Tamriel Wolfsbaine

And I strongly suggest making a feruchemist choose to tap before a roll as well. If you allow them to tap after seeing a result they will naturally meta game that to death. This would also help balance the charge economy. (At least for the rolls happening in time sensitive moments.) Building in negative effects from a failed roll turned into a secondary roll would help balance as well. Random idea for chromium: advantage / disadvantage dice per breakpoint of charges spent. I guess gold would need to be used reactively. Is it a free action each time it is used or will action economy limit gold use?

Yes. As someone who has lots of MAG experience the feruchemy system can feel quite broken. The ability to store on "breathers" same as rests really makes it quite powerful. When you use many charges you not only get the dice bonus because instead of 1 d20 you stack up to 10 d6 dice to try to fish for doubles. The problem is that nat 6s are not counted for doubles. You could technically roll 10 6s and still fail that roll. In fact part of what is fun is that in MAG rules you can never get the maximum outcome... unless you are a feruchemist. When tapping many multiples of a metalmind in increments of 10 you increase your outcome automatically. In D&D terms it would be like adding 5 to your result for each increment of 10 charges you spend. This can get outrageous quickly. A base feruchemist starts with a rating of 3 allowing for a maximum of 30 charges to be used in a single turn. Imagine if every character at level 1 in your campaign could add 15 to their results? For a ferring alone it is a rating of 5 allowing for 50 charges to be spent at once. Which would be the equivalent to adding 25 to the result of a roll. In D&D you could have level 1s landing hits against dragons with ease. The balancing act comes from storage. Per the laws of feruchemy you would naturally store during your downtime and rests. In the MAG a short rest allows someone to store 10x their rating and a long rest allows them to store 30x their rating. Meaning a level 1 feruchemist could start the game with 90 charges in each metal. Allowing for up to 3 total uses of the maximum effectiveness (the +15 to a result in D&D terms) for each metal they have. Tapping individual charges is sometimes more powerful as you can increase your dice pool to the maximum of 10 many times over this one. If 1 charge equals 1 dice and you are starting with 5 dice and use 5 charges to give you 10 then you can stretch that a lot more. If you think like D&D it would be like out your stats to a cap 18 times per long rest. However maxed stats to a cap in D&D do more for your chance of winning a roll than in the MAG. Difficulty: CHANCE OF SUCCESS, BY DIFFICULTY Dice Pool 1. 2. 3. 4. 5 2 dice. 14% 11% 8% 6% 3% 3 dice. 37% 30% 22% 15% 7% 4 dice. 61% 50% 38% 26% 13% 5 dice. 80% 68% 53% 37% 20% 6 dice. 91% 81% 66% 48% 26% 7 dice. 97% 89% 78% 58% 33% 8 dice. 99% 94% 84% 67% 40% 9 dice. 99% 97% 90% 74% 46% 10 dice. 99% 98% 93% 80% 52% As you can see in the MAG matching a difficulty 5 roll is only 52% likely with the maximum amount of dice. So being able to boost your end result is much more powerful in this system than in D&D where your stats and modifiers can really walk you up to near 100% success all the time. (Looking at the cheese min max builds). Basically feruchemy is the 1 stop shop for the cheese in the MAG. The only other mechanic that boosts over all success rate is allomantic duralumin. Which boosts results but costs all of the metal you are burning at the time. So there lies the issues people have with feruchemy in the MAG. It is very powerful and storing on breathers is a necessity for it to work. But a ferruchemist using the magic to its fullest basically plays with maxed stats all the time. In D&D terms its like having a full inventory of potions from the start of every new day.

Gold is tricky because HP can be such a wide swing. You could make it based on con since that is where most of your hp is coming from anyways. The higher your modifier the more you can store at once. The more you can tap. If you make the cap for storing over a rest something like con modifier x3 or con modifier x5 or whatever (adjust to your flavor).

