Brandon Sanderson

Just wait for The CW Mistborn Prequel which is about some poor half-noble Skaa Mistborn, who comes to the Capital faking to be from a distant full-noble relations to the Noble House come to learn true sophistication and must hide his new found sympathy to the city Skaa which is totally not because he wants to bang that hot Skaa Merchant Daughter he met when he came into the city.

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So who would win in a fight between Vin and Kaladin? Vin would have only standard metals.

Also is there anyone in TSA who could stand up to Mist-powered Vin who annihilated the Inquisitors? (outside of gods like Odium I mean)

Vin would win even with standard. Kaladin would still be wearing metal. That's an instant-lose setting against a Mistborn.

Is it? She's not Magneto.

If Kaladin figures out that she's pushing him telekinetically fast enough, he can adhere himself to the ground and she'll suddenly be throwing herself. Someone who can fly freely seems like a unique challenge for her. Remember how incredible it was when Kelsier was zooming around through the air with steelpushes in his fight against the Lord Ruler? Kaladin can just do that.

I still think Vin would win, but I don't think they're in instant loss territory.

Edited by Durazno on Jul 17th 2018 at 12:45:35 PM

If he can figure it out fast enough, if she manages to push him up before he can Lash himself to the ground, they could end up in a Tug of War.

It'd be honestly a toss-up in my estimate, depending on outside factors as well. (Terrain, situation)

For example, if they fought in the Middle of the Shattered Plains with the only Metal being on Kal around, he'd have the advantage.

If they did it in Elendel with Metal everywhere, she'd probably have the mobility advantage.

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Also, he'd probably think he has a strength advantage, and would get a rude surprise when she burns Pewter. There're a lot of ways this could go.

Really, I like imagining this as the inevitable team-up issue misunderstanding fight, and then they're off to fight something big and awful together.

Question about allomancy: I remember that Elend was "stronger" in allomancy once he got the leraseum in him. Is strength in allomancy a matter of efficiency? Like you get more strength for the same amount of pewter, more senses for the same amount of tin, etc?

I quite like the responses Brandon gives when asked about "who beats who" debates. He generally says it heavily comes down to the situation and lots of other factors.

For instance, I could buy end of Warbreaker Vivenna beating a regular Final Empire Mistborn if she's spent enough time learning the basic ins and outs of Mistings and the Mistborn has no idea of what Awakeners can do. I'd buy that happening 100% in story, but at the same time I also see how taking that fight in a vacuum or even just in most other non advantageous situations Vivienna probably looses 9/10 times.

That actually makes me think.

So far I've gotten the impression Worldhoppers try not to make too many waves, but there has got to be unsolved crimes in most worlds where someone was killed by a offworld magic user while doing something.

For instance I bet at least a few bits of Atium were smuggled off world for study, and people who have Atuim lying around probably have Mistborn who would object to stealing it.

"But if that happened, Melia might actually be happy. We can't have that." - Handsome Rob

Probably. More Bang for the same amount of Buck?

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Even if Kal Lashes himself to the ground, she can Pull as well as Push. Unless his COMPLETELY divests himself of metal, he can act as her one anchor, even if he takes them as high up as he wants. If he manages to Lash her, all she needs to do is Pull him before he gets out of range.

Also, Soothing and Rioting. She can INDUCE depression. ACTIVELY induce it. That would be NASTY for anyone, but most of all Kal.

And I just noticed Kal shares a name with Superman. Probably not a coincidence, given the flying and how blue is his color.

I think Allomantic power measures range and effect? Consider: steelpushing and -pulling, we are told, is sending your weight in a straight line path towards a metal object. This does not seem to change no matter how much allomantic power you have, so the only factors left to measure it by are how it alters how far you can project that weight (see how far Wax was able to pull the Airship from when using the Bands of Mourning) and how effectively you can project that effect on an Invested substance (see TLR Pushing at the metal in Vin's stomach). But remember that the only allomantic effects we can measure like this , off the top of my head, is the iron and steel, brass and zinc, and copper and bronze. The Temporal metals MIGHT also work like this, since indicators are you can turn them on or off, but you can't affect the RATE at which they affect time or the size of the bubble. Stronger allomancy might lead to a larger temporal bubble and a greater time discrepancy.

