Tamriel Wolfsbaine

Any investiture? Given that Vasher can fuel his divine breath with stormlight do you think he would be able to hack this as well with it pretty easily? Or would stormlight get used up alot faster?

Okay. I may have watched too much bloodborne lately. I just saw the cutscene with those cool looking all black horses and had a thought about midnight essence. This all pairs with other questions I had about the same stuff but when I was looking at a raven queen patron warlock for D&D as well. Midnight essence pets! In a world of RNG where I roll 2 dice for twinborn characters, each dice choosing a different metal from the table I landed 2 14s. Bendalloy Compounder. This roll was last last summer and I have been trying to work out what flavor would make it work. I had enjoyed some thoughts on endless rosite mech and weapons but then I watched me some good old fashion bloodborne and I want to make it work for midnight essence. What kind of abilities do you think this would open up? Just a straight pet class with near endless pets thanks for endless water? I thought I remembered reading something about seeing through your pets eyes but I have no access to Tress atm. So I need yalls help. Would an aetherbound with midnight essence be able to summon a flock of bird like essences to be spies? Or a midnight mount to ease the burden of walking? Could you change a creation from range? Small snakes that grow after a bite and constrict? I am probably missing something critical as I have no access to the book atm anyways. But figured I would ask.

There is some confusion on this. Ch. 3 of BoM is referenced on the coppermind. I had headcannoned the idea that a feruchemist storing all identity could potentially siphon all of the attributes out of their opponents metalminds in a sort of leeching kind of way. If that were the case then perhaps the trueself ferring could hold a medallion granting access to steelminds and then clear all of their identity tapping into the metalmind and then restoring it to a new metalmind with no identity at all. It would still be inaccessible to anyone who doesn't have that power. What it would do is allow the military to pay civilian workers to create an "ammo" for their medallion using soldiers and resupply them constantly with full metalminds. This is going far off topic of making shards but I am so anxious for Era 3 and 4 to see just how bananas Scadrials tech advancement allows them to get.

Absolutely. Not all of these metals will work as weapons or armor. I simply mean there is a form of production available that could achieve a similar result on a large scale for all of the metals without the need of murdering thousands of people. If you have an aluminum ferring then couldn't they be paid to blank their identity and tap / restore all of the attributes of a large collection metalmind and put out large scale identity-less metalminds as well? This would be in combination of a medallion to access all identity locked stores of a large collection metalmind and then store it all back again as an unkeyed and unlocked metalmind?

I really like the idea of the medallions in the floor. I was definately thinking less storing into the medallions and more using the medallions to access the ability to store and have ingots that they store into. A metalmind factory if you will. Medallions and ingots that are unable to be removed except by specific employees with the keys. You go in and are assigned an ingot or two or three and the necessary medallions. You use the medallion to fill the ingots and then those ingots, once filled, can go and be worked into metalmind weapons / armor / jewelry. You could hire nicrobursts to aid the speed with which your compounders can transfer and multiply the attributes stored. I agree money solves most of the problems. This would make for some epic heist stories and would allow anyone to buy full identity blanked feruchemical metalminds in the shape of whatever they want. Want a dagger or a piece of armor that acts as a metalmind? You would be paying premiums for this and I am not sure how happy Kelsier would be with a world economy based around feruchemically charged metalminds being available only to those noble enough to afford them.

Curious about metalmind creation? Could you take medallions and pay people to store? Wr have soothing parlors already. You could have a pseudo plasma donation bank. People get paid to use your medallions and store attributes to create full metalminds. Noone has to die and you could toss bonuses to allomancers who can compound for you based on what metals you use. How to keep them honest? That is a discussion. Maybe awakened ropes around the neck to kill anyone who tries to steal a medallion? Perhaps some cubes loaded with chromium with security? I am not sure how the identity would work for this. Perhaps you need someone with an aluminum medallion to tap and restore everything with blanked identity?

