fullborn have access to all standard metals (era 2 Mistborn), or just the ones from era 1? Where is the fight taking place?

They do work very well together, I believe. I think that F-steel would help in a similar fashion to F-zinc, but it probably takes a lot more Investiture (and time storing or Compounding) with steel to match zinc's ability since the cognitive boost provided by steel likely is primarily a side-effect to help the Feruchemist compensate and use their enhanced speed of body without killing themselves, similar to how F-iron and proportional body strength works. It may also be that F-zinc helps boost your overall cognitive efficiency (increasing fluid intelligence) rather than just making it faster, but I'm hesitant to suggest this due to the Taravangian WoB I gave earlier. It would also be worth noting that with F-copper your own abilities matter as well. Aparently, Sazed had an incredible memory even without his Copperminds and it likely takes some practice to get skilled with archiving Coppermind properly. Feruchemical mental enhancements are useful, but ultimately they are just another tool to be used along with the rest of your intelligence toolbox. Intelligence itself must still be obtained the old-fashioned way; though hard work, experience, and an open mind. ... Or with a supercharged version of the Blessing of Presence plus some Copperminds Hemalurgically stolen from a well-learned Feruchemist

Sounds pretty neat! I was actually going to implement the optional rule in my D&d game where critical hits could lead to lasting injures which would cause certain penalties. Magic could still be used to fix injuries if the players wanted, but it wouldn't be a "I walk in and get healed by the local cleric" sort of deal, it would be more of the "I do a side-quest to find the magic pool in the forest that can regenerate one person" kind of thing. That way injuries would be worth considering, but players could exercise their will over their characters should they be willing to put in the work. Never actually used the rule though, as I forgot about it until it was too late into the session (did make them pay a lot of money to get healed up though ).

Sorry to hear that. I haven't gotten a lot of time for RPGs a while either. I already love this character I once built an above-average intelligence Hillgiant villain for a D&d game I ran for my cousins. He was well dressed ("commissioned" clothes and equipment from skilled people he intimidated/stole from) and referred to himself as a "king" and required tribute of anybody who passed his way along a certain road. He had a small(ish) gathering of twenty bandits who played along with his fantasy (mostly because he was bigger and stronger than them and he shared his spoils), serving his every whim. He had a personality, backstory, and everything you'd make for a good NPC as a responsible DM. However... My PCs managed to gaslight him into drinking a potion of gaseous form with a stupidly high deception check (30-40's. And they were low-level) and got him to try to fly up into a cloud... where upon his potion ran out of juice and he plummeted to his death. His followers all attacked, but apparently a 6th level fighter duel wielding scimitars in 3.5e can be very good at crowd-control with the right feats and a wizard buffing them; it took two rounds to for him to single handedly kill all twenty the bandits (okay, the wizard buffed him a little, but didn't actively help after that) and they only did a total of maybe five or six points of damage to him. Somehow. All in all though, I wasn't too disappointed, since I had been the one to give them the potion in the first place (they got it from an ogre who buffed himself via potions for an extra unique battle), and they acted very creatively (I always reward my players for being smart, even when I don't have something planned to handle it). It was pretty fun to roleplay the Hillgiant as he fell to his doom though, even if most of his personality couldn't shine through. Rule of DMing an NPC you've lovingly put together; either (#1) don't. OR (#2) get used to the idea that the rampaging, bloodthirsty murder-hobos you call players will maliciously rip them to shreds (even if they weren't meant to be enemies).

To be fair, I actually really like building unique NPC's for D&d, even though I almost never employ them in actual gameplay.

I think that Breaths are actually better than Copperminds for total memory capacity (otherwise Odium excising some of Hoid's Breath wouldn't have made him forget their conversation), but Copperminds may be superior if you want to remember a specific thing instantly. However, Vasher's technique does seem to make you forget entirely, suggesting that Breaths can be made to function more like a Coppermind; it likely depends on how the practitioner wants to use the Breaths and their level of knowledge and skill. I'm not sure if you could use Breaths to do something like Awaken, then recover the Breaths later and retrieve your lost memories. It might be interesting to Awaken a Lifeless with a Breath that contained some memories (and being Identity Blanked) and see if said Lifeless's personality (assuming you can get it to take on one in the first place) was shaped around those memories, similar to how Nightblood's personality seems to have been shaped around it's first few hours of "life". In chess a Sparker comes out on top since they have practiced with their knowledge and have more capacity to think and foresee than the Archivist. Copper Ferring doesn't have actual skill from their memories, so even if they "knew" what to do in a given situation, they'd need time to process and take that action; they don't have the neural pathways formed to quickly take advantage of the knowledge they possess while the zinc Ferring has spent years building those pathways even without the aid of their Investiture. Language wise F-duralumin would likely be better, since F-copper would be more like being able to quickly and easily sight a language guide; it doesn't come naturally to the person tapping the Coppermind, while Connection can be used to "trick" the Cognitive aspect into changing to understand the foreign language as if the person had grown up with it (very similar to Forgery). In the scenario of a Scadrien and Nalthian traveling to Roshar, they'd both need to tap Blank Connection from Duraluminmind or they wouldn't share a common language in which to communicate. Feruchemical zinc might be able to help you recall information you already had, but if so it wouldn't be easier- you'd have to put in the same amount of effort, you'd just have more "time" to do so as your mind speeds up. So F-copper still has its uses in this regard. Yeah, the Heightenings are basically just a much, much lower level of Shardic Ascension, so I think it's pretty reasonable to connect the dots between the two of them. Lol, nice. Brains and brawn together in one character is pretty neat. Out of curiosity, do they favor one over the other? Do they use their heightened intelligence to the best of its ability or does their natural strength cause them to neglect it or vice versa? Might be some interesting character development opportunities to be had there

Same here, I hadn't thought of him using an Ironpull, though I'd be willing to bet on him using Emotional Allomancy to goad Ruthar into dueling Jasnah in RoW.

