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Brandon Sanderson / Re: Wheel v. Mist
« on: December 01, 2008, 03:39:39 PM »
Interesting discussion, I figured I would throw a comment here.
Based on what channeling could do, I would say that a (smart) channeler could easily beat any mistborn. There are so many things a good channeler who truly used his/her skills to their full potential could do that could be used to utterly crush a mistborn.
I will say however that I think from a literary viewpoint, allomancy is better than channeling simply because its more limited and so you dont have to make your characters look like idiots to keep the challenge up.
For example, consider the shield Rand creates in one of the books. It is explicitly said that its utterly indestructible with the only weakness being that its so solid that not even air can pass through. A shield like this would pretty much allow a single channeler to wipe out an army. Just create a coccoon like Rand did, then create a tiny gateway inside the cocoon through which air can flow and presto, you can kill everyone around you with no chance of being hurt. Heck, even just creating the shield, using the air inside and then turning it off for a split second (to allow new air in) before creating it anew would make a channeler extremely difficult to defeat with only a tiny window where they could be hurt. Ofcourse this would mean that Rand&Co would never really have to fear anyone again so the possibility is ignored and the shield itself is conveniently forgotten.
Or what about opening a gateway to space near the enemy and sucking him in. Or flooding an army by opening a gateway under the ocean and letting the water literally wash them away. Also whats the point of all those cool fireballs and such when we have seen that a channeler can just slice someones head off with a single sharp weave of air. And we have seen that you can literally grasp the one power and weave such a thing in a tiny fraction of a second. In one the books some guy surprises Rand by throwing a knife at him with no warning from a short range, only to have Rand capture the knife in such a weave practically as a reflex. There is no written reason given why a channeler could not use that to literally slice the Mistborn into pieces the instant the channeler saw the mistborn. Infact the same technique could be used on anyone other than opposing channelers and yet we see it only once in WoT (and conveniently never again).
Given the way the channeling system is built up, all these and so many other techniques would be possible and would pretty much make the channelers godlike in comparison to normal people (or allomancers for that matter). And yet having godlike main characters would be boring so RJ deliberately gimped his characters to keep things exciting, the downside of this being that Rand, Forsaken and generally all the channelers end up looking like blind morons who cannot seem to grasp how easily they could devastate their enemies if they simply used channeling in clever ways.
While I am a great fan of WoT, I will say that this is actually one of the things that bugs me the most. There are so many times in the books when I wish I could yell at someone for doing something stupid, when a proper and smart use of the power would easily solve everything.
Based on what channeling could do, I would say that a (smart) channeler could easily beat any mistborn. There are so many things a good channeler who truly used his/her skills to their full potential could do that could be used to utterly crush a mistborn.
I will say however that I think from a literary viewpoint, allomancy is better than channeling simply because its more limited and so you dont have to make your characters look like idiots to keep the challenge up.
For example, consider the shield Rand creates in one of the books. It is explicitly said that its utterly indestructible with the only weakness being that its so solid that not even air can pass through. A shield like this would pretty much allow a single channeler to wipe out an army. Just create a coccoon like Rand did, then create a tiny gateway inside the cocoon through which air can flow and presto, you can kill everyone around you with no chance of being hurt. Heck, even just creating the shield, using the air inside and then turning it off for a split second (to allow new air in) before creating it anew would make a channeler extremely difficult to defeat with only a tiny window where they could be hurt. Ofcourse this would mean that Rand&Co would never really have to fear anyone again so the possibility is ignored and the shield itself is conveniently forgotten.
Or what about opening a gateway to space near the enemy and sucking him in. Or flooding an army by opening a gateway under the ocean and letting the water literally wash them away. Also whats the point of all those cool fireballs and such when we have seen that a channeler can just slice someones head off with a single sharp weave of air. And we have seen that you can literally grasp the one power and weave such a thing in a tiny fraction of a second. In one the books some guy surprises Rand by throwing a knife at him with no warning from a short range, only to have Rand capture the knife in such a weave practically as a reflex. There is no written reason given why a channeler could not use that to literally slice the Mistborn into pieces the instant the channeler saw the mistborn. Infact the same technique could be used on anyone other than opposing channelers and yet we see it only once in WoT (and conveniently never again).
Given the way the channeling system is built up, all these and so many other techniques would be possible and would pretty much make the channelers godlike in comparison to normal people (or allomancers for that matter). And yet having godlike main characters would be boring so RJ deliberately gimped his characters to keep things exciting, the downside of this being that Rand, Forsaken and generally all the channelers end up looking like blind morons who cannot seem to grasp how easily they could devastate their enemies if they simply used channeling in clever ways.
While I am a great fan of WoT, I will say that this is actually one of the things that bugs me the most. There are so many times in the books when I wish I could yell at someone for doing something stupid, when a proper and smart use of the power would easily solve everything.