Venom 3 looks sick! Yeah honestly a couple weeks ago I would have said midnight essence had the least appeal of all of the aethers. Now what I see in my mind, although not cannon, is great. With the Kandra base and Midnight Aether I truly envision this Venom esque morphing pet class. At first I thought of ravens as a cool midnight aether pet but now I think I dig the idea of just sending out a bunch of little oozy balls that can shape-shift on the go. We obviously have very little on what midnight aetherbound will do but we have lots of midnight essence examples. Somewhere in between them all... and I envision more control than any of the others as well... I did see that drawing before. It does look a lot like Venom. I especially like how it is twice the size of an inquisitor. Probably my favorite part of Venoms transformations is just how massive he is in comparison to other humans. The Kandra fits that really well. Paired with Midnight Aetherbound and F- bendalloy I think it has some awesome potential. Not only being able to use months and months worth of water storage in a single go but also as a kandra being able to eat and store people for extra mass and regeneration as well. What blessing would you choose? Personally I like presence the most and if midnight aetherbound has the potential to create essence creatures and send them out with some sentience to work on their own and then take them over when needed... I think presence would give better command over that. I feel like I have to head cannon that the aether can be manipulated to become hand and sturdy enough to support the weight of the kandra as well growing massive without a skeleton structure at all would be a fail. Your idea of a regrowth power is good. Perhaps tension and cohesion could do it as well.

Hello my fellow shardsters. I haven't posted anything new in a while but this one has me excited to hear feedback on. I just saw Venom. I know... welcome to 2018. The guy is awesome though... and now I want to make him. Confession is that I only watched it because as I was describing the Aethers to my 12 year old he got really really stoked on midnight aetherbound. I was a roseite fan through and through but as I was reading the coppermind to him he went wild for midnight... as he was spouting his ideas it reminded me of venom. Of course then I had to watch it. Even for just the aesthetics I would love to make something like this a thing. But we would probably need to combine some stuff right? @Trusk'our anytime I think of a kandra as a base race for anything your name pops into my head. Seeing Venom get blasted and the bullets just move through him or blow some of him off and keep moving I think that a kandra has to be base for this. Honestly I think Kandra alone does most of this on its own. But how could I implement in that black tar oily substance? My first guess is midnight aether or essence. Dalinar sees in visions that the midnight essence is able to create claws on themselves capable of breaking plate... which is an obvious bonus watching Riot create those weapons he does. But what one would work for this best? Being a spore eater or an aetherbound? This is where it gets tricky. Getting enough fuel to play the game. Obvious synergy is bendalloy compounding. This would have to be done through spikes right? Does anyone have ideas for getting a kandra to be able to compound bendalloy that doesn't involve instantly being taken over by angry gods who frown upon you wanting to create a monster? I thought if trellium could disrupt communication with harmony perhaps an Aether being part of your being could help it as well? I guess having a primal aether isn't a better trade off but maybe? My next question is this. Is it worth worrying about all of the water? Could bendalloy feruchemy /pewter feruchemy offer enough mass trade for a base kandra to shapeshift in ways we see Venom do? (More specifically Riot if I am to be honest) Just a wild picture trying to conjure itself up in my mind and curious how others may build it.