I was watching some threaded cane action from bloodborne and got curious about awakening. Awakened objects can only really move if they are already able to move. If instead of a normal sword, nightbood were created from the threaded cane do you think he would be able to self transform and whip around to destroy the evil he sees or do you think he would simply destroy everything at that point user included? What if you used a tamer command? Do you think you could have a sentient bladed whip turned unbreakable cane when needed? Perhaps one that can transform at your whim and move itself in a similarly dexterous way to awakened ropes and cloth? Only with the added benefits of being soul cutting metal?

I understand and believe this. It makes sense that fluid would be the best of both worlds in a way. It really highlights just how much investiture is on Roshar compared to Scadrial. I don't know if all of the mists of Scadrial and all of the chunks of God metals there plus a perpendicularity or two can possibly add up to anything near what we see on Roshar. Preservation made how many chunks of lerasium? I am sure less than a single blades worth. On Roshar you have a moving storm dumping a dead gods investiture everywhere all the time and you have that same dead gods body being used by 10 huge swords plus this ability for the spren to all manifest as far more than what a small pile of Lerasium could have done. Imagine if one mistborn were given a similar masses worth of lerasium as a single honorblade. Then let that mistborn breathe in and use the mists at their whim. Maybe I am missing something but I genuinely feel like preservation and ruin were just lesser shards from the start. It is totally possible that I could have missed a concept pointing to the shattering being largely unequal parts and 3 of the largest shards investiture wise all ended up in the same system.

Ugh! Life is to chaotic atm to read almost anything. I think I will attempt to finish off TLM today and tomorrow via audible but stormlight might have to wait for a new job and more drive time. I won't lie... I keep searching for some epic YouTube reading of this fight. I have listened to kaladin getting 3rd oath a few hundred times by now... so I need some new epic fight to listen to.

I want to read that fight. Did Vasher awaken at a range in that fight? That requires the 9th heightening and from what we see of the God King that is far more intuitive than silent Awakening. As soon as Sus was able to speak he awakened everything in that joint with ranged Awakening. He didn't know he could do it without his tongue or else he would have destroyed everyone at range already. I think if Vasher was truly that high heightening there would have been a big flashing sign of him using some ranged awakenings. I am curious why Vivenna is after him as well though. I think him not having nightblood at the moment is a big issue though. That is a lot of power to allow to float around a world where people are after power. Though it does make perfect sense for a skybreaker to be using it and I think nightblood would be at home with a weilder who has a very black and white view of what is okay and what is evil.

This is in large the way I have been thinking about it as well. Intent plays such a crucial role in the cosmere that I think a type 4 awakened entity will get far more milage out of breaths than just storing them. That is why I also believe that an awakened set of armor would be better suited for its job than shardplate even. Radiant spren > robot spren > lesser spren > super invested steel sword. Then you titrate the amount of investiture past that. I imagine it is the intent of the sentient blade that allows the cutting and a sword with 1000 breaths stored in it would probably be on the same level as aluminum for blocking other shardblades but would have two major differences. The first being that the investiture may eventually get chipped away. The second being that steel sword would be way better at its job than an aluminum sword due to the nature of steel vs aluminum. That intent and command would likely be necessary for soul severing capacity. Who is to say that you couldn't awaken a piece of armoring and then further store more breaths in it as well. I think in the case of armor we may run into issues where flexible armor is a collection of items and not one complete form. Then again perception might matter there as well given that a brigandine is made with less individual pieces than a rope is made with individual strands. If you command the whole then it would work fine. You have no cloth without hundreds and thousands of individual strands to make the whole. Edit: The resistance of cutting through a person is interesting. Is it the innate investiture that does it? Does it feel different to cut through someone with large amounts of kinetic investiture? Or would a Godking be harder to swing through with a shardblade than the normal person? As far as the sheets falling and doing nothing. The breath is still there most likely and the sheet just can't work the way it was meant to anymore. With the scene written from Kal's viewpoint it also makes perfect sense for him to see them fall after cutting and not notice anything past that because he has no reason to be paying attention to that.

