Tamriel Wolfsbaine

This WoB seems to sum up my thoughts well. We are drabs. Everyone in the cosmere is born better than we are off. Noone else in the cosmere can give away so much investiture to get to the drab state than those who are specifically born with extra innate investiture specifically. I agree that the spiking process is likely doing something a bit more than simply taking investiture but I disagree that it is taking less than a breaths worth as there is no way to currently measure it. Harmony thinks he sees something more with Wax and even tells Wayne he suspects Wax inhaled a bit of Lerasium. It is enough of a change for the shard to recognize. We know that returned can feed off of all types of unkeyed investiture. The spike very well could be syphoning more than just the innate investiture that is so similar to breaths to be counted as such. We just cant tell. I would call the spikes from the humans on Scadrial to be on par at least with a single breath just for the reason that we dont know. I kind of envision a single "full" nicrosil spike to be enough for the first heightening and if they can only hold 30 peoples worth then it would be more than a breath but perhaps not. Think about how much waste there would be if you tried to spike an awakener for their breaths and you ended up killing them for less than half of the first heightening because the spike filled up to fast? This also hints that other planets use that bonus investiture slightly differently than Nalthians and, while I agree they have the most, it is simply used far differently than other spots. I would say Scadrial specifically is on a sliding scale if snapping is based on the innate investiture and connection that that brings to the shard. As for chimera... Giving human breath to awaken a squirell did not deform it or cause it to not work in any way. I believe that innate investiture is likely the same stuff in everything in the cosmere. It manifests itself differently. Returned have a really interesting control over identity that others in the cosmere do not. It could be that the divine breath could protect them from becoming some chimera long enough to fuel their divine breath and then remove the spike. I dont think consuming the investiture in the breath is going to leave lasting damage to a Returned's spirit web that would not be nearly immediately healed by their own identity and divine breath following it. This WoB talks about spiking an Aviar and Brandon doesnt really seem concerned by the chimera question. I know it wasn't directly related or relevant to the question that was being asked but I have seen most of his answers to questions combining systems and hacking them to include pertinent warnings. Perhaps there are some warnings about it not working as well but nothing about becoming a monster directly. Spiking a slew of cattle and then quickly absorbing that investiture before removing the spike wouldnt be a thing I would want to test on myself. If you are a Returned willing to spike or turn humans to drabs in the first place what would prevent you from testing it on another person first anyway?

Do you really think the innate investiture we see being taken in TLM is less than a single breath? I tend to think it is either the same amount or even a bit more. Lifesense picks up everyone in the cosmere that we know of except for drabs. Knowing that a native born Nalthian has an excess of investiture in the form of a breath and that breath gives them the spot of highest level of innate investiture as a birthright out there. But once it is lost they are drab and no longer able to be sensed. Scadrial is obviously less invested at the start of their life but on the sliding scale they could be sensed via lifesense meaning they have more innate investiture than a drab. Once they have been spiked with Nicrosil and left alive they are worse off than a drab. By description they are far worse off than a drab. Drabs still function and live nearly full lives. The person spiked by the Nicrosil did not seem like they were going to be living any kind of life with meaning in the future to me at least. All that said our only real sliding scale is lifesense and drabs. Both can be sensed before losing that innate investiture and both are alive afterwords. In both cases the Nalthian ends up with more innate investiture than the Scadrian person does after losing their investiture. Part of me thinks that hemalurgy could potentially be taking more than a breath is giving for the simple reason of intent. The intent of people giving away their breath is that they will continue to live and I believe some degree of investiture is going to be required for that. A tender mercy of the system is that being a drab is not so bad that people arent willing to happily give up their breath for gain or in the name of their religion (or both). Meanwhile hemalurgy has a totally different intent. The Set is actively trying to avoid killing people and they are finding workarounds to spare a tiny bit of investiture. I am sure that they are still taking a far higher % of innate investiture from a person by the mechanism of how the system works than a Nalthian is giving up willingly in a system designed to spare them and allow them to continue living life to continue the lifecycle of the planet. For those reasons I dont know that we can say a Nicrosil spike wouldnt hold as much as a breath. It could be the same or it could be more. Sadly we cant know without some numbers .... please Brandon give us some figures to play with! But I am of the opinion that a Nicrosil spike would last at least the same week a single breath would be. I definitely think iron is the easiest one to use. Wax proves that storing has a plethora of benefits and he could store all day. It also adds up rediculously fast. I bet a Returned with a pewter spike containing F-iron could easily find a groove to perpetually be storing the % of their weight and consuming it with their divine breath and never really feel any different. Store a bit more and you have something to play with later on too. There is also some whacky identity stuff going on with returned where they could potentially work a hack to have more weight to store and play with. Unless feruchemy is simply working by the percentages and not the total weight, in which case the picturing yourself as a denser heavier person to store more weight and consume it faster wouldn't work. Brass might be a better option if weight proves to not provide enough investiture on its own. You can only make yourself so much lighter... with brass you could use the fire trick and recharge at a bonfire as the environment seems to have more effect on it. As far as the placing the spike in a non-leathal location. Yes, this is my first thought on that. We see earings being viable non-leathal spikes in both eras and, in Vin's case, proves that power contained within the spike does not effect how devestating it is to remove or replace. To take this further and tone down away from the ruining peoples lives thing... I assume the fur/leather trade is a real thing even in the cosmere. Same thing with food sources like beef. I would even be willing to bet that cattle have innate investiture as they can be sensed with lifesense (crazy that plants have more innate investiture than drabs and being spiked is worse than being a drab). That said... some experimenting needed... Why not be a Returned who gets into ranching? Learn the bind point to steal bovine innate investiture. Spike the cattle before they go off to slaughter and use the earing method to syphon off investiture and feed yourself. It is probably the most inconspicuous method to date. Not saying Vasher doesnt have a good thing going on Roshar but we still dont know exactly how he is doing it. Piercing cattle could become as common place as branding them. Who knows, maybe the bind point would allow you to do both at the same time?

