Poll

Which would you rather be?

Channeler
41 (48.2%)
Mistborn
25 (29.4%)
Keeper
10 (11.8%)
Wolfbrother
4 (4.7%)
Inquisitor
4 (4.7%)
Gray Man
0 (0%)
Gholam
1 (1.2%)
Fade
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 85

Author Topic: Wheel v. Mist  (Read 29403 times)

Andrew the Great

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #30 on: May 07, 2008, 10:50:28 PM »
So What? You can see the huge white bar of liquid fire flying toward you at 10 million miles per hour? Why would that even matter? You see it, then a half second later your dead. You have no reaction time. There is an ongoing discussion as to whether balefire would affect someone wearing mat's medallion, but either way, hit them with lightning, their dead.

Well, emotional allomancy is only influencing emotions, not controlling them, and thats only as long as the affected doesn't know about it. The sensitivity of a channeler when wielding the Power would make them aware of something affecting them, and they'd fairly quickly start taking measures against.

I do agree that while they are very superior in a head to head battle, a Mistborn could whoop up on a channeler assuming that they could sneak up on them. Mistborn are creatures of stealth and shadow, channelers are blatant and powerful.

Actually, I would say that a Mistborn is controlling emotions, just not the person themself. Think about it, they can make them feel whatever they want, they just can't control how they react to that emotion. They can PREDICT it, but not control it.
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Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #31 on: May 08, 2008, 12:06:21 AM »
But atium users have incredible reaction time. Balefire should be easy to sidestep if you know ahead of time exactly where it's going to strike. At least, that is if it were some kind of plasma attack with no temporal effects. Since it has temporal effects, can its temporal effects be countered by other temporal effects?

Also, don't channelers have to train themselves to have a lot of control over their own emotions?
« Last Edit: May 08, 2008, 12:09:03 AM by Ookla The Mok »
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Andrew the Great

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #32 on: May 08, 2008, 12:19:50 AM »
No matter how good your reaction time is, you're still not going to be able to move quickly enough to get out of the way. Even if you are ridiculously fast to begin with and burning pewter, half a second isn't enough time to completely move. Even if you know what's coming. Ookla, channelers don't have to train themselves to control their emotions, they have to learn to not let them show and to not let them affect their actions.

Anyway, back to original topic, if you were to wrap them up in air before you BF'd them, they couldn't react. Yes, yes, I know, the medallion...so use earth and build a stone wall around them (and above) then you bf them. Regardless of what a mistborn could do, a channeler would win. The mistborn could hold his/her own for a bit, but they would eventually lose. What it comes down to is that a mistborn can't attack effectively from a distance (coins don't count, their too easy to block with air). A Channeler can, and mistborn really couldn't defend themselves against it.
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Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #33 on: May 08, 2008, 01:24:58 AM »
I was just thinking, if a saidin channeler is using the flame and the void technique to clear his mind, how would emotional allomancy affect him? (Seems to me using the flame and void is like soothing all your own emotions away.)

Half a second is a LOT of time. At normal walking speed, your body is in a completely different location within half a second. (Specifically: Typical walking speed: 2.8 miles per hour. Distance traveled in 0.5 seconds: 2 feet.)

I don't know the typical blast radius of balefire, though, but if it's small enough to hit one of those dog creatures and not hit the ground around it, it seems like something easy to dodge. Even if it comes at you at the speed of light, if the channeler is standing 10 feet away, if you've got half a second warning, the effective speed is only 13 miles per hour. You can just calmly step out of the way. (And if you assume the mistborn is already moving due to already being in combat mode, it's even less trouble to change trajectory than to move from a standstill. Pushing or Pulling would give an added speed boost if necessary.)

I think it's hardly a question at all that a person burning atium could avoid a moderately-sized energy beam attack. The question I'm interested in is how balefire's temporal effects would come into play. Maybe balefire would end up killing an atium user the instant they saw it, before the attack actually hit them. (A situation kind of like thiotimoline's.)

And how would Grandpa Smedry react to balefire? (See Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians. His talent is arriving late to things, including bullets.)
« Last Edit: May 08, 2008, 01:46:28 AM by Ookla The Mok »
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Czanos

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #34 on: May 08, 2008, 02:12:19 AM »
As to the atium vs. balefire temporal aspect, it would probably depend on the strength of the atium burn/balefire. I seem to remember hearing that flaring atium would give you a larger time jump into the future (can't remember if it was canon or not though . . .) but the strength of balefire can burn things out of the pattern at different intervals. So it would probably just come down to which had a larger temporal distance. (And the average size of balefire is about the width of your arm, if I recall correctly.)