I appreciate that wob. Though that brings me back to my first question here. What makes a shardblade a shardblade? You might be able to stuff all of that investirure into a metal sword or a metal piece of armor but would that make it a shardblade? Shardblades differ from plate in the huge fact that they don't break. I get that asking about type 4 entities is all RAFO territory but I am trying to figure out where the ability to not be leeched into uselessness comes from. 1000 breaths to make nightblood... he is an outlier. Perhaps 1000 breaths to make vivennas blade just a different command? If I take 1000 breaths and store them into a sword that hunk of metal will be crammed full of breaths and have the same density as the other 2. But it won't have any sentience or purpose. Do you think it would still cut through realms? Do you think it will retain its investiture as it clashes with other shardblades or do you think it will take 1 or 2 hits and then be a massive loss of 1000 breaths? Then we have to ask. If it is the sentience and a command to give the item intent that allows for that lack of being leeched when hit.... Wouldn't an awakened brigandine actually be better at resisting shardblades than typical plate? With its own sentience and 1000 breaths it would hold up indefinately. You would surely have to kill the user via blunt force at that point no? Furthermore. With enough awakened items underneath that armor to augment strength and speed and dexterity wouldn't it out scale living plate after enough augmentation? Or does the sentience not mean anything and you will get the same level of effectiveness so long as the item has enough breath stored in it because it is just that invested. Even if you don't awaken it and are a lower heightening? My thoughts used to be of needing to amass 20000+ breaths to do something like this. Now someone with the 5th heightening might be able to just store their 2000 breaths between armor and sword and have a similar effect.

@therunner @alder24 I actually agree that chainmail is not the ideal armor in everycase. My thought process is that someone like a fullborn or someone else with mad healing would do well with a piece of invested chainmail for the singular purpose of negating the 1 shot kill shardblade to the spine. I can disagree that blunt and piercing damage are the more effective ways of dealing with mail... Blunt and piercing damage exists to counter a world of armor wearers. I think there are plenty of better choice armor styles for someone who just wants to mitigate damage. In the case of someone who is specifically trying to prevent the 1 shot potential of a shardblade I really like chainmail as it is the option that perhaps keeps you most mobile and flexible during the contest. Chainmail also has a benefit of needing less investiture to fill up potentially as it is a smaller mass (I could totally be wrong here and would accept that). I also think that a brigandine would make a great set of armor to invest to resist the shardblade. However, the brigandine would be more metal to fill and not have as easy of a time protecting the neck or head where a single piece of chainmail may be able to encompass the entire spine. I am not thinking so much about access to the stored attribute as the combatant should be able to end the fight before needing to draw on those attributes. This is investiture from a compounder or awakener that is accepting of the fact that this piece of armor is only in existence to stop them from getting their eyes burnt out. You don't need to worry about gathering the investiture for use later. I totally accept that it would take quite some time to make this armor. 20+ lbs of steel would be well beyond bands levels of storage but a compounder like a fullborn could well have the time to do it. (That isn't to say they would). A body is pretty squishy and I don't know that I agree with the video @alder24 posted. I agree it will be pulled tighter but a stiff wooden back drop vs a squishy body as a back drop is quite a difference. A few pieces broken from a spike on a hammer aren't going to weaken the point of the armor which is to stop the 1 shot. Miles didnt skip a beat while instantly healing his face brain and skull after being shot in the head and I think the same argument applies to hammer blows. The mail would certainly stop a penetrating thrust before spine severing depth and so long as you are able to heal through the damage done while protecting your spine from the 7 foot shardblade the armor is doing its job. @therunner I appreciate the WoB on Vasher. You are right about a few breaths not being a worry for him. As for why they never tried metal armor awakening I imagine it is likely because the cost is so high. @alder24 has a good point about awakened armor being a thing and it just not being in the form of metal armor. Strengthened limbs and protection could well have been a cheaper attempt at copying a set of shardplate. I imagine after seeing that type 4 entities can't have their breaths retrieved, the scholars became very cautious in how quickly they jumped to dumping investiture into them. Furthermore, if it turns out that an awakened suit of armor would just lose breaths everytime it gets hit by a shardblade it would be really hard to justify if you could instead have a cloak with 100 strips of arm catching tassels to stop the blade before it hits you. Would I want to trust a cloak that can catch arrows to last clap a shardblade or arm wrestle a shardbearer who is trying to stab me? Personally, if I had the 9th heightening a blade and brigandine would be at the top of my list for things to awaken... perhaps a neck / head covering chain cowl as well if I had the breaths to spare. Then you awaken your clothing underneath to give you all of the strength enhancements and durability enhancements. That would be as close to a shardbearer as you can get through awakening but then you also have 3 separate type 4 entities talking to you all the time (pray you can get a quiet one like Vivenna). @Heilven I like the idea that there is a transference of investiture when smashing invested weapons. The idea that spren may choose to dip out during the fight after a specific draining threshold or something makes sense too. I dont think that an awakened set of armor would have that same issue and it is possible that the proper command could turn a suit of armor into an investiture leech like the blades. There is some valid basis to the idea of Vivenna's blade siphoning investiture as well and perhaps destroying on a deeper level than your Rosharan shardblade as well. Maybe Hoid would be similarly scared of it if he had more knowledge of its workings. It definitely works on a different principle though. Large stretch here... I personally believe that an awakener could potentially ruin enemy sources of fuel via color draining... the god kings awakening was turning everything to white. I think based on these wobs he could potentially ruin metals for all 3 metalic arts and create some huge issues for the abilities for gems to hold onto light for the long term. I also would venture to say that the god king could walk through Uritheru and absolutely wreck their fabrials and potentially damage the tower all together... Bottom line. Color is important in the cosmere and if a sword is draining all of the color of its victums then it is damaging them at a spiritual level unlike anything else we have seen... not just severing the connection between the 3 realms. Prepare for a load of WoBs all to do with color in the cosmere.

