Claincy

I can't disagree with most of what you've said there. But there are a couple of things I would like to mention. First up regarding your edit, I think its possible, but it would require ludicrous amounts of zinc to do so, impossible without compounding and if you somehow got enough you would probably burn through it in a second. As in, a second for you, making it kind of pointless Anyway, I think there are a couple of especially important variables that would really define what the end outcome was. First, if the seer didn't know and understand how the sparker was splitting their shadow they would likely die in the first or second exchange, just like Zane. So let's go with the assumption that they understand how the sparker is splitting their shadow. Let's say that the sparker has just split their shadow for the first time. The seer can either A continue on as before (and die), or B react to the new shadow, in which case the sparker will see the change in what they are doing and adjust their action again, splitting their shadow again. I can see option B happening again and again very very fast. So the real question here is then, how long would the atium shadows last? Not long certainly, but even a second or two would result in a build up of a large amount of shadows if: A: the sparker changed their action as soon as they saw the seer change theirs, probably a fair assumption. B: the seer changed their acton almost instantly after the shadow split, which atium would allow them to do. I can see the fight going either way, or, I have a mental image of them just standing facing eachother twitching

Hmm, we may. I would say that atium is as reactive as zinc is, you are just getting the info slightly sooner and in a different way. Yes, this can happen. But a similar thing can happen with atium. It is quite possible for a seer to get into a situation where their atium tells them that they are about to get hit, but they cannot move out of the way in time.

Sorry for being unclear Kurk. I wasn't disagreeing with your most recent post, I agree with that one. I was trying to clarify that one and how much it affected this argument =) I think I misunderstood how you were saying it slightly, my apologies.

Unless the seer was also able to tap steel or burn pewter there is always going to be some giveaway of their action at least a second before they take it, more depending on their fighting skill. So the seer would likely have an extra second to react, but this is balanced out by the zparker having as long as they want to consider how to react and to change their mind however many times over and they don't have a multitude of shadows muddying the water as to what their opponent is about to do. I would rather pit a seer against a thug than a sparker, I think they would find it easier, however I still maintain that sparker vs seer the sparker has the advantage.

Or similarly the shard of apathy.

I thought the goal was to use the moon as a giant anchor for the purpose of rapid transport, I could be wrong about what other people were thinking of though

It would be very interesting if he didn't. But I'm going to have to agree with those Shardlet that he would have a single one. From what we know of Hoid I don't think he has any future vision granting powers apart from the one that somehow lets him know where important stuff is happening and I highly doubt that could be used to split his shadow.

I don't think we were so much talking about pulling the moon out of orbit as simply pulling on it to move yourself (or I could have been missing part of the conversation :/). But I agree with what you are saying Miyabi. I just think that using whatever method it is for compounding allomantic power would still require ridiculous quantities of iron. To the point that I think we can parallel this to the question about tapping enough weight to break through the planets crust and there not being enough iron on the planet to actually pull that off.

That doesn't make sense as an argument to me. The seer and the sparker are both limited physically to normal speeds and are both going to have highly advanced mental speeds. Let's say that pech is correct and that atium doesn't have an upper limit to its mental expansion (which doesn't feel quite right), in that case the seer will have expanded mental speed that matches what the sparker has, not above. This is true and a good point. However it applies equally well to the seer as it does to the sparker. Each time the shadow splits and the seer switches to attack the new shadow they will suffer the exact same difficulty as the sparker does when changing their attack. I think what is particularly important here is the combat skill of the sparker. If they were trained and could accurately judge the seer's intended actions then it would be more or less equal footing. A sparker inexperienced with combat however would sooner or later misjudge one of the seers actions and as a result might react in the wrong way to counter first and *might* not be able to adjust their action back in time. This is still somewhat stymied by the sparker having a more or less infinite time to consider each and every minor adjustment to the situation if we are sticking with the "unlimited reserves". @Kurk On a related note: A fundamental disagreement we seem to have is on how much atium expands the mind. If atium expands the mind exactly enough to deal with every shadow, hence they wouldn't have a problem keeping track of which of the sparker's shadows was the most recent then in theory in a conflict between 2 seers each would always know the exact action that the other was about to take, naturally this would change an instant later, but they would still be able to keep track of which of the new shadows was correct. This does not fit with what we have seen of atium in canon. The shadows are too numerous and too fast for them to keep track of which is the newest. You could say that atium will result in far more shadows than you could create with zinc but this also doesn't fit. When Kelsier trains Vin with atium the shadows coming off him are described as "dozens", a sparker who was capable of interpreting their enemies movements with unlimited zinc could easily split their shadow that many times, in which case what applies for one situation should apply for the other as in my previous paragraph.

