Returned

Not on the list specifically, but Sazed vs. Marsh is my favorite. Cool uses of separate magical systems, clever tactics, dramatic moments, back-and-forth advantages, and doesn't overstay its welcome. My runner-up is Adolin's full disadvantaged duel. Action-packed and exciting, it showed the best of Adolin and Kaladin both. The fallout always bugs me though (like it's supposed to, I'm sure). I also liked the current top-voted scene, the Battle of Thaylen City, because it had lots of awesome individual sequences that I loved. But it went on too long for me, splitting my attention too often and breaking up the flow of events with repetition more than I enjoyed. I get why people love it, though. So many of the individual pieces are amazing and top-form Sanderson.

I think that ultimately it's going to be a struggle that is internal to Sazed with effects that ripple out across Scadrial and the Cosmere. Maybe not the whole era, and there will certainly be new characters and factions that come into play along with existing ones (like the Ghostbloods and the Set) that are likely to recur, but this seems to me like where the action on Scadrial has been heading. I'm of the opinion that most of the transition to Discord has already occurred, so I think that the consequences of that will be explored in era 3 but will not be the major setup for events. We're also likely to see conflict between the Northern and Southern Scadrians, though it's possible that the most acute portions of that will be stuffed into the time between eras and we'll only get exposition about it. We're also likely to see a full Feruchemist as the head of, or a key player in, an organization that will generate a lot of resistance one way or another. We have gotten increasingly explicit evidence that something strange is going on with Sazed, that it's consequential, and that Sazed is being dishonest about it and/or hiding the issue or mechanisms related to it. As the Cosmere has progressed we've seen more and more conflicts roll up into Shard-level issues and I expect that to continue; we will not see a book with plot arcs like Warbreaker, The Final Empire, and Sixth of the Dusk again in an already-established setting, I think, so the new Mistborn issues seem unlikely to me to be local or worldly for very long. I don't think that we'll get very prominent interplanetary conflicts until Mistborn era 4, and though we'll probably have visitors and meddlers I don't think that they'll drive plots over the entirety of era 3.

Lol, I'm always frustrated at not having all of the plot and setting information at my fingertips, but if we could predict all of it then the future books would be boring! I think that we superfans at 17th Shard do have a habit of overcommitting to our deductions and extrapolations, though.

I apologize for giving the impression I was trying to put words in your mouth; I was being glib (I always have trouble expressing myself precisely in message board forums). Similarly, I apologize if I've come off as aggressive or anything else like that-- I'm just excited to talk about the Cosmere! For clarity, I'm the one saying that it's bad writing to include something that doesn't make sense because it's the only way to make the plot work. It's sloppy and punishes a reader's efforts to pay careful attention in any event, and Sanderson has hung his hat on a setting with intricate rules which expand into logical consequences. Referring back to Pitch Meetings (Game of Thrones), when the dominance of dragons vs. scorpions arbitrarily shifts from one episode to the next, it was bad writing. It's inescapable internal nonsense that allows otherwise mutually exclusive plot events the writers wanted to include to coexist but makes any depth of thought or analysis of those matters a viewer might want irrelevant. But that conclusion is also a strong conclusion, one which forecloses any possibility of reasonable, in-universe explanation, and that's where the issue in your assertion is for me. If there is such a plot hole on this (or any) item in Stormlight, it would be problematic. Whether or not it's a plot hole depends on if it breaks any rules internal to the setting (we don't know enough of the rules to say either way, for now), if it's consistent with the motivations and modes of action of the characters involved (also debatable), and how singular it is (if it's plausible by the other two items, but sticks out and is only relevant to this plot event, it's a worse solution than others might have been). My position is that we have enough information to judge that it's fine by both the internal rule consideration and the motivation and mode of action consideration, and so doesn't necessarily stick out too badly on the singularity item. But if, as you offered in the OP, it's a kludge that doesn't fit with those items then I don't think we can avoid the "bad writing" charge (on that specific thing). And while I don't think that this is an example of it, as more and more Cosmere rules get nailed down I think that we're eventually going to run into situations where something awkward is the only way to reconcile some of the items in such a complex setting and meta-plot. An awful lot has already been ascribed to characters being able to see the future, but when that's problematic it turns out that they can't see the future that well, and also what is the future and what does it mean to see it? And, of course, there is subjectivity on all of these items. A good example is Sazed's description of Ruin's motivations in Hero of Ages: Ruin assumed that all humans were inevitably his servants, so he didn't take some actions or precautions that a human character surely would have. If you like that explanation (and I happen to), then you'll be satisfied enough with it as a natural, organic element of the story. If not, then it's probably always going to rankle. As to the topic proper I respect that you are not convinced, at present, that the items you've noted will be resolved in a satisfying way. It's a viewpoint and one that is valid. I am simply persuaded that permanently killing the Heralds in the past may not have been possible, would not have been easy at all even had it been possible, would have required a huge amount of Raysium to attempt in any way that might be expected to succeed, that creating and deploying that Raysium would have involved substantial risks to Odium's forces (risks which would be geometrically more pronounced as the amount of Raysium is increased), and may have cannibalized Odium's goals in the process to even try. From a broader perspective, we also have the issue of the completeness of knowledge of Shards. We know that Shards aren't actually all-knowing from a WoB, even if they could theoretically become so. We also know that Shards can be mistaken or plan inadequately from explicit events in-text, and also that they can be forced to do things they would rather not as well as be prevented from doing things that they do want. So for your position to be correct we need to assume that Rayse's knowledge was sufficiently complete to be aware of your strategy and that no (practical) constraints existed which would have prevented his applying it or made it undesirable. Since we know it's possible to permanently kill a Herald in at least some situations (because we saw it happen), and we know that Rayse didn't do that earlier, we have a couple of categories of possibility: it was possible before, or it wasn't. If it was possible before, Rayse either didn't try, or did try and failed. Assuming that it was possible we really only have a few descriptive categories from there: Rayse definitely knew enough to conceive the strategy and tried to execute it but was not successful; Rayse definitely knew enough to conceive the strategy, and it was not desirable enough to him to pursue; Rayse definitely knew enough to conceive the strategy, and made a mistake or foolish choice in not pursuing it; Rayse definitely knew enough to conceive the strategy and just arbitrarily didn't pursue it; or Rayse did not know enough to conceive the strategy and so did not have the option of pursuing it. It's only the second-to-last one (that he, for no reason, neglected a possible approach he was aware of even though it would work and was attractive enough to use) that comports with your position that it's a plot kludge. Since I'm not convinced of Rayse having perfect knowledge on this or any topic, and Rayse had substantial personality traits which impacted his thinking and actions, and I can think of (what I find) plausible risks and considerations which cannot be separated from the "kill the Heralds with Raysium" plan, I don't think that there is reason to reach the strong conclusion that it's a kludge and can only be justified because it's "necessary to make the story happen", even though it doesn't fit. Future developments may cause me to reconsider.