I imagine a Koloss midget would start a bit smaller. That said I don't know if dwarfism is a thing on Scadrial. It seems that most shardworlds have enough bonus investiture to avoid the sorts of birth defects and abnormalities we see on our earth. I even feel hard pressed to try and create a blind from birth character idea because I just don't know that it is possible with the innate investiture everyone has. Maybe on some of the more outer worlds. Nalthis spoilers and speculation ahead:

Side question but this would kind of go with this spoiled stuff. Do Kandra need to perform all human functions? Do they rely on breathing to oxygenate their tissue? Do they run risk of hypothermia in extreme cold or run the risk of heat injuries in hot enviorments? Do kandra sweat? Do they require water as well as food? The feruchemy powers in combination with the spoiled skeleton hack could allow for truly epic scenes. Storing the mass in pewter to become smaller. Storing weight for airborne builds. Tapping breath for aquatic builds. All of these would be absurdly cool on screen. #53 is just a copy of that new thing F Tin can do. Just not feel pain. Not only could you turn pain off but you could do it with minimal risk. For tin to turn off pain opens them up to not knowing when they are hurt. For a kandra to turn off pain... whats it matter they don't really have serious threats to their health in the form of physical trauma anyways. Maybe... maybe they enter a pit of acid and don't realize their flesh is melting away until it is to late. #54 not sure if this should count but in the spirit of replicating bodily functions... could a kandra escape the acid burning death by recreating the membranes that help produce the mucus-bicarbonate barrier? Even a few seconds of acid damage reduction could buy our super kandra the time needed to get out of the situation.

I would love to see something like a few lengths of rope being used for this. There is some insanely strong rope out there and to have a skeletal system capable of withstanding force and strain like that would be awesome. It would also bring with it the benefits of being highly invested without needing aluminum. It could be doubled over itself and such too. I would be really interested to see if something like this could pair with some F iron to lower weight enough to allow even flight. @Trusk'our do you think kandra would meet the same difficulties in creating feathers that they do hair? What about fingernails and teeth? Gotta add a new one. Not sure if it can count as a legit number as it will have to contain some Stormlight spoilers:

Okay so I am sad I didn't see this sooner. Kind of wish it was in general discussion so we didn't have to spoiler too much and could draw from other systems as well but I will do my best to add a bit here. First I will toss out my thoughts on what is already here. This can easily have the potential gecko and whale sounds added to it. In the MAG the Kandra actually have a stunt for this and it is great. Hard to say how it should work but I think that the hairs a spider has to sense the world around it. Or the hairs to allow the gecko to climb are awesome ones. MAG stunt: "Chimera: When you take a Mimicked form you may grant it one feature of another form you’ve taken in the past (e.g. granting a dog form the ability to speak)." I picture this very much like Twinsoul and his roseite under the door. Except the kandra doesn't have to take the Aether's description they can just see it. Likewise ventilation shafts could totally set up a spot for a kandra to sort of nest and root into sending out thin tendrils to all vents and spying on all rooms. Likely you would need and want specific blessings (maybe presence) to allow your mind to process all of the information at once. I agree with @alder24 that the meat would probably go bad. I like the addition tricks listed paired with feruchemy. I bet the use of bendalloy or more than likely pewter feruchemy would allow a similar end effect of being able to have some 12 foot hulking humanoid when needed without the added stresses of worrying about where you left your rotting meat suit. I have envisioned a kandra quick change magic act but with animal skins and bones. They step behind a screen as a tiger and immediately come out the other side as a shoebill stork or something epic. This sort of starts my desire to mix systems so some Warbreaker spoilers ahead: For me to extrapolate a bit more on other ideas. 47: Walking Bio Weapon- I assume Kandra are immune to most diseases. We see just how efficient it was for wiping out civilizations in the America's and I think the Kandra could do the exact same thing. Combining a couple of other ideas we could even add on to this that the Kandra could create the antibodies and inoculate their side specifically towards that disease and then go spread it in enemy encampments. The kandra could take over and infiltrate as a supplier or hunter or whatever for the enemy supplying tainted meat or food... they could even just eat a fallen body and then go back to the encampment after an outing and spread the disease via coughing and other contact methods. This becomes double spooky when thinking interplanetary war. We could potentially be seeing Kandra using that in Era 3 or any other more futuristic books. 48: Hidden blades- Need I say more? Straight assassins creed style. Another Awakening thought: 49: True body fuel: Obvious is true body metalminds or truebody used as allomantic fuel. Less obvious and another need for awakening spoiler box:

While a single Bands of Mourning will certainly open up conflict... I feel like Kelsier is a big fan of progression and he is after answers. So much tech and progression get made during arms races and war time. The existance of the tension between South and North Scadrial is going to propell them into the next eras for better or worse.

We really don't know enough about medallions to say. We know hemalurgy is as easy as finding a host to give up a power... I could totally see spikes becoming inheritance that is passed on. So far we have seen very limited medallions. It isn't quite as simple as "make medallion and gain power". It appears that medallions may be limited in what functions from a power you are able to use. Hemalurgy isn't limited in that sort of way. I think Hemalurgy and medallions are going to be used in concert with eachother in the future and I don't see the market for either of them ever going away. One of them will obviously be quite taboo and less accepted. There may be strict laws surrounding hemalurgy soon. As much as Sazed tried to hide it that art is going to gain more and more traction.

This might sound horrible, but I say if you are guilty of misusing hemalurgy your punishment should fit the crime. You get spiked appropriately and that spike can be used to better humanity... Okay maybe that sounds darker than I want. Let me try to leave more of an example. If there is no death penalty: Murder gets life in prison Muder for hemalurgy gets life in prison plus they get to spike out your innate investiture and you can spend life without a soul in prison.

This is great thank you for those WoB's. It answers a question I had posed in the cosmere discussion a while back also. So why don't allomancers just use 1-2inch tungsten ball bearings instead of coins? They can generate more of a push on them as the mass would be so much higher and with the way that the allomancer is going to be so much larger it makes sense that a mistborn gearing up for war should just carry some bigger ammo. My personal reasons for using coins instead would be the same reason so many law enforcement agencies moved to the 9mm from other larger caliber weapons. Higher capacity and you dont usually need the bigger gun against squishy targets. Why carry a few larger ball bearings into battle against enemies that wear no armor due to your magic allowing you to manipulate the armor they would wear when you can carry around a far larger amount of ammo that is just as effective against squishy targets anyway? A few hazekillers with wooden shields don't mean much against a mistborn who can choose to leave at any given moment anyway. As far as Wax's time in era 2... why burn steel when you can shoot guns anyway? That is just a different form of conserving energy. Use steel for mobility and let the inexpensive ammunition in your firearms do a lot of the work for you. Less likelihood of running into the "and then his stormlight/steel/pewter ran out" scenarios that are so common in the books. But that WoB does point to a larger, heavier projectile being a better option when facing heavily armored opponents. We just haven't explored a need for bigger ammo on Scadrial yet... guns sort of jumped past it. The more I think about it the more I would say Wax got extremely lucky with that jump. I envision steel pushes to be like shooting an arrow out of a bow. The force of the bow being your allomantic power, the weight of the object (or person's being moved) as being the broadhead of your arrow and the anchor you are trying to use being the shaft and spine of the arrow. Most pushes have such a great difference in size and power and a strong enough spine that they work out exactly how they are meant to when they are used. I think the bending of these steel beams is proof of just how unfamilure Wax was with the Duralumin. Not only a sign of how strong the push was, I think it shows that he was not expecting such force and power from the allomancy used. In order to get that effect he really needed to be way heavier via iron than normal plus have an influx of power that he was not expecting. The bending of the beams suggest that some of the energy from the push was wasted. Like shooting an arrow with a massive arrowhead and a weak spine is nearly as bad as dry firing your bow, the anchor almost didnt support him. In archery that comes when both the arrow head is to heavy and the power of the bow is too great for the spine. A heavy arrowhead alone and a heavier bow alone dont usually end with damaged arrows, but both together can lead to catastrophic failure. If the Duralumin splits the possible force between beams I would say 1 less beam and they would have surely shattered under that weight, a weight that Wax likely was not unfamiliar with using for jumps in the past. But had he been lighter, while the beams wouldnt have buckled and he could have gotten a better push, would he have had the ability to play with conservation of momentum to make the jump? Anyways, I am no engineer nor physicist so I really dont know if this comparison is fair. I do think that archery offers a better explanation for how steel pushes work than guns in my mind but I am open to that being changed. Maybe you could compare it to a really hot load being run through a chamber and barrel that just arent made for it (I fired a really hot .44 mag through my marlin a while back that a buddy had loaded up for me and it about destroyed that pretty lever gun). I definitely like the example used and pointed out by @PapaGeoff and it is a fun thing to look at. We don't see a ton of examples of steel or iron being used and the anchor almost breaking, usually it just does or it doesn't.