The purpose for chainmail and padded armor is to absorb a bunch of the impact (like an egg drop) while also protecting from the cutting edge. Specifically in the case of someone with supernatural healing who simply needs to protect their spine from being severed. Miles would not care about a rock being hurled at him nearly as much as he would be worried about a shard blade to the spine (if that is even a worry to him). A 5kg rock is going to have a fair amount of surface area and 100km/hr is still less than 100fps, tons of energy but I dont see it punching through chainmail and a person wearing padding underneath. Same argument for the shardhammer. I am not worried about the blunt force when the character is able to heal and is simply making an armor piece to stop the one shot potential of a shardblade. That is the danger of a shardblade. I am not really trying to argue for anything stronger than plate as much as I am trying to understand the material that is plate. A rock might take a few hits with the hammer to break but chainmail over padding on a body that can heal isnt going to break from any amount of hammer strikes. It doesnt have to stop the blunt trauma for a gold compounder to get a ton of milage out of it. It just has to stop enough spine shots to wear down the weilder of the shardblade. Edit: Just thought about this as well. Shardplate is probably the least consistent thing we have seen in the cosmere. Warform parshendi hammering on plate for minutes with weapons designed for it... But Kaladin cracks plate with a single dropkick. I wont pretend to know how much stormlight it would take to lash that many times but this is clearly a huge inconsistency. TWoK made shardplate wicked OP and it has only been tamed down since then both in strength and in durability.

Haha I have been there many a times. While wearing the armor it sings "can't touch this" over and over.