Since I'm arguing against this position it's worth pointing out that this is 100% a possibility. However, it seems that even more than being OK with it you have committed to this being the case. If so, I don't think that anything short of a WoB is going to satisfy you or shift your opinion, which of course is fine. But if it leads you to reject any theorycrafting in another direction (which is also fine), then it'll be off-topic to discuss in that direction. We can talk about possibilities, and whether you find them persuasive or not some will at least provide for not being 100% certain that it's a plot kludge. At some point we have to admit that every explanation is that, since the magic and its properties are all made up which means that all of it is arbitrary. Honest question: are you interested in discussing possible alternatives, or are you more wanting to vent annoyance? I don't want to waste anyone's time or your attention and patience if the latter. In the meantime, I have some responses to your rebuttals which I have tried to group to keep quote formatting under control (please let me know if this wasn't helpful, or if my groupings have distorted some of your positions in ways that inhibit discussion): 1. Odium Controls His Metal Absolutely, At All Times and in All Circumstances We don't have much evidence that Odium personally directs his forces outside of the current Desolation, but your point is well-taken. If Odium wants his forces to have some Raysium, he could probably make it happen. I'll come back to the "if" in a subsequent point. But this does not at all address how much Raysium there is on Roshar, nor how easy it is to get. How much Lerasium was on Scadrial? Not very much, perhaps not even enough to make a weapon by the time Vin is on the scene. And even less after Elend and Hoid. Similarly, Leras didn't have the ability to control who used it. Ati is an even better example: even after being freed from Preservation's prison, he very specifically couldn't control where atium was, how much of it there was, nor who had access to it, nor how they used it. He never knew where it was at all. That's the final plot arc, climax, and denouement of Mistborn era 1. Additionally, Rayse is trapped, physically and operationally, via details we don't know much about. If there are only three beads of Raysium left (a randomly chosen number) a dagger might not even be the best use for them, though if Raboniel has made one already then maybe there's no reason not to use it. We don't know enough about how godmetals are manifested to know one way or the other whether or not Rayse could have produced more of it, easily or otherwise. Perhaps you are not convinced, but I find the example of Ati to be completely satisfying in addressing these points: there is no reason to believe that a Shard necessarily has this degree of direct control over their godmetals. We have in-text evidence as iron-clad as possible that indicate limits which obviates these particular rebuttals. Summary: the arguments you advance for how much direct knowledge of and control over their godmetal a Shard has are specifically contravened in-text in the Cosmere. Further, there is no evidence to suggest that Raysium is common and some evidence to suggest that it is quite rare. 2. Heralds Are Easy and Desirable to Kill The first point, that they died every Desolation, is specifically incorrect. We know from Kalak's description in the prologue of WoK that some of them at least sometimes survived, though they had to return to Braize once the Desolation was finished even so. I'll disagree that the troops are disposable once Raysium weapons are on the field, a point which I will address more precisely below. The "lots of chances to retry" characterizes Odium's entire approach to the struggle on Roshar, again as the Stormfather said. Time is dross to him, and his access to unlimited attempts over eternity might well discourage him from doing something which would alter the state of play (another point which I will discuss below). Given that he didn't make the attempts you describe it's at least as possible that there are reasons for that decision as it is that it's bad plotting. As for the ease of killing Heralds, you've not addressed that this is not easily accomplished. As in the example I gave of Taln snatching poisoned darts out of the air despite barely being aware of his surroundings, why would "humans on his side" suggest humans capable of killing Heralds with little difficulty? Iyatil is presented as being very capable and lethal, and her assassination attempt failed utterly. Did Rayse have a huge supply of superior assassins? Maybe, but I see no reason to think so. And, as in my previous post, the Herald needs to be killed by a Raysium weapon for them to be ripped from the Oathpact. It's not enough for them to die. So unless you can demonstrate that there is a lot of Raysium around (which you cannot, unless you have held back some evidence so far), and that the Raysium weapons would not have other, destabilizing effects on the conflict (all speculative on my part), I think that you are way overselling how easy this would be to accomplish. I didn't mean to imply that Rayse needed the Heralds on his side for anything, only to point out that killing them isn't necessaraily the only thing he could do with them. We don't even know that the Oathpact would have allowed for the Raysium killing method in the first place. We know that the damage the Heralds did to the Oathpact changed the game in some fundamental ways, and it's not impossible to believe that this is one of them. That doesn't make it true, obviously, but again, it should be enough to chip away at the certainty that the situation is bad plotting, if that's something a reader is open to. Summary: Heralds have not been easy to kill by any means (with one glaring, recent exception, addressed in my previous post). Making sure that they are killed by a specific, rare weapon is hard to do even if there were no additional risks in making such an attempt. 3. Raysium Weapons Have Acceptable Risk of Unintended, Worldly Consequences Gemstones aren't exactly hard to come by on Roshar, even if that's exactly how it works (one gemstone for one killing-- wasn't the same gemstone used for Essu and Raboniel both? I don't recall the specifics, maybe someone here can clarify, but I'd thought it was the Light in the gemstones that mattered, while Raysium was necessary for the weapon to deliver it correctly). Gemstones are used as currency by even the poorest! It seems to me that if you want to handwave away the availability of Raysium then the availability of gemstones would be beyond trivial. And the requisite Light isn't at all hard to make, once you know how. If the Heralds kill many Fused each (which seems like it must be true, given how Desolations played out) then we run into some real problems with the "disposable, reincarnating troops" you mentioned above. If they don't reincarnate then they aren't disposable, and the Fused are the way that Singers regained ancient knowledge and technology much like how the Heralds brought the same to humans. Particularly as the humans won each Desolation, and had time to rebuild in between them. The increasing frequency of Desolations was the major thing that offset this, leading to Aharietiam being the worst one of all (in Kalak's telling). I don't recall a reliable estimate of how many Fused souls exist, but losing a few hundred to a few thousand each Desolation might well have put an unrecoverable dent in their forces after a couple of cycles. Summary: by the numbers, the Heralds must be much better at killing Fused than the Fused are at killing Heralds. Putting weapons into play which permanently kill immortal combatants puts at risk the only advantage that Odium's forces had in ways from which they could not recover. 4. Rayse's Goals Are Urgent and Not Frustrated by Investing Himself as Raysium But even beyond the possibilty above, we don't have a solid grasp of what implications Raysium's properties have in the Cosmere. The metal may be largely irrelevant, or it might be impossibly dangerous even to Shards. We just don't know. Something we do know is that Shards haven't been very forthcoming about godmetals and associated technologies. Sazed certainly hasn't been. My broader point is one which you gloss over: Odium doesn't care so much about getting free right now that he takes certain risks, because time is meaningless to him-- this is stated directly by the Stormfather in relation to the potential for Odium being hurt. As described, there is no meaningful difference to him between Odium getting his way now or later, while Rayse was very concerned with risks to himself. That's the very reason the contest of champions appealed to him in the first place. In that frame the distinction is not between now or later, but between more risk and less. If Raysium weapons present more than zero risk to him or his plans, then waiting may be preferable to him. This preference is specifically stated in the text. Rayse did not have urgency as the driver of his schemes, and so arguments which appeal mostly or entirely to speed are specifically off-target. We also know that there is a relationship between godmetals and the capacities of Shards, including their being bound to planets. Being more Invested in a place makes it harder for a Shard to leave. If incarnating more Raysium on Roshar means Investing himself more heavily there, and his goal is to be able to leave, more Raysium might be self-defeating. And we know that Rayse's plans involved travelling the Cosmere and taking out other Shards, so being bound to Roshar by any mechanism is going to be problematic. The issues and considerations go far beyond winning the Desolations. More Investment in a planet via incarnating as godmetals has other implications for a Shard as well, including limiting how much of their power is available to them to use. Ati came to a bad end because of how much of his power was Invested as atium: he could not marshall his divine power to destroy Scadrial all at once, as he desired, because too much of his power was Invested as the godmetal. This very fact was exploited by Elend and his atium Mistings to directly defeat Ati's plans even while Ruin was directly, actively opposing them more forcefully than Odium ever did to the Rosharans. Summary: the true risks Raysium presents in the Cosmere are unknown but may be substantial; what we've seen of it so far is significant. Getting off of Roshar sooner rather than later might have appealed to Rayse but the timing was subordinated to other concerns. And even if there were no particular risks to abundant and widely-known Raysium, and rapidly achieving his goals were important to Rayse, causing enough Raysium to incarnate to achieve that speed undermines that very goal (to at least some degree, we still don't have a lot of detail here). So, summing up altogether, I don't find the arguments you've presented for why Raysium weapons just have to have been possible and desirable in these dimensions to be very tight. While some are stronger than others (always the case with arguments), it takes some motivation to assume that bad writing is the only possible or acceptable explanation for that fundamental position. Someone who is interested in thinking that there are other explanations consistent with information we have will find ample reason to continue thinking so, and will not be ignoring much evidence to the contrary.