I think the memories are confirmed to be Kelsiers aren't they? That said his lack of powers doesn't exclude him from using a medallion to store and even have someone else view. That isn't to say that those memories couldn't possibly be corrupt or altered. I just think that the presence of medallions in general give plenty of evidence for them being legit memories of Kelsier himself regardless of his power status.

Personally, I think Zinc is criminally underrated. More processing speed. Nothing more to be said. All of those small undervalued feruchemy metals are the ones that would make a survival mode type of character so awesome. Keeping extra breath, determination, warmth, sleep, and food or drink all open up the door to such cool character moments. The things that make surviving the cognitive realm hard would be trivialized by a well stocked up feruchemist. I am a bit of a fan of the YouTube channel Fandabi Dozi... he does a lot of survival stuff and I can't help thinking about a survival feruchemist with a big greatkilt and his metalminds going into the wild. As a fan of the show Alone I think what I would take as my 10 items. The greatkilt, a good length of rope and some fishing gear are 3 obvious ones. A set of metalminds would be the next. Determination to push through the lonely times. Some bronze so I can sleep away boredom and stay awaken during dangerous times. Bendalloy and gold are obvious. Cadmium and brass could be used to let you dive for spear fishing even in the cold. You could be down for a ton of time and not need to surface.

Oof. It has been a good 12 years since I read Mistborn. Yeah it is the stones. For some reason my mind thought that she braced herself against the stone and pushed with duralumin. But it was iron against multiple anchors I guess. Good catch with the duralumin. I think I misunderstood what was being said there. A duralumin push should split the power of the push and that makes sense. Duralumin on a single coin should be far greater than duralumin pushing a bunch of coins. That does make more sense. Who knows how much steel Wax had for that duralumin push anyways. It could have been a ton. I do think that the iron feruchemy still likely played a large role in making that jump but there is a world where he simply had a chunk of steel all being burnt at once. I still don't think the Steel beams would bend without iron feruchemy in this case as a stronger push with no opposition would simply throw him further faster. As for the steel being split between multiple beams. I would like to think that the bigger the metal you are pushing on the more force you can generate. Perhaps that is limited only to normal steel pushes.