However, another advantage Mistborn have is that 90% of Aes Sedai have to use hand gestures to get their weaves to work properly. Burning atium would let them see which hand gestures the Aes Sedai was using, giving another insight in to what the channeler was going to do.

As for zinc and brass, while channelers don't need complete emotional control, they do need to be able to focus. A Mistborn could riot emotions such as shock, worry, absentmindedness, or some such to weaken that control, or soothe all their emotions away in a big push to shock them out of weaving right. Of course, where Aes Sedai are trained to handle their emotions, this might not do much good once they figured out what was going on, but it could be used to stall and close in.

And as for Mistborn not having good long range attacks against Aes Sedai, it may be true, but a steelpush or ironpull (enhanced with duralumin perhaps?) would considerably shorten that distance very quickly. The terrain would really make a differene in a fight between the two though, as a lot of factors come down to how much metal the Mistborn has to use and how fast the channeler can get a weave around them.

Also, most Aes Sedai keep coins on them, don't they? A Mistborn might not have to get too close if they can just push the coins off them far enough to pull them back with lethal force. Aes Sedai aren't likely to guard against their own coins killing them. (Though I bet they'd learn fast.)

And keep in mind, it takes quite a lot of the One Power to go moving earth around, particularly large amounts of it. While the Aes Sedai in question could probably do it, (a touch unfair to give the Mistborn advantages such as atium and metal to work with without the Aes Sedai being equally gifted.) it would take quite a bit of effort to encase someone in stone. Which raises another question. Could a Mistborn riot/soothe an Aes Sedai's emotions to make them more likely to draw on too much of the One Power or otherwise let it consume them? I would think they could, as Rand makes Saidin at least sound easy to fall prey to.
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Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #35 on: May 08, 2008, 02:45:46 AM »
I must say, this discussion is certainly more interesting than Superman vs. Son Goku.

Channeling as a type of magic is capable of so much more than allomancy. But in a head-to-head fight, I'm not sure who would have the edge, especially if we're talking about continuum-consistent channelers and mistborn. The average mistborn we've run into are much more used to killing than the average channeler. They are very effective at rapid assassination. Whereas channelers would be more hesitant to use lethal force.

If we take them out of continuum though, I guess if I were choosing a power myself I'd have to go with channeling, simply because my commute would be much shorter. Though it would be nice to try both out for a while and pick which one I like best. ;)
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Faster Master St. Pastor

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #36 on: May 08, 2008, 04:13:44 AM »
But Allomancy is a cooler magic system, IMO. To me, it has more style and... finesse than channeling.

I'd say that's kind of the point, no? Channeling isn't graceful, its brute force attacks.  The truly talented channelers, other than people like Rand or Logain, who have tremendous limits to their power, are the ones who have acquired grace, and they aren't exactly easy to find.

It really depends on the channeler as far as the killing is involved.  If the mistborn is dealing with an Asha'man it considerably levels the hesitation factor for the channelers.  Also, in such a case I'd bank on the Ahsa'man, we've seen that they have no hesitation literally blowing people's heads off.  Overall I'd say the mistborn has a better chance in close quarters, as they can move much faster and drop down from the ceiling, but in the open channelers win eight out of ten times.  Although that aside I do wonder if the mistborn could move fast enough to avoid the weaves the Asha'man use to blow people's heads off, as insofar as my memory serves we haven't been told the exact nature of the weave. 
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Plasman

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #37 on: May 08, 2008, 05:14:02 AM »
feel free to ignore me, but i'm going to reiterate. Keepers rock. i'll bet that nine times out of ten a fully-charged, battle-practiced keeper could kick a mistborn's butt.
again, i haven't read the wheel of time, so i don't know about channelers.
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Comfortable Madness

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #38 on: May 08, 2008, 02:12:30 PM »
I have to say Channeler hands down. While, as most of you have stated, the key to a mistborn beating a channeler is the element of suprise.Although with knife up my sleeve and the element of suprise on my side I could beat a channeler AND a mistborn, grant it mistborn abilities greatly enhance their chances at being undetected. To have a mistborn face a channeler head on is certain death for any mistborn. The mistborn can burn as much atium as he/she wants to but it will all be for naught when the channeler uses an attack that encompasses huge amounts of area. Back in the first book of WoT Moiraine creates a wall of fire that stretches across a whole fist of trolloc. Or how about when Rahvin turns all the air around Rand into water?  I don't care if you can see three seconds into the future and you have pewter burning your just not going to make it. Channelers can effect to big of an area for any of that to matter. Heck, even if the mistborn was really good and quickly duralumin enhanced steel pushed their way away from the first attack the channeler is definately going to hit with the next attack. A mistborns only chance is that the channeler has no knowledge of mistborn and is caught by suprise and in close quarters. Bottom line IMO channelers contain just too much power for a mistborn to contend with....