Yeah. I love D&D rules but I always felt that it was built for murder hobos way more than anything else. Powers don't usually get created to cater to more RP heavy games very well. Why get cool spells and abilities if you can't use them? And that is why I fell in love with the MAG. It has its issues (counting dice and negotiating dice can be a pain) but all in all the biggest draw is that combat works 3 ways! You have 3 different health pools. One for reputation one for willpower and one for actual physical health. The game is built to allow murder hobos to not only build a reputation as a great fighter but as a worthy opponent in the political and social ring as well. I have seen far less use for pewter burners in MAG campaigns than I have for soothers or rioters and copperclouds or seekers. A zinc ferring or tineye is almost always useful and your thug is really just there to wait for things to go terribly wrong. If you run around murdering everything because you are a combat superstar you could be in terrible danger at the next dinner party or debate... But rolling for attacks and damage during to whittle down this obligator and convince him to look the other way is far more satisfying than rolling a D20 as a charisma based character and suddenly he didn't see a thing when the murder literally just happened. Or if you are truly sinister... blackmailing people becomes and entire combat scene with the back and forth as they suddenly are fighting to make you back off of it. Everyone's reputation and willpower are at risk. Of course you be a bad soother and try to embarrass and destroy the reputation of a thug or coin shot could just end with them deciding to destroy your health back. A lot more risk in the MAG than D&D. A party wipe could just mean you get laughed out of town and always have to fight against that tarnished reputation for the rest of your life until you build back up. It makes the best use of all of the metals and abilities because more than half of them just plain do nothing for physical combat. With how rare metal born are and how rare it is to get the perfect combo I just think it is a worthy challenge to make it work in the D&D rules. (granted that is what authoring is all about. Noone is writing a story about some F-bronze A-duralumin character right?)

Yes. Awakening is the best way to do this on general. Single breath lifeless van basically work and move forever. The idea of electric hamster wheels has been shared before. Cloth rubbing together to generate heat as well. My big question there is would it be possible to turn that heat into energy. I guess it still isn't truly perpetual because of wear and tear as well as the fact that breath eventually decays. I wonder how many miles a lifeless could walk or run with frequently updated equipment before the joints get destroyed and bones wear away? Would a lifeless stay functional if you replaced all joints with good new hardware or would it stop functioning in those areas?

I think this is a good breakdown and point. The hardest part of balancing feruchemy is that it is impossible to balance in the setting with rests. Short rests and long rests from a game play viewpoint are where charges should be stored. Sadly that takes away the whole net negative and what the players see is an out of control powerful net positive system. But making them store during play time is also antifun for the feruchemist because from a narrative point of view there is no reason you would actively store to give yourself a negative roll ever. You would immediately stop storing if you needed that trait and were in danger. Forcing a ferring to store and take penalties during game time is not true to the class as we have seen it on paper. Every feruchemist we read about leverages it to be positive when needed and negative from the safety of their home. Wayne is an exception to this rule to an extent but never did Brandon write Wayne to be fighting while storing just to have some later... you store when you don't need it and it won't hinder you and you stop when you need to use your brain and you tap when you really need to use your brain. Unfortunately this leads to any ferring build to feel really really powerful. Limiting the amount of charges a ferring can use based on level is the route that the MAG went but that also limited how much they could store on rests. Someone who is used to their power and feeling sick can endure much more storage on a rest like Wayne.

Okay. So I would start by saying that choosing A gold is a flavor choice. Like multiclassing a whole bunch for a long game where characters may actually hit later levels is usually not optimal. Some choices for making your metalborn are just not optimal for a murder hobo setup. Rolling for powers would be far truer to the books and then you just learn to cope with the underpowered powers. I mean duralumin gnats exist and even being born powered they probably get beat up in high-school for it more than the kids who have no powers at all. Its just sad when you roll a nat 20 at start of life to become an allomancer but roll a nat 1 in what power you actually get. That little rant aside.... I think Feruchemical zinc should get far more opportunity attacks than the rules currently build in. Feruchemical zinc should always have the top spot in initiative. Feruchemical zinc should get bonuses to wis and cha when tapped. I want to say int as well but you don't suddenly have more knowledge on things you can simply process and make decisions faster. An AC bonus, though it may be a copycat to other metals, would be appropriate. Same with some uncanny dodge like perks. Zinc doesn't make you faster or stronger but you can see whats coming earlier on in the stage. It may not be balanced to give all of this to zinc but it would be a resource heavy ability that is beneficial in combat and in RP situations... which is true to its power I think. Back to gold and this is directly from Brandon in the MAG: "Being a Gold Misting is... well, in most people’s eyes, it’s about as useful as an Aluminum Gnat. It does have its uses — or so Miles thinks in The Alloy of Law, but the practical application has more to do with roleplaying and characterization than hard and fast game rules." Something gold... and any metal that lets you see spiritual realm stuff should give is this... blindsight. Everything has a spiritual shadow. While burning gold if you can ignore your own image you should be able to navigate a completely dark room with ease as you would see the spiritual shadows of everything. This comes from someone asking about a blind character in a reddit AMA. Brandon confirmed that it would let the blind person see but was a very expensive way of doing it.