In addition to what's already been posted, I think that there might be a couple of other considerations. Raysium doesn't seem common, so getting one of the few weapons made of the metal (and correctly) might not be a small feat. There may not have been even the possibility of equipping soldiers with them in general. We don't know how hard it was to get the materials for even just the one dagger. Killing a Herald in any way was not easy for most of their existences. Some of them tended to die in battle during Desolations, but that's a far cry from getting a Raysium dagger into the hands of someone who could actually find a Herald on the battlefield and strike them down with it. It's a near certainty that the vast, vast majority of individuals who fought Heralds died because they were incredibly formidable-- access to tons of magic fueled directly by Honor, millennia of combat experience, etc. Even in the depths of his madness, Taln is astute enough to snatch darts out of the air. So you need a lucky soldier who happens to also already have such a weapon to survive the fight long enough to deal the killing blow, and the odds don't seem favorable for that. The specific level of debilitation we see with Jezrien was due in large part to a more recent development (widely believed to be related to what happened to Ba Ado Mishram), and even then it's only Jezrien who lies down drunk and helpless. That doesn't impact how the Raysium dagger interacts with them, but is similar to the above point: this may be the only time someone could just walk up and stab him. A dead Herald isn't necessarily as useful as a live one. Nale is certainly doing more for Odium than his corpse would. Raysium is dangerous, period, not just dangerous to Heralds. The immortality of the Singers is one of their key advantages in the cycle of Desolations, but a soldier with a Raysium dagger could kill them off permanently. And, as above, the Heralds were/are very good fighters-- equipping Taln with a Raysium dagger for even just one Desolation could easily lead to hundreds, if not thousands, of immortal Singer troops being permanently removed from the war, taking all of their knowledge, skill, and experience with them without any replacement. That makes general deployment of Raysium weapons during the previous Desolations incredibly dangerous to Odium and company; conceivably it could have been enough to permanently weaken those events, upending the spiral by which humanity was harder-pressed by each subsequent Desolation as they lost technology and numbers while the Singers remained unweakened. Finally, the implications of what the Raysium dagger did to Raboniel, Essu, Jezrien, and Kalak go way, way beyond killing immortal pawns/associates of Shards; it might be something which could threaten a Shard, or seriously dilute their ability to influence people and events. It may not be possible (for a variety of reasons) for Shards to prevent mortals from using their essences once those Shards have Invested themselves in a place, but I could imagine Rayse not really wanting mortals to have regular access to his godmetal. Even if the bonds placed upon him by the Oathpact allowed him to pursue killing the Heralds so directly as guiding his followers to Raysium weapons, with the end of freeing him from Roshar, the long-term consequences of mortals having that knowledge and the material might have been very unfavorable for him. Maybe not! But we know from the Stormfather that Odium didn't really fret between being freed now or later, so why risk more than he needed to just to avoid waiting?