Ooooo. Sounds like a fun challenge I'm going to start out with a disclaimer; I count "intelligence" as anything that acts as a tool to improve a being's cognitive flexibility or efficiency in some way; intelligence is like a toolbox for problem solving, not necessarily just thinking speed (that might already be obvious and that me explaining that proves my own lack of said intelligence, but I digress). I'd say that the Blessing of Stability probably won't help with this much; from what we know, I think that it's likely it only helps protect you from external influences (such as Emotional Allomancy) more than it boosts your Cognitive functions. The Blessing of Presence does grant some nice intelligence boosters however: You can focus and think at least somewhat despite pain or discomfort, you have sharpened memory, resistance to madness, and an inability to fall unconscious due to shock. Also, the Hemalurgy table mentions that it is supposed to increase "intelligence", likely meaning that your fluid intelligence is augmented at least a little as well (which is apparently different from F-zinc) What would be really cool to see is someone supercharge a Blessing of Presence by adding the Investiture of many people into a single spike. You may get things like: total control over your focus (so you can completely ignore distractions if you choose, such as pain), a photographic memory, great resistance to madness (would be helpful especially if the person or being you're boosting is going to live for thousands of years), and a sizable boost to fluid intelligence (ability to reason and think flexibly, and likely to learn new skills faster). AonDor can utilize Aon Ene to produce "Light of the Mind", which causes anyone who touches it to memorize more quickly, reason more clearly, and stave off the mental-diminishing effects of illness or lack of sleep better. Bio-Chromatic Breaths can be used to store one's memories like F-copper (Vasher teaching the one child in Warbreaker) or to boost their total memory capacity (Hoid in RoW). Forgery can be used to rewrite your past to give you new knowledge and expertise in a given area, which would definitely improve your skill focus and mental flexibility if used in the correct situations. F-duralumin can be used to instantly understand the language of any land you visit and Bondsmithing can be used to understand the language of anyone you use it on. F-electrum can increase "determination", though I'm not entirely certain of what that pertains it probably means that you "want" to work and accomplish more when you tap and are better able to resist distractions and discomforts. Building on Forgery, it may be possible to use H-duralumin to steal someone else's Connections to their past and by extension take their skills in a given area, though not the memories themselves (memories aren't stealable by Hemalurgy, since they are from the CR and not the SR). Think of the Returned; they're able retain skills they had before they died, but don't have the actual memories of such things. Aviar are supposed to primarily provide Cognitive powers, though admittedly we don't know a lot about this area yet. Radiants have certain skills come more naturally to them due to their Nahel Bond (Kaladin is more talented with the spear, for example). If you don't mind looking to direct Shardic intervention, we saw in TLM that Autonomy can increase one's ability to understand certain large-scale plans better and we see in SA that Cultivation can increase one's intelligence, though with a price attached (though Hemalurgy can be used to steal such Boons from others and even separate the Curse as well, which is a nice improvement). When Allomancy of any type is used, it has a mental side-effect/improvement. This may also extend to other manifestations of Investiture; powers come hand-in-hand with the mental capacity to use them. We know that the more Invested a being is, the better its memory (i.e., Shardic Vessels. Heralds are mentioned to be able to use Stormlight to increase memory in the RoW chapter headings). Beings with more Investiture also seem to understand certain things better, such as Awakeners being able to innately understand certain Commands at the sixth Heightening. I think it's likely that more Invested beings also have their general, fluid intelligence boosted somewhat as well (Shardic Vessels have this on a larger scale). Perhaps this was why Susebron was able to learn to read and write so quickly. I'm with @alder24 on this; F-zinc is far superior to F-copper if you want to solve a lot of problems quickly. I suppose that F-copper can be pretty useful for memorization, but in reality I don't think that it is as useful, since you could also write things down or practice with mnemonic devices (such as using acronyms, association, and chunking). So I'd say a zinc Compounder with a F-copper medallion would be a better deal, especially since with the medallion you might be able to directly share memories with other people, or they with you. And that could be a very useful way you could gather lots of information very quickly; have a group of people study and learn, then have them Feruchemically store the information and let you tap it. And if those people also have F-zinc... things start to speed up a lot.

Lol, that was the goal!

Here's a new one I came up with when I asked myself, "what if a Kandra decided to go against the First Contract and live more in alignment with Ruin's Intent? What would it look like?" This is what I came up with:

Ah. My apologies. For someone who uses sarcasm in plentitude, I do have a rather difficult time picking it out when someone else makes use of it

I don't think that Nightblood's approval is necessarily something that should be trusted too much. It doesn't really understand what evil is, so it relies on its wielder to determine that (who is, of course, going to have something of a biased view). It's actually funny, this is why Szeth didn't feel anything, good or bad, when he picked up Nightblood for the first time; Szeth just wants to do as he's told, but Nightblood also wants to do as it's told, so they are kind of a null set (in a good way- no crazy bloodlust or sickness).