That would make sense. (I also don't have a copy available right now), I *think* at the final fight after his storing "on the go" for a couple of days he had enough stored for 3 gunshot wounds. (Just for extra info)

Given we are talking about unlimited quantities the sparker could essentially reduce time to an absolute crawl for them and could react to the slightest change in the seer's position or bearing. So I think they could easily split their shadow many many times. In the end I think the sparker would more likely win as they would always be able to see what the seer is trying to do and react to that, rather than having to pick between shadows. The seer could just try to pick the newest shadow as that will be the current one, but the sparker will see that and change again, splitting the shadow further, too fast for the seer to keep up with which shadow is real.

Yeah definitely. But all the same I wonder if they can see as far as an ordinary person. Because, without obstructions a normal person can see quite a long way.

I wasn't talking about the MAG ranges. I believe you are correct regarding the size of the metal object but the range of iron/steel is still relatively short. At my guess, excepting especially large metal objects most of the time it would need to be within 300m, for nails, screws, coins I would hazard a guess at 100m max. This would vary depending on the allomancer naturally. If they had a moon, well firstly it being composed completely or even mostly of metal would be very very strange. But even if it was it would have to be very close to Scadrial for them to be able to pull on it.

Given that iron and steel have overall fairly limited range (which makes me wonder at how far inquisitors can actually see...), if they could pull on the moon (well, metal parts in the moon) then everybody would be in very serious trouble.

I do get very invested in characters. One of the biggest marks of a good book to me is how invested in the characters I get. I won't say that I "like it" when characters die, but I do vastly prefer stories where some characters die as makes sense in the story than books where everyone always survives everything. Death is a very powerful thing and I like books that use it well. The ending of mistborn felt right to me. I'm finding it hard to see an ending with them living that would have been better.

Welcome to the forums Serendipity! Serendipity would be an interesting shard. Luck granting powers...like chromium compounding

Oops, forgot about that. You are correct Pechvarry.

I think it's more likely that its based on the centre of mass given how integral mass is to allomantic iron and steel.

Yeah, you could simplify to say that pewter doubles. But it does depend a bit on how good they are with pewter and how fit they were to start with. (ratings can go from 1 to 10). Flaring is a bit underwhelming in the MAG to be honest. It only adds one. From canon I think it should be adding maybe a further 50% of the strenght/speed/agility/etc that they get from normal burning. The reduction is almost certainly a balance thing. That is a reasonable interpretation of duralumin in my opinion. The MAG does things a bit differently. For this to make sense I'm going to have to do a quick rundown of how rolls work in the MAG. You form a dice-pool of 2-10 dice then add/subtract modifiers. The highest pair out of 1-5 that you get is your "outcome" . (any 6's you get are called "nudges" which can be used for small bonuses, eg +1 damage in combat or a flourish or similar). Some rolls also have a difficulty which you have to meet to succeed. For example a difficulty 3 roll requires you to roll a pair of 3's, 4's or 5's to succeed. Your final outcome is your outcome - the difficulty and that determines how succesfuly you were. If it is positive, you succeed! and the more positive it is the better your success, if it is negative, you fail, and the lower the number the worse you failed. Returning now to duralumin. In the MAG a character will have a rating with duralumin, just like the have a physique rating and a pewter rating. They can use duralumin to either: -increase the outcome of the roll by half their duralumin rating. Example, a mistborn is trying to break down a door that has a difficulty of 3 to break. and burns duralumin as well as pewter. Let's say they have a rating of 4 in duralumin and decide to use this option and that they roll a pair of 2's. Without the duralumin their action would fail and the door would stand. But with duralumin they have an outcome of 2 + 2 = 4 which beats the difficulty and the door comes crashing off its hinges. -Gain a number of nudges with the roll equal to their duralumin rating. For example a mistborn punching someone and burning pewter with rating 4 duralumin. Could burn duralumin to get an extra 4 nudges and could turn them into extra damage if they chose. For a bit of context, most attacks in game tend to hit for around 3 damage. If any of that wasn't clear just let me know.

Ok I'll dump the MAG info here. They may differ slightly from canon but I think its fairly reasonable in this case. In the MAG everyone has a physique stat, where about 4 represents an average fit person and a 5 is someone who has trained their body to a very good physical state. In the MAG your pewter rating adds directly to your physique score and flaring adds an extra 1 on top of that. A standard misting from character creation has a rating of 5.

Have fun =) The AoL ones shouldn't be too bad, but looking at the WoA ones let alone the ancient Terris dialect....yeah, no intention of ever doing them

Ah yes, "I'm glad you talked me into this." very epic XD Seriously though, that entire sequence was truly fantastic.

I'm working on the final empire set. Personally prefer them to any of the others =) (I kind of just love Mistborn 1 in general I guess partly because it was my first Brandon novel.)

Yeah let's leave the somewhat irrelevant y thing. It is possible that we pronounce it differently anyway, making the whole debate even sillier. The spelling mistakes were in the actual text. They were minor, particularly in "shall" that one time where he forgot to use "sh" as one character. I'm now up to kerning with the font so it should be done inside the next week depending on health and uni work. I am really looking forward to having my roleplaying groups find some mysterious document and then pass them an actual sheet written in the steel alphabet

Basically just a way to give people warm fuzzies.