As far as the temporal effects of balefire and atium burning go I see that as a complete mess. In theory  channeler can use a stream of balefire strong enough to erase any effect the person they dispose of had on the world throughout their life. So, does that mean they won't be able to forsee the attack that effectively burns them from existence? Or would they see and be able to react to balefire the same way as they react to a coin flying through the air? That's what I believe. Until the balefire actually hits them I think the balefire would simply be another projectile for a mistborn to dodge.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2008, 02:14:42 PM by Comfortable Madness »
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darxbane

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #39 on: May 08, 2008, 09:23:29 PM »
Rahvin and Rand dodge each other's balefire attacks for quite a while before Nynaeve distracts Rahvin through Moghedian and the A'dam, so balefire can be avoided.  That being said, both sides would need to adapt eventually.  A Mistborn could push a channeler into a wall with lethal force, so channelers would have to remove all metals in the future.  As for a Mistborn, once a channeler is aware of how Allomancy works, a Mistborn would be toast in a head to head fight.  Atium would not help them see a flow of air being wrapped around them, or a knife-sized flow slicing their throat.  There is no competition.  It would be suicide for a Mistborn to face even a weak channeler head on.  However, there are other ways to fight.  Imagine what a Mistborn Gray man could do, for instance.
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Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #40 on: May 08, 2008, 10:09:10 PM »
But as people stated earlier in the thread, electrum may show a Mistborn what will happen to them in the future, possibly getting them around the "can't see the weaves" problem.
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Andrew the Great

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #41 on: May 08, 2008, 11:50:09 PM »
With the Atium-Balefire Situation, I believe that the Mistborn would see it coming and where it would strike, but they would not die from being hit by the atium shadow. As for would they be able to see balefire, the answer is a resounding yes. The mistake you made, Comfortable Madness, was to say that balefire could erase any person's effect throughout their life. Actually, it usually only erases a few seconds previous to their death. The exception is when really powerful channelers go for hours (rand could probably get a couple of days). Incidentally, when the balefire is more powerful, it is also bigger around. There is no set size for balefire, it's just that most Aes Sedai are too weak to do more than about arm size.

As for Rhavin and Rand avoiding each other in FoH, darx, that doesn't really count here, as they can feel each other's weaves. They know when and where an attack will happen. Mistborn don't really know what is going to happen until they see the atium shadow, a few seconds after when Rand and Rhavin would feel it.

And besides, as stated before, it doesn't really matter whether mistborn can avoid balefire, all the Aes Sedai/ Asha'man has to do is wrap him/her self in air and the mistborn can't do anything to him/her. Then he/she would start chucking big walls of fire around, and the mistborn would be gone. No chance. If we're talking about stealth, the mistborn has a very good chance, but open battle? No way.
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darxbane

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #42 on: May 09, 2008, 02:31:59 PM »
Ookla,
If gold shows you who you would be based on past choices, then I imagine electrum would work the same way.  In that case, I would think that the Mistborn would choose not to fight a channeler directly because that choice would mean almost certain death.

Andrew,
True, they could see each other's weaves, but how long do you think it takes them to create balefire?  The books make it seem like it only takes a second to for the stronger channelers to create the weave.  A channeler would most likely not use balefire in this fight anyway, as you and some of us have stated already.   I bet Semirhage or Moghedian could land compulsion on a Mistborn no matter what he/she was burning.
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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #43 on: May 09, 2008, 04:30:05 PM »
Ah, but it's malatium (as well as gold) that shows something based on past choices. Electrum is more likely to work like atium does, then.
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darxbane

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Re: Wheel v. Mist
« Reply #44 on: May 09, 2008, 06:14:58 PM »
I thought about that after I posted.  I still think they would see that a surprise attack would be the most successful.  I don't think any amount of precognition could save you from someone who can cause such mass destruction.   
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