We can't measure this for aluminum and duralumin, since they're burst effects (ESPECIALLY aluminum) and gold and electrum... well, how WOULD we measure increased power in that?

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jul 18th 2018 at 4:13:13 PM

It's unclear if stronger allomancers are getting more power out of the same amount of metal, or if they get more power by burning metal faster, but I'd guess the latter. We already know you can flare metals to get more power by burning it faster — I'd imagine that allomantic strength is just your baseline burn rate.

As far as Vin vs Kaladin, I would tend to bet on Kaladin. They're both accomplished fighters, both have ways to boost their strength, speed, and toughness to inhuman levels, and both have good mobility (ie, the can fly around at high speed). But for the things they don't share, Kaladin's are generally better. Vin's biggest "unique" asset in a fight is steel and iron, but Kaladin doesn't rely on metal to fight, and could likely counter pushes/pulls with lashings given some practice. Kaladin has a shardblade, which is a huge advantage, and stormlight gives him a straight-up Healing Factor, which Vin can't match. Kaladin's lashings are also generally more flexible than Vin's steel and iron, though Vin does have the advantage of not having to touch her targets to affect them.

Short of using atium or Mist-fueled super-allomancy, I don't see Vin beating Kaladin in a fair fight.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I wonder if a Radiant has a way to ward off emotional allomancy. Do you think it's similar to Nergaoul's deal, at least from a Radiant's perspective? My instinct is to say that they might be protected if they're wearing their proper Plate and have their helmet sealed.

Of course, whatever emotion gets rioted or soothed has to be present, so that's probably more a matter of goading him into mistakes than using his depression as a weapon against him.

I really think this might come down to location, and whether they're both aware of the other, and why they're fighting.

Kind of a random tangent but I remember when I first read The Final Empire I thought Vin was like a super badass chosen one prodigy. Kelsier was charismatic and clever but he wasn't that powerful. It was Vin who could pierce copper clouds and it was Vin who was the true genius and powerhouse.

But then Hero of Ages says her ability to see through copper is due only to hemalurgy and not just because she had a higher power level. And furthermore, she's "weaker" than literally anyone who swallowed the original empowering beads at the Well.

Kinda annoying or disappointing in a way.

I don't think we've ever seen anyone use Soothing or Rioting to actively disable their enemies unless they were using duralumin to boost it or were just inordinately powerful with all metals like the Lord Ruler. Those metals' influence is described as, under normal circumstances, being the sort of thing you can shrug off so long as you know to do so.

I'd give Kaladin the edge over Vin because stormlight healing makes him nigh-impossible to kill.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

Of course, Kal gets Rekt against a full blown Mistborn/Feruchemist Compounder.

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I'd put my money on a Full-Radiant Kaladin, personally.

Stormlight healing makes him incredibly difficult to kill. Also, he probably would be smart enough to dump all of his metals as soon as he figured out what Vin was doing. Furthermore his Syl-blade is immune to allomantic pushing.

Of course, there are a lot of circumstances that could turn the tide: Kal running out of Stormlight, Vin burning duralumin,etc.

I'm absolutely sure that wearing Plate with the helmet up would block emotional Allomancy, since different types of Investiture naturally block each other at least a little. It's why it's very hard to Push or Pull on metalminds (and speaking of, why it would be basically impossible to Push or Pull a Shardblade or Shardplate, even though they're technically metal). My question is whether or not merely holding Stormlight would be enough to block it.

Unlikely. Burning metals doesn't protect you against emo allo, only burning a SPECIFIC metal does. And while you can't affect an invested object, you can affect anything behind it, else you would be able to protect yourself from emo allo by, say, building an iron box and filling it with weight.