Now that I think about it, F-cadmium must also involve elimination of carbon dioxide, or alternatively the elimination of oxygen free radicals. It's magic, so we can't be too precise on "realistic" mechanisms without a WoB, but I'd probably lean towards the latter since it is the most parsimonious (we don't have to worry about replacing carbon atoms, or even oxygen, but rather just adding or subtracting one electron at a time). Neither seems all that useful to me on the level of an individual person, though I haven't thought through the chemistry too much. But if we place the effect in a machine like one of the Allomantic grenades (or hook a skilled Feruchemist into a broader system) we could wind up with some very interesting, efficient, and effective energy generation and waste energy dissipation mechanisms. I hadn't really thought about F-cadmium much before this thread, but it seems like these would be pretty important for the later-era Scadrian technologies.

I think that fiddling with your mental state is probably one of the most dangerous areas to apply Cosmere magics. F-electrum might be especially so since the effect always requires your choice to initiate and maintain. In an example like addiction, would the choice to sap your motivation to indulge help blunt the urge to do so? Or would the compulsion to service the addiction simply lead to stopping the storage of motivation? An interesting (to me) side-question: could someone aggressively storing determination fall into a rut, unable to form and execute the desire to stop the storage, until their metalmind is full?

Depending on the exact mechanism by which it works, I suppose you could use F-cadmium to conveniently blood dope, though that's a pretty marginal benefit.

These do seem like troublesome metals. My first thought is that neither should, generally, be that combat-oriented given the structure of tabletop gaming. F-zinc was really useful to Sazed in his fight with Marsh because he was the character, not a person playing a character. Players already inherently have some of that benefit since 3.5e combat rules are rigidly defined, actions are constrained to a set list, and other players' and npcs' turns allow a player to use that time to plan out the next six seconds of what they do. A-gold is introspective more than anything else, and even if you think of some combat uses for it I have a hard time thinking that it would ever not be strongly dominated by at least one other choice in basically every situation. So these strike me a non-combat metlas in practice. A-gold A-gold is the easier case, I think, since even in the novels its not necessarily that valuable. It's also going to be self-limiting in D&D because you'd have to spend your wealth directly to use it and so the opportunity costs would be much more stark. So it doesn't need as much direct, obvious application, nor does it need a lot of mechanical value. Someone who isn't Mistborn but chooses to have access to A-gold (without F-gold) is making a low-value choice and it may not be necessary to adjust that much. That said, I think that it would have some natural value in certain Wisdom-based checks for information a player could derive from seeing what they might have been with different choices, particularly when the outcomes of certain skill checks are unknown to the players. If you don't know whether or not you successfully Bluffed an NPC, perhaps later on you could burn gold and glean from your goldshadow information that you could interpret to answer that question. If you're unsure if you aligned yourself with the right faction, A-gold might reveal that you would have been wealthier/stronger/happier/maintained your alignment better/whatever if you'd made a different choice (or confirm that the alternate choice would have left you a wretch harried by unseen foes). It would take some extra work for the DM to set up situations in which players could make those choices and later get useful information from confirmation, and the narration of what information the gold revealed (and how) would be important as well. But as a player I wouldn't be unhappy with the chance to get more information on the state of the plot, centered around the choices that I had made. In any event, I'd expect to need a high Wisdom modifier to be able to interpret what gold showed me with any reliability. F-zinc As above, this gets murky with the F-zinc-like advantages that players get from meta knowledge of the game system and the non-real time nature of typical play. These advantages are most pronounced in combat and so that might not be the best place to focus your efforts on operationalizing F-zinc. I like the idea, above, of pumping Intelligence-based checks with an extra bonus (where appropriate, not all such checks would reasonably get much from zinc). It's an abstraction, of course, but Intelligence checks are already one of the more abstracted mechanics anyhow as they are tend to override the players' superior or inferior knowledge of game rules or in-game information which has no real-world analogues. It's always going to be hard to play a character that is more intelligent than the player (not even including that such a character will also have all of in-world knowledge of which the player can only know a subset). Other enhancements in this area might involve reducing the amount of time PCs need to accomplish something which requires thought or analysis, which would be an amazing benefit in situations where there is time pressure of any sort (the High Council is meeting in one hour, and you need to translate the Infernal contract before then to have any hope of describing to them the danger they are in. Enough stored in a zincmind may make this possible, or even trivial). For Intelligene-based casters, maybe they can use a higher level spell scroll without the attendant risk of failure if they're willing to tap the zincmind in the process. Zinc could provide a flat bonus over the duration of some scheme that the PCs planned in advance or issue they might have thought through to reflect the extra, in-game intelligence the PC brought to the task. Maybe a PC can discern something like a resistance or weakness to a damage type for a creature they haven't encountered before, based only on brief observation. PCs might be able to think up a way (not necessarily specified in much detail) to slip through gaps in guard patrols, come up with an angle to work a scam, or engineer some mechanism for an extra-efficient trap. Using up stored speed of thought could also be a good way to make extra money during downtime, though that's not the most inspired way to use it. I've toyed with a theoretical mechanic (never tested in play) that is essentially "I thought of that!": a pool of points (or something similar) which players can consume while executing a plan to gain some advantage over an unexpected event, without needing to actually have specified that preparation. Something like: DM, after a bad Move Silently check: "You try your best to be quiet, but the nearness of guard patrols and the heightened alert status of the castle means that the books you knocked onto the floor make a loud clatter. Guards immediately burst through the door, too quickly for you to figure out a response to the blunder." Player, who has two IToT! points from using some of their stored F-zinc: "I thought of that! Having examined the layout of the library before our intrusion I already know all of the places we could hide there." The party then gets to roll a Hide check (with an additional +2 bonus, if they use their entire IToT! pool here) when they otherwise would not have been able to make a roll at all. It's flexible and simulates the supernaturally excellent intelligence, foresight, and meticulous planning that F-zinc allows. The other element of F-zinc (and all Feruchemy, really) that I would find interesting as a player is the balance between bonuses and penalties from storing and tapping traits. Assuming that players don't get to abuse downtime to store too much of a trait (or traits) with no downsides, the wildness of potential advantages from a more abstracted, flexible F-zinc system would be balanced harshly by having to play out extended periods with a reduced Intelligence score. The advantages gained from F-zinc can safely be pretty extreme if you have to front-load substantial difficulties to obtain them.