Exciting to potentially see an engineers thoughts on this. I have to ask about Vin and the scene with the horses... In my mind I always viewed steel as burning per push. Each different line offered a different push. If you push on more lines you burn more steel and you generate the same force on each line you push regardless of pushing on a bunch of horses or a single coin. I really need to reread some mistborn because until reading your post I had never thought of steel as having a limited amount of power split between multiple objects. As I mentioned the scene where Vin duralumin pushes on the horses makes me want to disagree. As well as every scene with multiple coins being used. If using a handful of coins allows for multiple projectiles that all work wouldn't this theory allow a single coin to be shot at far greater speeds and with far greater force? The doors in front of the well of Ascension when Vin duralumin pushes them open. Why would she push on them both if that split the force? Pushing a single door would double it and be far more efficient right? I would be curious if you have specific examples of it working like this as I really don't remember it ever being described as less power when multiple pushes are happening at once. @PapaGeoff I imagine the duralumin push combined with his iron allomancy might be what explains it. I really, after so much effort, don't understand the whole conservation of momentum thing. In my mind this example is the closest thing to rocketing off there is in the book. The jump was impossibly long and I would like to make a case saying that it was impossible even for a duralumin steel push unaided by iron feruchemy. If Wax was far heavier and he pushed it could explain these support beams or whatever bending. If Wax then instantly stored as much weight as possible I feel like conservation of momentum could explain the ability to make that jump as it would have taken far more force to get him airborne in the first place. Is it that cutting your weight in half would double your speed? Either way we know steel is only half of his tool kit. And we know that in order for Vin to break the doors she had to brace herself. I think those beams could only be bent, even with duralumin, if Wax was bracing himself (without pewter he would surely die) or he was tapping a large amount of weight to push into them with and use the conservation of momentum to get that extra umph to get him to the ship. The jump should not have been possible and Kelsier had already spoken of allomantic steel being garbage over water (even knowing he has no allomancy that just makes sense).

Yeah healing kind of kills the fun here. My mind goes beyond that though. Thinking prosthetics I start thinking 6 million dollar man. Not just a matter of having some invested item to replace an arm or a hand or whatever but something created via the magic systems to act and perform better than a hand or an arm. Again the ropes Vasher awakens to lift him up onto ledges or lower him down. They did it effortlessly. Awakened limbs are likely better than non augmented limbs. Heck they are likely better than limbs on stormlight. Healing is busted in the cosmere and it is hard to argue with that. But for those who don't have access to healing they could be augmenting and creating prosthetics that go far beyond what a normal fleshy limb could do even with all of the cosmere arts. Flash back to (Alcatraz spoilers) All really neat visuals and really fun ways to use the magic that likely won't need to be explored because cosmere healing overshadows all. With limitless power on Roshar and 2 classes that literally can raise the dead (except for beloved characters who Brandon wants to die for dramatic effect). I really don't know how anyone would need prosthetics. It would be a complete shame if somehow the surge of regrowth usage were to become monetized...

I am genuinely shocked that this thread was started yesterday. After having the YouTube algorithm heathens send me a "Lie's of P" short and then binging more than a couple game play videos (though I don't play any games anymore) I couldn't help but immediately wonder how I could place a character with that asthetic into the cosmere and have it be functional. I really like @Duxredux point about Roseite. There isn't a ton of information on it but I assume that if the artwork of twinsoul sitting cross-legged inside of the roseite golems torso is legit then the Aether has perfect qualities for acting as a prosthetic... being able to move on its own it could absolutely function as any limb. Things I wish I knew about roseite would be this. When roseite is used to make something does it require constant flow of water to maintain it and work it or is the cost frontloaded enough that maintaining it is trivial? The Kandra point is great. For my purposes (lies of P arm stuff) It makes perfect sense to have a kandra with metallic truebody mixed up with some steampunk-ish tech going on to make sweet arms. Awakening is another one I really want to explore with this. I think awakened shirt tassles becoming as hands plus seeing ropes lift persons up and over ledges is prefect proof that Awakening can do it easily. I have had visions of ramping that up with the 9th heightening and using a bunch of steel cables and ropes as Doc Ock arms. Even thin cables have insane tensile strength and working loads... at the 9th heightening it wouldn't even just be long metal limbs for carrying you around and fighting for you but you could also forge the inner section of the steel cable into long thin daggers and the outer pieces of cable to lay over the blades as an awakened and invested sheath. This would give you access to longer limbs that are awakened metal plus awakened blades hidden in the cable wraps. The breath cost might be high but they could likely carry you around as limbs plus be extra arms and shields to bat away even shardblade attacks all while concealing awakened shardblade daggers. You could use them to run up walls hold on to the ceiling... break your falls... With awakened rope you could un wrap the last few inches of ropes and create fingers and hands for the ropes too. For a whacky combining of powers... Awakened ropes with roseite grown up them and able to be shaped into whatever you need. I don't know how well this would work but if a golem was able to form joints enough to move around I don't see why there couldn't be some roseite / awakened version of an Iron Spider suit with the instant kill command... roseite spikes and points growing off the ends of the ropes and the awakened ropes acting on their own to stab/ punch any enemies. Get yourself bendalloy compounding and you have unlimited regrowing roseite armor / weapons / prosthetics. Not to mention a time bubble of awesomeness that lets you fine tune the commands and a god adjacent character whispering into your mind what they want you to know. I imagine that any of the Aethers would be beyond happy to give a bud to a bendalloy compounder. At least I picture them as being thirsty and greedy. My head cannon is that they want the water at least as badly as the user wants to use the power. (In fact my head cannon has Silajana coaxing Twinsoul to use his powers the way Nightblood wants to be drawn.) Anyways very likely I am far off topic now. I would imagine that other systems could do more as well and potentially do it better but this is the limit of my readings so far and the systems I went to as I googled: 17th shard invested prosthetics.