I have seen it be said that hemalurgic spikes must touch blood to make the connection to a soul. I have a few questions regarding that. Vin and Wax both used earrings. The skin heals. Vin was literally spiked with hers and thus blood contact was made. I assume that she has removed and replaced it from time to time with no blood contact after that. I assume she loses the power while it is missing. Does this just mean that part of her soul is gone or does it fill in with the old bits while it is out? Did Wax pierce his ear fresh with the earring? I know he removes and replaces it multiple times but dont remember him repeircing himself. Perhaps the spikes rip out and replace a part of your soul on first contact and the persons spirit web simply recognizes when it is or is not present?

Yeah I assume that the pain is more associated with the displacement of tissue. Something fluid would probably be less painful than a bunch of spikes or vines growing. It does make me curious how Zephyr might work. More likelihood of air embolism? Subq emphysema and the rice crispy skin?

In the MAG they have "stunts" which are basically feats geared toward specific abilities/ spells / classes. One of the stunts that exists for both steel and iron is called steel / iron redirection. It is a reaction and allows them to make a roll based on metals moving near them. Iron gets to pull things and steel gets to push them. I think in a grid system you could easily make this work in combat the same way an opportunity attack works. Only the range gets amped up and you have to make sure people are safe. Its not your turn and the enemy ranger shoots an arrow at your pal. It triggers and opportunity attack that the allomancer may or may not choose to use. The projectile travels in a straight line between the point it was pulled / pushed on following the steel and iron damage rules for the first thing it hits. Another thing to take note of is how damage is going to work. If a lurcher is going to pull something away towards them how are you going to deal with it? Is a shield / armor going to absorb a flat amount of damage in this case? Say your iron pull base damage is 1d4 for a coin and 2d12 for a Warhammer or whatever. I would suggest building a chart to say how much your shield/ armor will absorb. There is no real roll to hit as it will always come straight towards your lurcher. Perhaps that is a possible trait / perk as they level? That they can fine tune their pushes and pulls or have better reaction times and can try to dodge out of the way? Uncanny dodge style? To allow them to avoid the damage entirely... but certainly you should build in up to a point where the shield absorbs a full amount of the damage from whatever sized weapon you want to count it as absorbing. I would just remember that mass is a big deal. Maybe your shield is perfectly capable of absorbing the damage potential from all 1 handed weapons and smaller. But 2 handed weapons if you can't dodge it and you brace up your shield you will still take potential damage. If a shield absorbs 12 damage maybe that hammer hit weird and they rolled a total of 6 only. You don't take that much. Say it rolls perfect and you take the hit. Your shield is only going to save so much of your hp bar. Back to the reactions it will allow your lurchers and coinshots a lot of wiggle room. They catch a glimpse of large metal object on steel sight and enemy rogue can't get the sneak attack damage. Listened to one scene where the coinshot just pushed up into the air and hovered there pushing weapons away from those who held them over and over again. Pretty fun scene really. Another option later on would be a feat in the realm of multi targets. In the MAG you can push on one object or all objects. No in-between until you get the multiple target stunt which allows you to push / pull on any number up to your level basically. This is a fun way to allow your steel and iron allomancers feel like they are improving as time goes on. Maybe add more reactions / opportunity attacks as they level? You get up to your level in bonus opportunity attacks that resets with a short rest or a new vial or whatever. Just more thoughts because I love the home brews.