Oops! My fault for making the assumption . But I agree that 3.5 will give you a lot more space for Allomantic abilities being incorporated into the game. I think the limited flight would work really well in areas with a lot of ambient metals, like a city. I think it might a really cool mechanical distinction to make, too: in a city, you can basically fly all over the place, sort of like Kelsier bobbing above the soldiers in the execution square. But elsewhere you might be stuck using something like a spikeway, working out a complicated rhythm like Vin's horseshoe wheel method, or stuck with individual linear jumps that you have to prepare yourself. It would make some limitations on Allomancy something players would really feel, shifting from freeform flight-like movement to something much less versatile. For sure there are some places where iron is better or even the only option, and these ideas are good ones that players would definitely be able to use well. I didn't mean to imply that iron was flat-out worse than steel, but rather that they might not balance very evenly no matter what you do. Your modification sounds really cool, and I hope you'll post more details about it (and even the whole thing when it's done!). Out of curiosity, how are you planning to track metal reserves? Like, the amount of iron or steel in an Allomancer's stomach, how to decrement it when used to Push or Pull in different ways, and things like that?

To my mind, there are too many details which D&D doesn't simulate and which a DM wouldn't necessarily describe outside of making it obvious that A-Iron can be used (and therefore should be used) to translate the full creativity and versatility of A-Iron and A-Steel into the game mechanics very well. There are also significant issues with D&D 5e mechanics which will lead to the physical pushing and pulling metals being overpowered, which may not be an issue for you but is worth thinking about. In any case, trying to use these abilities the same way as in the books might involve a lot of bookkeeping and overhead for the DM and players both, which can be troublesome. D&D also doesn't handle height in combat very naturally, which can complicate things like sustained Pulling. What I would probably do is favor streamlining the mechanics in combat to preserve the feel of the abilities and their versatility while not bothering to place a bunch of rules on out-of-combat uses. To that end, here are some ideas I thought of about how combat might incorporate the powers in a more fluid, spontaneous way: Emphasizing the mobility aspects of iron and steel is going to be important for making iron valuable, in ways beyond what D&D 5e combat generally allows for. So bigger combat areas, at least some obvious metal anchors, and a modified approach to combat movement overall will probably be valuable in making sure iron gets its due. A map similar to the skyscraper Wax scales in Alloy of Law is a good example: he can Push to move up, but never to get closer to the building, while a Lurcher could essentially walk right up the side. If there are metal pipes in the ceiling then Pulling might be helpful while Pushing might be much less so. Items like this will require planning and will often be gimmicks, but that's true of Allomancy generally anyways. Specifically include some metal objects that are far more massive than player characters or solidly anchored (if any make sense for the setting). These would allow players to maneuver tactically in the area and plan out specific uses of Allomancy, which is important, but would not overload them with possibilities to analyze individually in the heat of battle. Circumstances might make Pulling the only useful option, so engineering maps where such a circumstance might arise will be useful. Outside of the item above this one, rather than specifically placing every single metal object, with defined mass, in combat areas and obtrusively pointing them out to players, define a "metal richness" for the area which sets the difficulty for identifying a useful metal object that you don't need to specifically place and track. This would be an abstraction that allows a player to use ironsight/steelsight to identify opportunistic sources of metal spontaneously. Some sort of randomness (a roll against a lookup table, maybe) could define a metal object useful to the player at some moment that would only be used via Pulling. I'm imagining a roll that determines if a useful metal object is positioned accessibly at all, and then a roll for where exactly it is in relation to the PC and target (if any). "You notice a lump of ore, but it's in this square and so to hit the enemy attacking you you'd need to Pull it." A little clunky, but at least Pulling would always at least possibly be useful in an environment. There isn't much that iron necessarily can do that steel definitely cannot, and steel offers a lot more opportunity for players to dynamically create situations that are useful (such as dropping a coin and Pushing against it). To some degree that means that steel simply is more valuable, and given that it becomes desirable to use iron when you can in order to preserve steel for when you can't. Players that manage their metal reserves carefully will be able to get more out of their Allomancy by doing so, and if they do not (for whatever reason) then the consequences of neglecting iron are their fault. Giving a bonus to using both metals at once might help iron not be left out, even though the same might be true of steel. Using iron to nudge a steel jump to the intended destination could be useful, for example, and at least keep iron in players' minds. How this works with your Allomantic action economy and how much it helps are, of course, very important considerations. Another good example is Vin swinging a heavy door in an arc during the defense of Luthadel: simply impossible without using iron. Other issues with bringing Allomancy into D&D 5e exist, and how you choose to deal with them will also have an impact on how you might handle iron versus steel. You may have already dealt with all of these, but for consideration: Decide how easy you want movement to be via Allomancy compared with normal movement. Movement rules in 5e are odd sometimes, and allowing extra movement beyond base movement + the Dash action could be extremely balance-destroying. But leaving characters suspended in the air and calculating "leftover" movement which they are committed to using by being mid-leap can be tricky too. There is also the issue of how hard a Push/Pull can be, the relative masses of objects and characters, and other elements. Under-developing how the core movement mechanics will interact with your Allomancy mechanics may shortchange iron directly and/or overemphasize steel. Playtest some different approaches to requiring a Perception roll as an Action to use ironsight/steelsight versus making such a roll a part of using ironpulling or steelpushing (after committing to use an Action for the Allomancy). It seems problematic, given D&D mechanics, to give players free information about how an ability would be used without their needing to commit to using it. But I think it would be similarly difficult to force them to use up a whole turn's Action just to gain that information which then could only be used on the next turn, at which point conditions might have changed to make the information useless. Using a Bonus Action to do it might solve the issue, but might be too expensive in opportunity costs. Trying to use D&D as a physics simulator will quickly run into severe problems, and some of iron and steel's most creative uses require some detailed underlying physics. Streamlining this through abstraction is, in my opinion, the best way to deal with the issue. And the way you choose to abstract the specifics can keep iron as a viable, mechanical option without needing to fully define all of the specifics in every single case.