I can get on board with most of this. New question to pose though. If instead of metalmind chain mail we were to have an awakened chain mail that is now a type 4 entity do you think that you would be losing those breaths piece by piece? Would it hold up as well as say a piece of living plate? I still have a small insistance that there is a material difference between shardplate and invested steel. Shardplate cracks and shatters and leaks light... regardless of what is damaging it. It appears to be brittle where a tempered steel piece of chainmail would not be. I am curious if intent given to a now sapient being saying to "use this investiture to protect me from weapons" would allow it to resist far beyond plate. I am not entirely convinced that the investiture plays as big of a role as the material still. Wax can shoot through plate according to some wobs... in about the same amount of shots that a shardblade would take. Shardhammers can break through plate. A cloth with a hundred breaths or so gets cut regardless of the weapon. Chainmail would not be penetrated by a shardhammer but they can break through plate. The material being used has to play a role of some kind in it. How much of a difference it makes I dont know. What we have in the books is that if a blade can cut it or break it then a shardblade can do it faster. But I feel like you continue to look past the fact that shardplate and regular plate armor or chain mail made of steel work completely differently from the start. Regardless of investiture levels. Cloth, straw, steel, and shardplate are all different materials and they all act differently. I am trying to remember if blades pass through plate once it is locked up and drained? There is no noticeable difference in the way plate spills out stormlight when being hit by a shard or non shard weapon either is there? The lesser spren likely are less sentient than an awakened set of armor would be as well. Again this leads me to trying to understand the difference between a shardblade and an awakened steel sword. If you had enough atium to forge a sword would it be awakenable? You can store youth into it so it obviously isnt so full on its own that investiture cant be added on. Would that blade be a better option than simple steel awakened?

I enjoy Shads videos. All of those dudes were totally gassed after just a few swings of foam swords that size... I respect that shardblades are lighter than what a steel sword of the same size would be but they aren't foam. Also the blades used to deflect the attacks were foam as well. I can also respect that plate will help largely in swinging a shardblade but it doesnt change the balance. Balanced weapons exist where shardblades dont for a reason. Every other episode of forged in fire has Doug commenting on how the balance of blade x lends itself to the movement better than blade y. Shads first video on the massive sword he actually showed the impossibility that is swinging a sword like the buster sword. With one of the worlds strongest men struggling to lift the thing. I understand his point in this project is to find a design that would allow it to work but without shardplate it would be an impossibility. With shardplate you still have this horribly forward heavy monstrosity that will ruin your day to swing it a few times. The best case scenario is stormlight making it impossible to feel fatigue and having plate as well. (Likely a pewter burner could swing it as we see Vin do with the koloss blade to great effect). No doubt a huge reach advantage is a big deal but perhaps the radiants at the recreance in part abandoned their oaths with massive unwieldy blades for a reason? Deflect is the key word here. Anyone who tries to block a shardblade with a smaller blade is asking for issues. The thrusting design of a spear is why they are so efficient... doubling a spears weight and trying swing it like a large sword would take it from S tier weapon to trash tier. When smashing through plate the mass is needed and important according to that wob for sure. I am a big fan of big brutish weapons. I would love to see a koloss blade get awakened and watch a mistborn jumping around the battlefield Vin style with it. But I dont think Shad breathing heavy while swinging a big foam sword should be taken with any more than a grain of salt. Reach is great. I dont see anyone in the cosmere being as efficient in a duel using a shardblade like oathbringer as they would using a faster more balanced blade shardblade. Big swords like that are great at doing what we see them doing in the books. Swing away and clear serious space. But that is only a viable option until someone else has a smaller faster weapon that can deflect and parry that shardblade. As was said in the other post... Sylspear ftw. It is a perfect weapon.

