Claincy

No worries. Always happy to help out anyone who is trying to set up a MAG game.

It certainly wouldn't be highly practical But we did get confirmation a while back that it is possible to create a heamalurgic spike without killing the victim. Very serious side effects all the same that makes this speculation remotely feasible.

Found it. Not that it got too far. :/ Anyway, Melbourne, Australia. Great place

@Darnam, A good point. <upvote, oooh, 200, congrats > From a strict balance point of view the MAG is a long way off being well balanced. However a lot of aspects of it are very hard to give an unbiased comparison of. Regardless, each person in the crew should hopefully be performing a different role with different specialties, that helps. Edit: The thread is now fairly derailed, sorry Kad.

You do have a good point. It likely wouldn't work at that juncture. You could however pull it out then stab it back into yourself at the appropriate place to tack on that bit of soul just as the spike could be used on someone else. (This is all based on having found a way to spike yourself without killing yourself of course.)

Ok then. If they are used to DnD the first piece of advice is to expect the MAG to be very very different. Important things: the rules DnD has a very strong rules focus where the players are trying to "beat" the scenario that the gm created. Narrative generally takes a relative backseat. In the MAG narrative and characters are front and center. The rules are simple and often fairly in-specific, it is frequently up to the narrator to make a call about what happens. If you find yourself arguing about rules for long, make a quick compromise and move the focus back to the story. the story/setting Unlike in DnD and similar where the gm builds a mostly pre-determined story and adventure. One of the biggest strengths of the MAG is to give the players a ridiculous amount of power in the direction of the story. The players aren't playing through a story you designed, they are creating a story with you. You set up the general premise and situation and they need to decide how to deal with it. In an ideal situation (like with my online crew) the narrator adds elements to the story, or "prompts" and the players decide how to react to those prompts. For example: "Another crew is planning a job to scam house Erikell for a large shipment of weapons." Does the crew: -offer to join in on the job? -tip off Erikell about the job for a quick payoff? -wait for the job to go through then steal the weapons themselves? -sabotage the job and take whatever remnants of the crew is left after the disaster into their own crew? And many many more possibilities. However, a lot of new players find this very difficult so it would probably be better to start off with a bit more direction. Perhaps a noble house hires the crew to do some specific job or similar. If the players get stuck at any point, don't be afraid to provide an idea or hint. awesomeness If a player comes up with an awesome idea, if it is even remotely possible to do so without completely wrecking your future secrets/challenges/plans, let them do so. Encourage them to do so. Allomancy and feruchemy and the loose systems of the MAG allow for a huge amount of creativity. collaboration I know I said this before but it needs emphasizing. This isn't the narrator against the players, if it feels that way something is wrong. You and the players are working together, you just have different tool-sets. Don't be afraid to let the players describe things or add elements to the story, several people can come up with a lot more interesting and varied things than one person. Be careful with this though, allowing them to add description etc is good but don't let them just add in a perfect solution to any problem Remember that you have the final say on anything and can confirm of deny anything as needed, just don't abuse the power. It could, and likely will, take a bit of getting used to for you and your players. But once you are used to it, less narratively focused rpg's feel sort of shallow and unsatisfying in comparison

The idea of having one spike passing through 2 people is interesting. However I get the feeling that it would be considered to be in one or the other. let's assume I am wrong though and continue speculating This idea, as far as I know, has never really been discussed so all of this will naturally be complete speculation. It is quite possible that such a link would create some form of cognitive bond between the two. I do not think this would readily allow direct telepathy but I think it might grant a vastly heightened degree of empathy such that they feel something of the emotions of the other, in a way as if they were being effected by brass/zinc. I think the second spike victim would be considered the recipient and hence the spike could be removed from them without killing them if it wasn't puncturing anything overly vital (or they had Feruchemical gold). Personally I doubt that a feruchemist could use someone else as a battery like that. If he could steal any in this way I would suspect that it would either be limited to cognitive or spiritual attributes, or work for all. I do not think it would be exclusive to physical. I'm not sure if storing as much of their breath as possible would work or not, but there would certainly be much easier ways to murder a person than spiking them with a special spike like that, then spiking yourself with the other part, then storing their breath. Why not just aim for somewhere vital with the initial spiking and just stab them to death?

How experienced are you at role-playing? Because that would effect what advice I would give.

When you spend ridiculous quantities of time in mistborn roll-playing games and designing and creating things based on Brandon's works. When one of your first reactions to any magic system is to wonder how it could fit with realmatics. When you are excited about an RAFO because it means you can go on theorizing and that there is something important to theorize about.

I never really thought about this too much. You have some interesting ideas here. It wouldn't be cheap or easy to get letters to someone in the army. They did have the spheres of course but they may not have at this point in time. Or something else could have happened to them. Kaladin's phrasing suggests that he considered the message to be the last he would send, even when he sent it. So he was essentially cutting off contact at that point regardless of whether they replied. Maybe they knew this. Maybe not.

Really sucks huh? When your first thought in the morning is about a theory you can't wait to post on 17s.

Feruchemical electrum could, but it would be very situational. It would only work when they are soothing you to try to prevent you from doing something. Otherwise the added determination wouldn't really have any impact on the soothing. Feruchemical aluminium might. Reinforcing your identity could effectively overshadow and minimize any effects on your emotions that weren't yours to start with. For example: Say a soother was trying to make you very angry about something that normally wouldn't bother you, or would even make you feel happy. Tapping Feruchemical aluminium would strengthen your normal personality, effectively increasing the happiness relative to the anger. Again highly situational. This would be more effective with less charges for a strong-willed person naturally. Really I think Tyndwill is simply very strong-willed and also very much a master of her emotions. As a result she would have a fairly easy time recognizing a soother or rioter's influence and could ignore the emotion they were enhancing/effect they were trying to achieve.