I think that the conjoined aspect would not matter. Cosmere magic all works via sprit webs, "spiritual DNA", and Identity. Conjoined twins would be two people, regardless of how they are physically arranged, so I don't think that what one does (like burning Lerasium) would impact the other directly. The one that does the magical thing is the one that gets the magical result. If the twins are totally independent save for sharing part of a pelvis I don't see how they would be just one person, Realmatically, and they would barely have any overlap in their bodies. There could be some more to it given that they share a body to some extent, though I think that the degree to which they are sharing physical structures would matter (especially to how they view themseleves). Like, if one can burn pewter Allomantically but the other can't, to the degree that they have the same body the effect would maybe cover both since there is only "one" body between them. But only the one can burn the metal: the one which is not an Allomancer can't just choose to start burning. At least, that's how I believe it would work in a generic case. You could also get some different results based on how they view their Identities (or Identity). If they view themselves as one person (or something similar to that), and have overlapping spirit webs, maybe something like both getting the benefits of one member burning Lerasium could happen. We don't really know. The closest analogue I can think of offhand isn't all that similar. Aimians are single individuals, as far as Identity is concerned, made up of an agglomeration of smaller, somewhat independent pieces. But I don't think that one piece of an Aimian is its own individual in the same way that one member of a set of conjoined twins would be, as described in the question.

There are some other interesting patterns that could affect things like this. Quite a while ago I read a write-up of some linguistics research concerning different languages with gendered nouns but which used opposite-gender forms for the same objects. The example I remember was key: in Spanish, it's la llave (feminine) and in German it's der schlüssel (masculine). When participants in the study were asked to describe words they associated with their language's word for "key" the most common responses followed the gender of the noun: Spanish-speakers tended to say things like "slender", "graceful", "delicate", and similar-- things which the researchers described as coded more to the "feminine" concepts in the participants' cultures. The German-speakers tended to say things like "heavy", "solid", "sharp/jagged", and other words which the researchers described as coded more to the "masculine" idea of the participants' cultures. I might be misremembering some of the details, like the specific associated words, but I'm confident I recall the thrust of the study correctly. So even though the participants were describing the "same" thing with a word, the grammatical gender assigned to that thing was associated with emphasis of features that correlated with that gender more generally. It wasn't really about the properties of the object being described but rather the association of gender with an inanimate object leading to what properties they focused on. We might imagine that the study participants were imagining very different keys (like, a key for a diary or small box versus a cartoon prison key), but that kind of split wouldn't apply to a single type of spren. I don't know how applicable any of that is to Roshar, given the variety of languages (especially over time), the enduring nature of individual spren, the capacity of spren to be changed by shifting conceptualizations after their creation, and the ability of spren to change themselves. As expressed in the text, Alethi seems to be similar to English and not assign gender to nouns as Spanish does. Rock's Alethi speech seems to carry over some degree of gender for nouns, but we don't know how gendered the language is, nor if it's prescriptive or descriptive. But at least I can imagine an Alethi looking at a spear and thinking of it as lethal, dangerous, or a two-handed weapon, while another might see it as precise or a one-handed weapon. None of that touches on how a spear might think of itself, or why, but that hasn't been much explored yet.

I wonder how effective it would be for a spren to change form mid-flight. If you start with the momentum of a bullet (however achieved) and then turn into a thin blade mid-air you could have an on-demand horizontal guillotine. With the light weight of Shardmetal they could even glide for a good distance with the right shape. I'd also find the prospect of facing Shard bolas on the battlefield pretty terrifying, especially since you can just summon one back to your hand in an instant. Though the spren's timing on dulling the cord seems pretty high stakes for the thrower.