In D&D the imagination is the limit. Steel looks great as you can use the ground as an anchor in combination with a simple coin always. Irons flying is more difficult and based on the setting more than anything. As far as offensive ability the MAG basically makes them identical except that iron needs to have better narration of the surrounding area. I would say balancing them in the damage dice they use (which I would personally make a moving scale based on mass / sharpness of the object) is the best you can do. They aren't the same ability and they never will be right? Steel is easier because with a bag of coins you can make things happen. Iron is a lot more dependent on the DM giving that information. Both abilities absolutely need iron/steel sight at level 1. And iron will balance itself by how well the player uses it.

This is what I was picturing, although for more as a use for an Aetherbound than a spore eater specifically. Although I guess thematically a spore eater probably fits better. I guess we don't have a ton of evidence for this but my headcannon is that the primal aethers would try to protect their aetherbound as well. Perhaps an Aetherbound could maintain a small portion of the aether to watch their back?

I think this all helps. At first thought my mind for a midnight aetherbound was just a pet class. Now I am picturing more of a Symbiote like Venom or something. Honestly one of the cooler things I have cooked up in my mind. The fact that it can create claws capable of damaging shardplate is super interesting. I assume if it can create something hard enough to damage plate and it is considered highly invested it could likely resist a blade as well to an extent. Only big turn off from the coppermind is that it smells putrid? Is that just the roshar version or is it described that way in other works where it exists?

Honestly I have long thought about this interaction with groups of enemies all trying to get in to you at the same time. Whether it be a group of thugs charging you or if you were to stand ground in the front lines of some large scale melee conflict this could be useful. Just imagine charging against an enemy and suddenly your buddy who was in front of you is standing still. How do you get massive pileups on freeways? Same thing here! And with both types of bubbles you could appear to be at the same exact speed as the person inside of it. Its not until you go through the first one that you would know something is off. By then its too late. Like a massive glue trap. Also note and make use of the nausea and jolt of going through time bubbles. In the MAG it specifies you lose a beat (lose a turn). I think getting disoriented by a bubble all while getting slammed into by your allies from behind and then seeing your enemies moving like blurrs in front of you would do it. Part of the name Pulser I think comes from the idea of this trick. You could easily throw up a cadmium bubble let the first group of enemies hit it and cause the wreck only to drop the cadmium bubble step back 10 feet in your own bendalloy bubble and throw up another cadmium bubble. Pulsing out waves of disorienting time bubbles that make for a near impassable barrier. Add in allomantic grenades and you could even play beyond that. Having multiple multiple bubbles. You could create a bigger bendalloy bubble and then yourself inside of it in a smaller one dilating the already dilated time. The biggest issue you are going to run into with all of this is that your metal reserves are going to a bit whacky to balance.

How hard and sharp can midnight essence get? When the crimes were being copied in Oathbringer was the essence gathering up weapons to use or did it create them? Or I am just misremembering it all and the question simply makes no sense. I'm a fan of summoning weapons or creating them from the Aethers and curious how well Midnight essence could form weapons or defenses. Roseite I figure is pretty straight forward but I really like the idea of being able to experience and see through the creations of midnight essence. When Twinsoul grew the roseite under the door I feel like I remember silajana explaining what was on the other side. He couldn't see and experience through roseite right? But Midnight essence does allow for that right?

Okay. But what about soulcasting? If a metalmind can be soulcast to disapear could it be soulcast to a new type of metal and use that attribute? I guess if you could access stormlight you could probably just skip it and convert it into whatever attribute you needed when you needed it.

So rad. If this same idea crossed over to Aethers you could rock a suit of armor that allows full range of motion while having no visible gaps. Obviously it is still not shardplate or anything in terms of protection but with potential compounding hacks in the future this could be super dope (Bendalloy compounding for the win... heck even just a metalmind with months worth of water at once). I can see a dude just spending a day at the drinking fountain to carry around a ring sized reserve of water worth hundreds of camelbaks. Not to mention we already have one person who has hacked Stormlight enough to use it to maintain themselves... whos to say Aetherbound couldnt hack and breath in unkeyed stormlight and feed it the way Twinsoul used the unkeyed dor?