I must apologize to @therunner for making a separate post to continue this disussion but I feel like the vs battles get less traction due to the somewhat monotonous and simetimes contentious nature of them and I would like to hear other opinions on this side conversation from one of those. The question was initially about the ability for metalminds to block shardblade strikes. After many WoBs being pulled out I think my mind has become more open to shardblades destroying metalminds after some amount of blows. However this leads me to more questions and perhaps a newer theory on invested objects. I will provide large quotes in spoilers for those who wish to be caught up on the discussion from the other post but my question at the end of this pretty well stands on its own. I do appreciate the quotes from the Vasher Kaladin clash. Do you think that Vasher has found a way to use stormlight to awaken? Do you think he was able to recover any breaths when the cloth was cut? I think these questions are vital to this discussion as there are only a couple of possible outcomes. Either the investiture was lost forever in the case of Syl severing the connection between breaths and cloth or it was simply a blade that cut the cloths and they were not able to function correctly anymore but Vasher didnt lose hundreds of breaths. Clearly invested objects rely on the material as well as the amount of investiture combination to block attacks. I am not suggesting a metalmind would be able to be so heavily invested that it would forever exist against a shardblade but I would suggest that the design of what you are using makes a difference. I strongly believe that a cloth with 1000 breaths would still be cut through faster than a metalmind with even a quarter of that total investiture level. I also believe that the nature of a plate and blade being made of spren allows them to constantly (especially when living) pull more investiture from the spiritual realm to heal themselves. I imagine Vivennas blade to be somewhere in between an honorblade and a sprenblade. The sentience of type 4 biochromatic entities likely makes them closer to sprenblades than a normal sword in more ways than the obvious "more investiture duh!" We know intent means a lot in the cosmere. Awakened objects seem to have their own specific intent (based on what the awakener pictures and commands). Type 4 or higher seem to have a specific ability to have their own interpretation of that intent as well. Perhaps it is this ability to have their own intent that allows a shardblade made via awakening to continue to be fed investiture. Perhaps this is why you cant retrieve the breaths used to create the type 4 objects we have seen. If they breaths used to create those objects are more to kickstart their life and then they pull investiture from the spiritual realm to fuel their intended purpose it would make more sense that something like a metalmind could lose its stored investiture while being struck by a shardblade until it breaks, but an awakened sword would seemingly survive far far longer, perhaps forever. That does still leave me questioning if Vasher has been using stormlight to awaken though... I really feel like a duel with Kaladin cutting multiple awakened objects could have dropped a heighening or two depending on where Vasher started breath wise. Perhaps he is not worried about losing any of his breaths due to his experience but he is on a planet where they aren't readily available for him to collect back up. Edit: I also wanted to leave this WoB that @alder24 provided in another discussion. I am happy with the idea that the shardblade in some way disconnects the investiture from the object but further WoBs would point out that physical mass definately plays a factor in how well this works. Which would suggest to me that something like padded armor surrounded by chainmail specifically designed to absorb some of those physical blows would also make a difference in how many strikes a metalmind could take from a shardblade of any shape and size.

Okay I know that this is just a word dump of WoBs but they all discuss shardblades cutting power. I am slightly torn after reading them. I wanted to believe that investiture fueled items would work like aluminum to block a shardblade. In one WoB it says the straw man would be able to block a shardblade but in my mind a sword cuts through straw so this confuses me. Then again we see regular swords cutting through awakened cloth so the investiture in an awakened object blocks shardblades but not a simple sword? Metalminds obviously can block a shardblade but how long? My issue is that we see plate leaking stormlight when it is getting cracked and broken no matter if it is hit by a rock or hit by a shardblade. So plate acts more brittle than steel. Steel would have much more give and a layer of rivited mail made of steel would have even more give than a steel plate to a physical attack. If it absorbs the physical aspects of weapon blows then we really need to understand the mechanism for shardblades destroying half shards and plate. I get that half shards and plate act like this but the way they respond to physical attacks is not so different as you pointed out... it just takes more of them. Would a layer of locks protect a persons neck from a slice from a shardblade? Would the straw man be cut in half from the blade? In the case of aluminum the blade acts just like a sword vs the aluminum and if the aluminum is not thick enough to withstand the physical blow the blade goes right through it. If investirure simply gets leeched (again the plate pouring out stormlight hints in my mind that there is no leeching happening) and the investiture blocks the shardblade attack physical attack and all, then an awakener with layers of awakened clothing might fare far better than someone behind a halfshard right? Even if each layer required 2 attacks to get through it really wouldn't be much layering before your average awakener has more protection than shardplate. Metalminds don't leak investiture when broken at all. If there are 15 hrs of speed stored in an earing and you cut it in half then you have 2 halves of an earing holding 7.5 hrs of stored speed. The types of investiture are different. Though I do appreciate the idea of the shardblade separating the parts of the item. Is investiture really working that way though? If stormlight were being separated from the items physical and spiritual why would plate leak no matter what is striking it? Would shot placement make no difference in this case? Perhaps the shardblade is simply bludgeoning the investiture off of all of the items? Sadly we haven't really seen any examples of a shardblade hitting something and then that thing being measured for its investiture. Personally I feel like it makes sense that invested items would work more like aluminum but then again... a straw man could stop a shardblade according to WoB. Maybe awakeners vs shardbearers is a better match than I thought. As for feruchemists and shardblade blocking... I honestly don't know. The aluminum chainmail is definately a favorite for shardblade sparring though. Also I never knew this and find it interesting as well. The magical cutting of shardblades exists thanks to Brandon not wanting such a gorey entry for Szeth into the world: Edit: Another thought that has crossed my mind. Shardblades don't damage nor destroy other shardblades. This goes for nightblood and vivennas blade as well. Is it the sword shape that prevents them from being damaged and seemingly leeched or something else? Is there a breakpoint of investiture where a shardblade cannot drain the item? If there is it would appear that awakened metal is capable of reaching that point. The bands likely could as well. Or do you think enough strikes from shardblades to other shardblades would destroy them too? We see Nightblood damage an honorblade. Is it the amount of investiture present? Because if it is then shardplate, even living, is far far far less invested than an item capable of delivering these investiture severing attacks. What do you suppose the breakpoint is? Nightblood took only 1000 breaths. You could say he continues to consume more but vivennas blade works similarly to shardblades and doesn't appear to be a constant investiture sucking item. I think there has to be more to invested metal than what we are seeing and I think sticky investiture is far better vs shardblades than leaky light.