Kaladins journey is very good. I think a lot of us can relate to it to some degree Rithmatist is excellent, though be warned, you will not enjoy waiting years for the sequel. Alcatraz is good, though almost too silly.

I know it isn't quite the same, but over on steelministry.com we have a game running called futile efforts where we are trying to assassinate the lord Ruler. Herowannabe who is running it does awesome narration, including some from the lord Ruler's point of view, so if you want to see a bit more of him you can check it out. I've compiled the narration, cutting out all of the out of character comments in this thread if you feel like a fun read. (You don't need an account to view this campaign).

Welcome Auri! We are very glad to have you Have you read all of Brandon's works yet? Which was your favourite?

I don't think anyone was disputing or even questioning the point about who died when the mists struck. The question was: "When Preservation initially set up the mists did they attack people like that who were unlikely to survive it as much as they do in HoA". Preservation would definitely be aware that this would happen if he had set it up as it is in Hero of Ages in the beginning. He would have to be a fool not to, but did he just consider the people who would die from that collateral damage? That doesn't seem to fit that well given that he was mentally incapable of even attacking ruin with the intent to destroy. I'm not saying it isn't possible that the strengths and targets of the mists attacks are exactly the same as preservation made them, but it wouldn't surprise me if Ruin had strengthened them in that regard to make them seem more threatening. I think we can safely say that Ruin did cause the mists to come later and later in the day. I strongly disagree that the mists staying out later and later was done by preservation, or if it was then there was a limit beyond which this would not occur, simply because if the mists continued to stay later it would eventually effectively wipe almost all life from the planet. Preservation would not and in fact could not do that.

Yeah I was thinking similarly regarding the effects of the coppercloud. But something to consider, if a coppercloud is insignificant at blocking ruins influence then is the blessing of stability equally futile against Ruin? I would figure that Marsh and at least most of the inquisitors have copper. Simply because sometimes they would want to go undetected which could be a bit tricky if they cannot burn copper. Also, I seem to remember it was Marsh who followed Vin in Fadrex, if that is the case then he definitely had copper. Does anyone recall if this is the case? Or was it just Ruin playing mind games?

I figured that he definitely made them stay longer in the day, blocking the sunlight and preventing crops from growing etc. I know it has to be rough for them to snap, it was kind of the whole point All the same I am unsure that preservation initially planned for the mists not to be as commonly lethal as they are during the time of hero of ages. Perhaps partly just due to not targeting those who would likely not survive the ordeal. It is possible that the casualties were always going to be the case and it was just a compromise Preservation made, but I don't know that preservation would have been capable of that by that stage.

Yeah I kinda figured the biological human part. Main trouble is, how do you define a biological human? Clearly at the point of having kollos skin you aren't really human anymore (though human would debate that). But while it can often be clear that something isn't human, it is much harder to define at what point someone stops being biologically human.

The biggest question here is "What defines the difference between someone with spikes and a haemalurgic creation." We can pretty safely say that Vin, Phenrod, Zane, Spook,etc were people with spikes, each having only one. But a koloss with 4 is definitely a haemalurgic creation and a kandra with only 2 is also one. Perhaps then the definition of a haemalurigc creation is that ruin can control them.

I would look at it more as taking what is there and arranging it to fit a specific pattern. I don't view it as actually destroying or creating anything, just reshaping it. @Darnam, Just a note on the mists. To my memory Ruin strengthened the mists back in Alendi's time, making them far more dangerous and forming the threat of the deepness. I would guess that he strengthened them again in the Hero of Ages period and that without that it would very rarely have caused any deaths. On the flipside it would probably also have snapped fewer allomancers. I could be wrong here, but I *think* Preservation was a little more careful when he set up the mists, he just didn't count on Ruin's influence.

That made for a very interesting read. However I would think that for a general statement for aluminium it has to be skin-to-skin. Why? Because Allomantic battles would get very disappointing otherwise and any future mistborn v mistborn battles end with whoever manages to get the timing right on the chromium to do it first. I just don't think it would work well from a story perspective even if it made sense realmatically. So you know, it got me thinking about how much the person had to consider their clothing a part of them for it to work. Considering that for most people specific clothing isn't really all that important and might not apply for this. For many mistborn however their mistcloak could cognitively be significant to their identity. There would be a certain irony to wiping a mistborns metal reserves through their mistcloak

As am I. I get the feeling that we will end up writing the rules for ourselves though. I'm planning on writing some for stormlight archive sometime after WoR comes out. Depending on how much we learn in WoR it might need to wait for the next book though. Why thankyou It is just a theory that you could do that kind of thing with gold, but I really hope it is correct. Gold is still, in and of itself not that useful if that was all it was capable of. However depending on how far the dual selves thing goes it could potentially have a huge number of applications. Sorry that I'm not being specific here. In my MAG campaign Kad's character has the intention of exploring the possibilities of gold and I don't want to let all the cats out of the bag yet. Suffice to say that you appear to be simultaneously both and perhaps have access to the memories of both. At any rate, it could still be pretty useful for trying to understand yourself and what you could have and maybe could still become. More of a personal introspection tool than an active power when used that way.

There is some speculation as to just how much you can learn from your gold shadow and how much you could potentially learn to control what gold shadow appears when you burn gold. The simple fact is that none of the characters in any of the books have really explored gold, most only ever burnt it once. Both Kad and I strongly suspect that you can get a lot more out of gold with practice, most people in-universe don't see the point and so never get to a point where it is particularly useful. Edit: A further note that bugs me a bit. A lot of people describe gold as seeing an alternative version of yourself and, while this is technically true it is only a part of what is actually described wen Vin burns gold. She doesn't just *see* another version of herself, she simultaneously is both herself and another version of herself. This is a very important distinction.