I can totally see an allomancers box of gobstopper sized metal balls all with layers of different metals. I don't think you need the duralumin core. I believe that all of the duralumin would burn itself away even if it does preserve the other metal. If all the duralumin is connected it would most likely be a waste. But as @Trusk'our said I think multiple beads would work best. What metals are best used with duralumin? Probably would only need a few of these beads made. Some alternating duralumin and steel others alternating duralumin and pewter or iron or the emotional allomantic metals. Maybe time bubbles with duralumin could do a thing? My big question would have to be this. Duralumin gnats can still burn duralumin right? So even if you reached a point where all of your ingested beads were duralumin only you could just burn a couple of those layers off. What if you placed a slice of metal in between the two of them that can't be burnt? Or some other food safe option? And then you alternate sides. Or just a metal that is often burnt but not always on say tin, copper or bronze. Using a ball bearing of steel and duralumin again with copper being the middle divider. DSDSCDSDS This would always allow a section of steel being available for each section of duralumin and leave you with a commonly used metal in-between. Heck if you put aluminum in between you could always purge your system following a day of use.

So I was just throwing together a bunch of numbers and got a ton of decent data points for different ammunition as well as hammers as found in @therunner and my conversation Spheres vs Shards. Kaladins fall is still the most energy I can come up with. Not by a ton. The shardhammer at 100kg, as well as the 700 nitro and 50 BMG are all right behind it with hot load outs (just like a hammer can be swung slower or faster the ammunition can be loaded differently) all of these come out to somewhere in that 20,000 joules range. Being a forged in fire fan I also calculated out the biggest sword they ever made. It weighed 15lbs only but landed that ~6 foot blade length and I feel it is a good comparison for the shardblades we see most commonly in the dueling arena. I had it swing at 40m/s (thinking shardplate would enable you to swing it that fast at least) and got about 5400 joules. And assuming a parshendi club generates 1600 joules and the slings do just under that I think this might work. In my efforts to make sense of all of this I fell back on my old gaming habits and tried to remember those years tanking in various MMOs. In WoW there are 3 or 4 main concepts I think could be combined to explain most of what we see shardplate do. First off, the HP bar for a person wearing shardplate is really actually just stormlight and what makes living plate a cut above the rest is that they are a raid teams worth of healers combined with the tank so that plate will likely suffer far less in the long run. There is a good argument to be made that living plate could have higher base mitigation as well but it we push that too too far we break my brain further. So onto a bit of my theory (decided I wanted feedback before I deliver it in another thread): Like a shield in the MMO plate has a specific amount of damage that simply never gets through. I think 1500 joules or so is a spot that is arguable for what we see in world. Anything 1500 joules or less is going to be wholly ineffective. So long as the plate was fresh and had not sustained a large enough hit yet. The plate could be carrying a 75% kinetic energy reduction at that point. The first time the plate gets hit it lowers the damage reduction threshhold by an amount. Maybe the next hit only needs 1400kinetic energy to start to make those cracks. As well as weakening the large 75% damage reduction down to a more manageable amount. So give the plate a 10,000 kinetic energy threshold hold. It starts out absorbing 1500 kinetic energy minimum without issues and lowers all other kinetic energy by 75%. Your 20,000 kinetic energy kick, guns or shardhammer are only getting 5000 of that energy through. But at 50% broken the plate now only has a flat mitigation of 700 kinetic energy as it is losing structural integrity and it is fragile enough that it can only block upwards of 50% of the next blast. That gun can only do 10000 to it. Here we hit a snag. I think the plate will always give you one last hold. All overkill on a piece of plate gets negated by the outward force of the explosion. Shardblades are magical and avoid all damage resistance by the plate. So that first 5000 energy blow damages close to what the first 20000 energy shot or kick does. Plus it would allow the parshendi hammer time parties to make sense as well. I think it works fairly well considering the fact that it is powered by stormlight. More stormlight like in the case of radiants could heal back and as it heals back it will gain its resistances again proportionally. Your big hits still have devastating effects while bringing a 20000 joule hit in line to make sense with the 5000 joule strike of a shardblade against full plate and still stopping the 1 shot potentials. It probably needs a bunch of tweaking but it is the only way I can make sense of what we see in book. Kaladins drop kick didnt specifically say he broke 4 different pieces of plate just that it cracked in 4 corners on the back and not at the point of impact. I kind of picture it as cracking at the edges as the plate tried to absorb the energy but a Shockwave hit where it wrapped around the guy and cracked at those corners. Now for some in world justification for the mechanic: It is the spren making up the plates moral that allows them to be so efficient. Large hits break moral quickly but many smaller hits will also wear it down. As they take a massive blow they see failure more and more just as they would if 3 guys surrounded them smashing over and over. Stormlight directly feeds their moral and thus you have healing plate. Their last ditch effort when dropped to 0% moral is to violently shove back one last stand against the thing hitting them before breaking fully. Investiture resists investiture and all shard blades cancel them out. Only think I can't wrap my head around is why everyone wouldn't just carry living shardhammers if this is anywhere near correct. I guess if it works in this way nothing can get more than a 1 shot. A living shardhammer could do it but the overkill rule limits it to 1 piece or whatever at a time. For normal non shard weapons you would need 40000+ kinetic energy to destroy a single piece of armor in 1 shot. If you can land a hit on multiple pieces of armor they simply divide the damage dealt amongst themselves.