I just found this: I think it is kind of an interesting find. The traditional shardblade size is viewed by Brandon as a negative for duels. I know loving shards can be any weapon but the reach of a 6 or 7 foot long blade is not necessarily a boon in a fight against an opponent with a more agile and modestly sized weapon.

Definately steel and iron battles are tricky because allomantic strength doesn't necessarily mean that much when weight is involved. Not only would a person a full head or more taller than you likely weigh far more but inquisitors could have had F iron as well potentially. As for physical enhancement it could have been a combination of iron spikes as well. Just 1 iron spike would supplement speed as well as strength and A pewter would simply magnify any of those changes.

This is a thing I have thought about a lot. How does investiture block a shardblade? I dont know that is is the investiture itself so much as invested materials used to make the object / item. Investiture doesnt block the blade. Investiture blocks the magical cutting of a shardblade. The material is what matters for blocking blades. A highly invested awakened cloth may be able to grab onto a shardblade lastclap style but if the blade were to hit the cloth it would cut it like any other sharp sword would cut through that cloth. The type of investiture surely matters: Stormlight leaks quickly from broken gems and the brutal blows of a shardblade to crack what is holding that stormlight are why halfshards and deadplate have issues. Living plate surrounding a radiant who is using light constantly obviously will heal those cracks faster (perhaps as they happen). Those cracks in deadplate and halfshards arent healing quickly or efficiently enough to matter in the long run. Deadplate can regrow itself with stormlight but nowhere near as fast as living plate. Metalminds dont lose investiture when they are broken or cut. Feruchemical storage seems to be very very sticky. (Much the same as breaths would be to cloth but this is to metal). I imagine feruchemically charged metalminds would be able to constantly withstand blows from a shardblade and never lose that ability as shardblades don't actually leech investiture. The metalmind would not last all that long as armor against heavy meaningful blows from a shardblade but the failure would be due to deformation not a lack of being able to stop the magical cutting ability of the blade. The advantage of having metalminds as armor would be that you can heal the damage underneath as normal blunt force damage. Until the blade could naturally break through the metalmind there will be no magical cutting ability no matter how many blows are delivered as metalminds dont leak investiture and shardblades arent leeching in anyway. It is far better to have your spren turn into a blunt weapon to deform the metalmind as quickly as possible than to keep swinging with a sword hoping to sever the spine of someone wearing protective metalmind armor. I go back and forth on what is most efficient for the fullborn / feruchemist but I do believe chainmail made entirely of metalminds would be the best option as you could probably fill it faster and it is harder to deform while providing plenty of protection from the cutting edge of a shardblade. If there is any evidence that shardblades do leech investiture vs just breaking things and it leaking out I am willing to change my mind on this but given that metalminds can be seperated and split up without losing power (just having it split with the metalmind) I really don't think a shardblade breaking a metalmind would do anything to that metalminds ability to stop the cutting edge with either half next time as well. The only reason we see plate and halfshards work the way we do is because stormlight is not sticky and leaks freely when not contained in a perfect gem or piece of plate. When the plate or gems get cracked the investiture granting them magical protection flows out of them as freely as water does when poured out of a container. The bigger the crack the bigger the pour spout. The best magical protection from shardblades is metalmind / awakened chainmail on top of padding (If an awakened piece of padded clothing can be worn underneath the chainmail to provide it the ability to move thus making it harder to break that is even better). The gold healing of a person wearing this type of magical armor would certainly prove to be a huge boon and since chainmail can easily be worn covering the entirety of the spine then a fullborn with this in place would be virtually immune to a spine severing blow anyways. You would have to actively leech the investiture from the metalminds and shardblades dont leech.