That's not what I mean. Harmonium always could exist, but for a very long time it didn't. When it suddenly did exist it had specific properties which derived from the specific circumstances of Harmony's existence, and we know that those properties did not need to be the same as what they actually were (whether or not that would affect Harmonium's properties I'm not sure we know). The specific Shards of Adonalsium that exist always could have existed, as well as countless ones that don't, but it would be absurd to say that the properties of Honor are identical to those of Odium, or that either would be the same as some totally different Shard that wasn't created in the Shattering. Bound by similar principles and limitations, sure, but very different in the specifics of each one. The specific properties that anti-Investiture actually has is exactly what this thread is about, and to say that "whatever those properties are is possible within the laws of the Cosmere" is tautologically true but uninformative. This is off target for what I'm describing as well. It's clearly true that Investiture has specific forms which are not directly interchangeable, as in the many WoBs about fueling magics with forms from different planets-- all Investiture, but with different specific properties as it's manifested here rather than there. Stormlight isn't Voidlight, even though they're both Investiture. Anti-light is neither. Something causes them to be different, even though it's all made of the same stuff, and those differences matter in at least some applications. Even two forms of regular Investiture, such as those contained in Harmonium, can annihilate in a manner similar to what has been described for Investiture and anti-Investiture. And in different realms Investiture has properties which it does not in the Spiritual. There is no location in the Spiritual realm, but the Stormlight in a sphere does have a physical location in the Physical and Cognitive realms. If you carry a sphere of Light from the Physical realm to the Cognitive, you have brought some Investiture to the Cognitive that wasn't "there" before. Even though spiritual energy is everywhere, a Radiant can't just drink Stormlight from arbitrarily far away (as far as we know, for now), so those additive properties have real impacts and consequences for how they interact within different realms. So my suggestion is that Investiture in the Physical realm isn't exactly just "raw" Investiture, but Investiture that has a specific form and specific properties. Some of those are innate (what Investiture "is", at a fundamental level), some of those are Shard-mediated (how a Shard Invests that power in a location), and some are elements inherent to a given realm (like physical location being a necessary component in the Physical realm, though less so in the Cognitive). Anti-Investiture also has at least some of this additive characteristic, as evidenced by Sanderson's description of the form of anti-Investiture causing different reactions (in scale, at least) with specific forms of Investiture. And since the only instance we've seen of anti-Investiture was created by mortals in the Physical realm alone via mechanical methods, it's not crazy to think that anti-Investiture might have some local properties influenced by those factors. Souls exist in multiple realms at all times, just as you say Investiture does. So if the connection is constant, how can anti-Investiture exist at all without immediately annihilating, as it's constantly connected to the all-Investiture Spiritual realm? We obviously don't know the specifics, but the answer is "somehow", since we've seen it happen. If it can happen in one application, then perhaps it could in another. Severing all Connections might indeed be a necessary part of any method that could even potentially succeed, if such a method exists at all. Or perhaps some mad Cosmere scientist builds an anti-soul from scratch for just such a purpose, housed in a Raysium bodysuit or something. And all in a setting dominated by magic, which makes the impossible possible through mystical means. It's obvious that we have virtually no information about anti-Investiture, and what we do have is a bit fragmented, so we can't be very precise in our guesses about what it is like and what it can or cannot do. Any specific guess is probably unlikely to actually come to pass. I really appreciate your posts and the work you do with bringing citations to the board, especially your deep pulls of WoBs and intricate analyses of published material. But I think that in this case you're overinterpreting what we already know to be incomplete, fragmented information about something we've barely seen. I respect your opinion that anti-Investiture is and will little more than an antimatter analogue. To me, that sounds like a dull, one-note magic-dampening-super-murdering plot device, albeit with explosive potential. Just an arbitrary MacGuffin. I think that the books will be more imaginative and surprising than that. We've got an awful lot of pages to go for anti-Investiture to be so... limited.

I'm also curious about other properties of anti-Investiture. It seems to me, at present, that it is something like a cognitive/physical twisting of something that, in itself, doesn't have properties like "ordinary" or "anti-ordinary". By which I mean that anti-Investiture isn't a thing that existed before the theories and processes which first produced it-- it has qualities derived from what qualities people think it should have based on how they made it. It's all the same stuff (Investiture) which comes from the same source (the Spiritual Realm) and then is changed (cognitively? physically? both?) while it's wherever it is (a distinctly physical concept with cognitive mediation). In any case it is sort of a category error to presume that it has many characteristics beyond what we've seen specifically in text and WoBs, if only because we've seen such narrow instances of it. It annihilates Investiture on contact, particularly if the Investiture/anti-Investiture components are in the same form (mediated by Shards' influence). So beyond that the sky's the limit for what we think anti-Investiture could do. I'm warming up to the idea that the conversion from ordinary- to anti-Investiture is going to be a pretty big deal, even beyond being an implicit limit on how and when characters can use their "ordinary" Investiture-derived powers. If converting Investiture to anti-Investiture is something that can be generally done, as Navani's and Raboniel's work suggests, then why couldn't a soul be converted to an anti-soul, which could then make use of anti-Investiture forms for magical effects? Would those effects be the same as the ordinary magics, their opposites, or something completely different? Could an anti-soul be riddled with anti-Hemalurgic spikes, thereby gaining access to Fullborn powers but beyond Harmony's control or influence? It would be interesting to have an axis of conflict that isn't just Shards squabbling, especially since we've reached a kind of plateau on magic power escalation. Anti-Investiture provides a possible avenue to that: power which is on par with Shards in nature but removed from the state of conflict that has existed since the Shattering.

Yes, I could do that. More seriously, I think that it depends on the particular details of how such immortality is achieved, and I'm not sure we know enough to speculate with much confidence. Youth is meaningless to an ageless immortal, and in the mode of a zen koan can we even say that such a concept exists for them? Most other immortals (or "immortals") we've seen still show signs of wear as ages pass. The Heralds suffer mental problems, Rashek dealt with some kind of weariness along with diminishing returns on his atium use, we know that Hoid has some special trick that shields him, Kandra show signs of physical change (if not outright degradation). Maybe they would have some youth, in some sense, to fiddle with Feruchemically. But Returned and people with 5th Heightening or greater? I haven't seen enough to feel like my intuition is all that reliable here, but Vasher seems pretty hale. For that matter, Elantrians might also be able to escape the ravages of time, though they might also just have a constant influx of spiritual energy de-aging them just as it heals their bodies. I would be very interested to know how similar the Nalthian agelessness is for Awakeners with enough Breath compared to the nature of the Returned .