So we know that zinc and steel are both hard to store into. Also gold seems quite uncomfortable to store into... But if you had large iron metalminds and could forge them into steel, zinc or gold and then tap those for physical / mental speed and health that would be huge. You could store nearly all of your weight nearly all the time if you just couch potato it and the drawbacks would be so minor. Then forge yourself to be able to use zinc / gold / steel and suddenly you have full metalminds of the more useful metals. That is pretty genius actually. We see with Wax how quickly Iron can be filled with little thought and consequence vs Wayne. My question would be... does a full iron metalmind act the same as a full gold metalmind once forged? A goldmind could take months of feeling like garbage to fill up where as an ironmetalmind could be filled in a matter of days just because it is far easier to store your weight than it is to endure a bad enough illness to really make a dent.

Twinsoul was able to grow a massive roseite golem and reside inside of it as a huge suit of armor and wielding a massive hammer. I am curious what people think the limits of these sorts of constructs are? How fast could that a roseite mechsuit move? If an Aetherbound had the investiture or water stores for it could they grow roseite steed to match the speed of travel a horse would grant? What would be the limits of this? Could a Roseite bird or dragon fly? There was just such a difference going from making stationary roseite objects that increase quality of life and then making a moving suit carrying not only the Aetherbound and itself but also a large mace. Do you think these effects of roseite would be tied to the users physical abilities? Roseite works as the Aetherbound could without it? If it is limited to what the person inside would be able to do what would happen if a pewter arm was burning pewter while Aetherbinding something like that? Or a feruchemist? We already know Feruchemical steel would let you burn metals faster and compress the benefits into something smaller. Would an Feruchemical steel user be able to cause the Roseite suit or a Roseite steed to move quicker? Would Feruchemical iron allow it to be lighter? How much of a connection does an Aetherbound actually have to the Aether they are making? Obviously it is connected to them so long as they are using it otherwise it wouldnt fall apart so easily when they break that connection.

Okay, I know we have seen this is a working thing and I know that investiture is able to make it work but I am trying to picture it in my mind. Were Kalads phantoms solid stone and the investiture allowed it to bend? Or were they made of many different stone pieces set upon eachother like our bones are with joints? I have seen WoBs that indicate a body turned to stone could be awakened and brought back lifeless. But what of those joints? Will the investiture just turn the stone bendy enough to move? What of Roseite Aether? I assume Twinsoul's Golem was able to move, in the art it depicts him sitting in the center and controlling it with what I can only assume is through his mind and intent. Do you think that Roseite must be grown with many pieces that can move within eachother or do you think it can simply flex when and where it is needed by the Aetherbound growing it?

Anything that mashes up systems sounds like a win. Anyone introduced an F-bendalloy Aetherbound? My mind has been fairly obsessed with that combo for a while now... especially if it is decided that the correct investiture fields are in play for Aethers to stick around a bit.

I feel like A-pewter shouldn't be ignored for edgedancers. They are described as being graceful and I remember Vin feeling the same on pewter. This isn't just thematically based but it would also benefit an edge dancer so well also with the increased proprioception and balance. I don't know how I could fit this thematically with it but I would love to see a twinborn A pewter / F iron on either of the abrasion orders. If they really skate around the balance and conservation of momentum could do a ton. I think the synergy of the two would quite possibly make the most maneuverable non flyer in the cosmere. Dancing and skating around manipulating weight to make their trajectory nearly impossible to estimate. But how do you make the pewter / iron twinborn thematic outside of both powers being used and described as allowing their users to be nimble and graceful?

Exactly. As well as I enjoy reading the Wax and Wayne dynamic... I think I would have preferred a series devoted to Ham and Breeze haha. They didn't get enough screen time.