Moved this whole thing to a different thread I mentioned you in.

I guess that all depends on if I get any powers from that place and have the knowledge of how to use them. If I was just a total random person being dropped into a world with no powers I would probably choose Scadrial. Elendel has been saved from Autonomy and it seems there will be some peace for now. I imagine they have indoor plumbing and some really bomb resturaunts to eat at (thinking A and F tin using chefs should do a bangup job with their flavor profiles). Plus there is so much wonder to explore. If I could enter with a single breath I would choose Hallendren. Because I really want breath. In fact the idea of waking up somewhere random at the end of a book... hows this: I wake up in Hallendren, I remember nothing because I was murdered by lifeless an hour ago but now I am brought back as a returned. Done and Done.

I wonder what shardhammers are made from. I guess it wouldn't take a ton of volume to hit those weights with one seeing how much exponential growth a sphere has as it gets bigger and bigger. I assume the shaft must also be made of a fairly durable metal as well. At what I would imagine is a 3 inch in diameter shaft. (I believe it describes it as bending and becoming useless for Dalinar at one point.) Given that the energy gets to such bonkers levels when thinking about the size of needing 2 people to carry it I think it is another instance of Brandon going with the rule of cool and in writing it sounded awesome but it is really hard to explain yourself afterwords. If a 60kg shard hammer does less damage with a strike than Kaladins drop kick I wonder how it was that only kaladins legs broke. He honestly should have popped into a pile of goo. I really don't know how to accurately calculate a hammer swing but 60kg at 35m/s would be 36700 joules. Far above the 23800 you estimated kaladin used. Again I have no idea how to calculate a 60kg hammer as it isn't as simple as all of the mass hitting at once like a ball being thrown. But the hammer cracks a piece of plate where Kal broke 4 right? I see the shardhammer much the same way I see Dalinars catching the chasmfiend. It makes plate look incredible and rule of cool is awesome. But then we find out chasm fiends have a spren bond to make themselves magnitudes lighter than they should be for their size out of necessity and want to breathe. Saying 2 people needed to carry it to him could have been largely in part because of the terrible balancing issues a hammer that large must have. Like moving a super awkward piece of furniture. Not saying it couldn't be that large but it would be very difficult to move a hammer shaped that way even if it was half that weight. Anyways I am trying to process how the plate might work out and I think I may have an idea but I will make a new thread to grab more eyes. I think 22 posts back and forth between the same 2 people may be less welcoming when I know I have gone so far off topic.