Not to beat a dead (though not Lifeless!) horse, as the above posts cover the details pretty well, but I also think that there is an element of the nature of Awakening and Breaths. We've seen some cool things with Awakening, and we certainly don't know even the theoretical limits of what it can accomplish. Nightblood is... minimally competent at fulfilling his Command. What if he had more ability to move and act on his own, had a more achievable and precise Command, and was good at fulfilling that Command? Such an Awakened object might be very difficult to deal with for any Cosmere magic user, depending on how much latitude you want to grant in how powerful and flexible an Awakening can be. But no matter how cool and flexible the application, there remains a fundamental problem that Awakening involves giving your power away in order to accomplish anything. Breaths take a while to accumulate, and sending a bundle of them off to do their best at following your instructions can be a pretty high-risk situation even if your Command is solid. An Awakened object could stolen or destroyed, for example, leaving you permanently weaker. Other Cosmere magics are both more self-directed (you do what you want with the power that you access when you want to do it) and more direct (you don't have to create an entity that you hope will accomplish what you want in the way you want it accomplished, nor do you have to guard or recover that entity). That's a sharp contrast to needing to have some metals around, or a way to mainline Light. Awakening is cool, and the passive kit of powers from a solid Heightening has a lot of nice features. But in a serious showdown with other powerful Cosmere dwellers, Awakening requires a lot of risky investment of dear resources in order to, hopefully, indirectly accomplish your goals. And so far the goals we've seen that are very achievable are also kind of modest. I may revise this opinion when we've seen more Awakening in future books, as I think that we're going to see some really impressive things from it. I find it especially noteworthy that most discussion of Awakening focuses on efficiency of Breath use and not what could be done with a lot of Breath, efficiently used or not.

I agree with your overall assessment and share some of your concerns. I don't mind the connections between series; I generally love them and have fun trying to figure them out. But where they once felt like a reward for reading attentively, I feel they've been getting both more explicit and less organic. Some of that is probably unavoidable-- as the different series develop there is more and more information to keep track of, and it shouldn't be necessary to formally study the books or to read a wiki just to be able to follow at all. Not necessarily my favorite thing, but maybe the best that can be done. And eventually we definitely will need strong inter-series knowledge because the stories are going to converge in one big meta-plot, and that will necessarily break the silos each series could be in earlier in the publication schedule. A new reader might be a little bit confused, depending on where they start, but I'm not sure it's much worse in itself than earlier in the Cosmere novels. Continuing with TwinSoul, we know a bit about what he can do and a tiny amount about how and why he can do it, but I don't know that we know less about those things than we knew about Allomancy or Radiant powers early in Mistborn and Stormlight. Some details of those books stuck out specifically because they were hints about the Cosmere that we didn't have the information to decode them. We knew they meant something and couldn't figure out what. We've gotten a bit complacent in knowing more about the Cosmere, so it's jarring to be flung back into being teased with that sort of thing, and more so when the hints are more obviously jammed in. What I like a lot less is when the connections don't really have a point except for making the connection. TwinSoul is a great example that I've commented on in other threads: he's a cool and interesting character, but we learn very little about him or the part of the Cosmere he comes from, and what we do learn is just stated in expository dialogue. And, the most serious of all, he doesn't really matter to the plot of TLM. I wonder sometimes how much we (people that pore over details at 17th Shard and elsewhere) drive the issue. Our constant demands for more details, especially about connections between series, probably make subtle hinting a lot less worthwhile. How much extra work should Sanderson put into a subtle clue that can develop over several years and books when he will immediately be asked to explain it definitively so that we can record a new WoB? And to satisfy fans he gives us as much as he can, mainly just avoiding specific spoilers that will be central to future book plots. It's probably very difficult to balance secrets and mysteries revealed subtly and organically in books to a casual reader, or a new fan entering the series at some later point, with giving information to super fans who will coordinate questions at book signings and listen to regular podcasts/watch Youtube videos for hours just to get one extra nugget of new information. But honestly, I think that the biggest issue is the scope and pace of what Sanderson wants to do. He is a prolific writer, publishing a lot of substantial books and novellas each year. He has a pretty well-defined writing schedule that he sticks to pretty well, but writing to a such a brutal schedule must have some impact craftsmanship, and I don't recall it being quite like that in the past. As the Cosmere overall becomes more complex and more details are canonized by being published it becomes a bigger task to manage it all while also focusing on the current project. Some of that feels, to me, like it's showing in books being a bit more formulaic, a bit rougher around the edges, and some pieces being jammed in because things just need to fit together and there isn't any more time to do it more smoothly. Finally, I acknowledge that I'm pretty spoiled by Sanderson's attention to his fans and have high standards. I'm used to very high-quality writing and books from him, and even his worst Cosmere book is still better than an average fantasy or sci-fi novel. But for whatever reason my mind won't give up the idea that every book will be on par with The Final Empire and Way of Kings, and I react to new books accordingly even though I don't think that that's a realistic or fair standard.

Exactly my point, though maybe not clearly expressed. There isn't much reason to think that balance will persist between Shardic entities. Even Shards of equal power and very well-balanced (in opposition) Intents like Preservation and Ruin won't necessarily stay balanced. That would make a situation in which some new arrangement of Shards is balanced at that time an unlikely ending to the Cosmere series, in my estimation, since such a balance is obviously not an ending to the conflicts that have driven many Cosmere novels and most of the meta-story between novels.

I've long thought that reunification is the end game of the Cosmere either as one thing (a new Adonalsium) or as nothing (the "identity" of the power that makes up the Shards, such as Honor, Ruin, etc. become so small and specific that Shardic power is evenly dispersed through everything in the Cosmere; sort of an Anti-nalsium). Anything is possible, but we've already seen promises among the Shards collapse and lead to enormous conflict. It's hard for me to see the conclusion of so many novels being some few Shards (combined or working in agreement) "winning" without a promise of that balance collapsing in short order. We could see the power of Adonalsium being incorporated as some other forces that would balance out, like Good and Evil, but the Cosmere has avoided any sort of moral tone with Shards. Not to mention that Preservation and Ruin were presented as very evenly balanced, and their agreement certainly didn't end conflict.

I seem to recall a couple of examples, but the only one I can specifically reference at the moment is: I'll try to recollect better and offer citations later, if I have a chance before someone else beats me to it.

I'll agree to both of these for sure, though the other difficulties seem difficult to get around to me; more plausible doesn't necessarily bridge the gap all the way to realistic. But someone sufficiently skilled with Forgery could potentially do it, and I think that all aspects of Forgery will become easier as the Cosmere timeline progresses. If I got to hack together my own age-defying scheme across all of the Cosmere through Forgery, I'd Forge compounded atium and then Forge/actually obtain a lot of Breaths. Though I imagine that would be even harder!