Okay, let's standardize the scenario. Let's say Kaladin at the end of book 3, Vin as she was when she was fighting all the Obligators before she went all godly. Vin is full of all metals known at the time (sans atium) and glass knives, Kal is at full capacity of stormlight and has a normal spear and a throwing knife. Kal is wearing his officer uniform, Vin is wearing her usual assassin clothes and mistcloak. They're fighting over the ocean with no land in sight, each having started from a wood raft made with wood and metal nails thirty feet apart and it's a clear sunny day at noon with no chance of any weather changes. They have never seen each other fight. They fight to the death. That's as close to equal as I could envision the scenario.

Who'd you bet on?

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jul 18th 2018 at 8:20:59 PM

Allomancy is a rather low-Investiture system, remember. It mostly works by catalyzing Investiture rather than the massive amount of energy Surgebinders throw around on a regular basis. Holding Stormlight is roughly equivalent to burning pewter, but much much more powerful. Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if Investing a metal box (or in a simpler scenario, making a metalmind out of a helmet) would in fact protect you from emotional Allomancy. Feruchemists are pretty rare in era 2, so we don't know every way the systems interact. It doesn't seem any sillier than tinfoil hats protecting you. Though I suppose it's kind of the opposite; aluminum is an Investiture-sink (so a tinfoil hat works as a crude Faraday cage, conducting the energy away from doing anything useful), while the metalmind helmet would more directly block it like a wall.

In your scenario, why does Kaladin only have a normal spear? He had his Shardblade at the end of 3.

Why does that mean he shouldn't have a spear? He'd still has Syl anyway. Although now that you mention it, I suppose Vin should have a bag of coins too.

And I posited that metalminds don't block other forms of allomancy from affecting things behind them because we don't see it being used in the Wax and Wayne Era, and specifically with Wax himself. If using an ironmind flask to block steelpushes from being able to push on his steelflakes-in-whisky worked, he'd be doing that instead of having breakaway belts.

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jul 18th 2018 at 9:15:01 PM

I wouldn't hold Vin being weaker than anyone who ate the original lerasium against her. The Lord Ruler - and later Elend - are the only people in Scadrial that have that level of strength. Everyone else in the setting is a weaker allomancer than the originals - and while Elend may have stronger allomancy, Vin is unquestionably better at being a Mistborn.

And she managed to think up the flying horseshoe trick, which hundreds of years of Mistborn were too lazy to work out.

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jul 18th 2018 at 9:20:59 PM

Also she's one of the few heroic characters where I'm not questioning the idea that, should she be made aware of his weakness, she'd be willing to Riot Kaladin's clinical depression until he curls up into the fetal position mid-fight and starts crying about his dead brother.

Most things do, yes. They had to nerf away some of the metals to get a full Compounder down to "undying god-tyrant."

I posit that the reason that Investiture from Scadrial is so broken is because it was made cooperatively. In every other place, Investiture is either powered by a single shard or one shard coops another's system (Sel and Surgebinding/Voidbinding come to mind). Literally everything there is made of Investiture from two different Shards, so on a Cognitive and Spiritual level, it can do more than any other system powered by one Shard alone, in the same way that Ruin and Harmony were able to create life together when they couldn't alone. It's dynamic equilibrium as a baseline.

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jul 18th 2018 at 9:57:31 PM

The fact that Feruchemy on its own isn't particularly broken implies otherwise.

You know my feelings about Feruchemy actually being of Preservation alone and not both Ruin and Preservation. But yeah, it's actually pretty darn broken. Most investiture we've seen is about energy output. Investiture goes in, flashy effect comes out. Feruchemy, however, is storage and concentration. A FULL feruchemist is pretty darn broken since they can make DRM-free metalminds and after that you just need to imagine possibilities. The only reason the Feruchemists of old seemed weak was because they didn't have nicrosil and aluminum. Off the top of my head, Copperminds suddenly could become communal use, which for Sazed's bunch would have been awesome. Communal gold for healing. Communal bendalloy for times of famine and drought. And it would work for non-feruchemists too, because of nicrosilminds with stored investiture. Not everything is broken because of destructive power.

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jul 18th 2018 at 11:05:37 PM