Just spit balling a bit here. The vs battles also have a tendency to assume power usage when it wasn't explicitly written out too. Who is to say that Kaladin didn't lash his opponent in that instance as well? Dalinar could have been using a surge in a way to help with the Boulder as well. I have heard of things like "the mom lifted the car" or whatever but I am really interested in a legit documented case of an average person lifting a ton+ the WR deadlifts are just at that 500kg mark and that is still a far far cry from a ton. Rock is also another example of something else happening behind the scenes. Swimming in pools of God powers....

I was just thinking about a lady I know who is in her late 80s and still remembers my birthday after hearing it 1 time. She can't tell what color my car is or if it was big or small but she remembers the exact license plate, after seeing it 1 time! Her memory is perfect. And it takes her exactly no time to recall this information. It was said that TLR had perfect memory. I kind of wonder if copper stores a memory but 10x from compounding if that would imprint it more into your self and less so just multiplying it into metalminds. Perhaps copper compounding would allow for perfect recall of things. Then the zinc compounding would still inch it out in the computing part but there are less computations to be made when you remember everything perfectly like this old friend of my wife I met.

Yeah healing is a powerful mechanic (as if we don't see it in the cosmere). The lack of it is one of my favorite parts of Warbreaker. I loved how it was used in Alloy of Law and I found Miles to be a total boss of a character. Where it utterly failed in the cosmere was SA. Swords that can 1 shot everything except the people who get them for free in their kits plus have infinite healing from the same 1 shot moves... totally weakened the entire series. Kaladin had a whole 2 paragraphs where he was sweating after losing his arm. 2 whole paragraphs for the audience to worry before learning that he was infact immortal. It didn't even last a paragraph when Shallan got stabbed in the heart. The sword went in and then she took a breath and any worry you had for the character was instantly gone. Sometimes in D&D I felt similar feelings. Yeah your groups tank just got stomped on for 99 out of 100 health but because he has 1 he still has full function of his kit and can land the final slash to the giants big toe that kills it. I'm glad to hear more DMs making damage punishing. In the MAG they have breakpoints. Damage is damage is damage until you hit those breakpoints. If you take 25% of your current health as damage you get a burden this is usually just an injury that will make the rest of the fight harder but easily healed through a breather or two. If you take 50% of your current health you get a more serious burden. This one will take a session or two to heal and will make the rest of the fight harder. 75% of your current health and you are severely impaired for the rest of the fight and the burden could very well be permanent (an arm gets cut off. Over time you can learn how to fight with just 1 and not take penalties but continuing the current fight puts your character at serious risk of death). It opens a ton of options for antagonist NPCs as well as your PCs to grow. Maybe your PC shows or is shown mercy? Maybe your PC makes that last second escape and has to train back to take revenge with his last good arm later. Anyways. Kind of back on topic. I think that F zinc and F Copper totally synergize well together. But I am curious what is the benefit of Feruchemical zinc? Couldn't compounding steel allow you to think through a situation just like zinc plus give more combat benefits? (Basically action surge of we want a D&D comparison).