Since I am hopeless at physics, I hope you don't mind me leveling another question at you. So an 8kg hammer (at least this is what the post I linked seemed to estimate a shardhammer as) could generate nearly 5k joules if moving 35m/s. We see that in world only shardbearers can weild that. And I imagine that shardplate would largely absorb any shock back to the user. Do you think a pewter allomancer could weild a shardhammer? I assume a jacked up pewter ferring could to a degree. What if you threw in some F steel... enough to double their speed and coincidentally double the speed with which they can swing it to 70m/s. According to my super basic kinetic energy calculator it says that 8kg at 70m/s could produce 19600 joules. My question is this. Besides needing to crank up some form of investiture to save the shardhammer from deformity or even a catastrophic failure, what is going to happen to that feruchemist / mistings arms? Say an Allomantic pewter/Feruchemical steel twinborn. I know pewter will strengthen the bones to an extent but if all of that energy suddenly stops when it smashes into a piece of shardplate would it destroy the users arms? We saw what happened to Kaladins legs but I am not sure how much of that shardhammer would absorb that before reaching the arms. It is described as having a haft the thickness of a man's wrists. So I assume there is a lot of material there to work with. I assume this transference of energy back down the shaft is going to be an issue with every weapon you make. Steel feruchemy is already super dangerous but how badly will the user be hurt and what are some ways you think that could be solved? Do you think Awakening and just jacking up the investiture in some gloves or in the weapon itself would offer a way to absorb what energy gets kicked back after a blunt strike that isn't specifically passing through the enemy? I think I remember that the shardblades did more damage to plate when swung like they meant it too. I feel like the calculator hints at doubling the speed = a 4x or more increase in kinetic energy. If it takes 2 strikes with a shardblade to crack plate would a single strike at twice the speed pretty much shatter that piece? Even at that you would probably have to deal with some form of recoil back into your arms so long as it doesn't pass straight through the enemy shard bearer right? My next question would simply be if you think that shardplate offers a special kind of energy absorbing benefit or if any cohesive armor would strengthen the structure of your body to reduce that?

Sometimes I get worried I come across as confrontational. While I get heated around the subjects of shards and I desperately want to see a set of plate smashed to bits in a single hit... I also try hard to respect the books as they are written. And thus I am in love with trying to take my limited knowledge of ballistics learned via hunting / reloading and archery and apply them to magic systems. I LOVE awakening but picturing it in my mind is a really difficult thing. In a way it is the most magical magic system that I have ever tried to picture. Ropes coming to life and acting like arms. It makes me wonder how long the rope would need to be... like a longer sling will wing the shot further. Or a long sling set at the end of a long lever as seen with trebuchets and slingstaffs. But from an awakening sense... how fast will that rope move to send the projectile. How long does it have to be? In a random scenario where Wax is thrown onto another planet with no guns but access to beautiful ball bearings of many sizes... I picture a harness with a few long lengths of rope and the ends splayed open to make hundreds of tiny fingers. The rope can grab a projectile and Wax can increase his weight to anchor down the entire contraption while the rope heaves it forward and then he can give it the extra punch by steel pushing it from that space. Honestly with a setup that allows him to use massive 4+kg ball bearings he could absolutely decimate things. Maybe more work than with the gun though part of me thinks that his ability with the gun is because he has built in lazer sights and when he swings it around the steel line is moving... he just pulls the trigger when it hovers over his target. Totally cheating. I have no idea the accuracy of an awakened sling. I bet it is far more accurate than a human slinging shot. If awakened strip of cloth can snatch an arrow mid flight I have to assume the awakened appendage / spiritual eye coordination is about 100% dead on. Edit: I don't hate myself trying to combine awakening with any other magic system as it appears to be wonderfully mobile and doesn't seem to be impacted by other magics so hence my working my way to it as well.

Likely a better option if firearms are off the table is via awakening to awaken ropes or ribbons to sling these ultra heavy metal shots at the enemy. If Wax is able to push on bullets I would assume that a mix of being able to sling an 8 lb ball bearing through any means you would simply increase its effectiveness with a push vs a push alone. Vasher spoke of ropes slinging massive rocks and I sort of pictured them more like a trebuchet. Just for force and energy generations sake I figure I would ask your opinion.

Do you think that awakening a shardhammer would make it more effective at cracking plate than even a shardblade? Shardblades are great at cutting souls and sweeping through live fleshy folks with ease taking out many in a single swipe. They also carry the benefit of being invested which allows them to damage shardplate well even if blades are not designed to chip into armor well. Given that a shardhammed is designed for armored opponents do you think that awakening one would channel that investiture to do that job even better than it already does or would it just bring it up to where the shardblade is at damaging plate? I assume that a shardhammer would struggle to effortlessly mow down a file of enemies the way a shardblade does but maybe the investiture would allow you to push more? Or do you think the investiture to awaken a shardhammer is totally wasted for everything except to make it resistant to a shardblade in that it won't be cut through so casually?