Duralumin contradiction?

[Samael]

I've noticed what seems to be a contradiction between the Mistborn player's manual and the book. About 2/3rds of the way through The Well of Ascension, while Vin is fighting assassins. Quote:

 

She had duralumin still—burning it only made other metals vanish, not the duralumin itself [.]

 

 

... but the player's manual specifically says:

 

The effect is so strong it consumes ... all Duralumin in a character’s system[.]

 

... which is reiterated several times in the rules.

 

Burn Rate: Burning Duralumin instantly consumes all charges of this and every other burning metal in your system.

 

Vin being somewhat of a special case, I could maybe see her being an exception to this, but it's still pretty jarring.

[Lightsworn Panda he/him]

Huh. Never noticed that. Duralium still wipes Vin's entire duralium reserve, I'm quite sure, though.

 

Good spotting, Samael. 

[thefunkindofevil]

Game rules break book canon to stop overpoweredness, don't think of it as canon.

[Swimmingly he/him]

But I'm pretty sure Duralumin burns itself out as well, in the actual book. I think you caught an error.

[Kurkistan he/him]

In the books, there are multiple instances of Vin using Duralumin multiple times in quick succession in conjunction with different metals, all without "reloading". Of particular note is her first fight with Marsh in HoA.

Myself, I'd hazard that some proportionate amount of Duralumin is burned away for each "super-burn" it provokes.

Edited July 20, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Swimmingly he/him]

Huh. I never noticed that.

[Left he/him]

I wonder if Nicrosil does the same thing then   Or does it burn at a steadier rate. And what would flaring it do?

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

I doubt nicrosil would have any similar problems because the issue with duralumin is whether or not it wipes itself out when you use it.  Nicrosil, by affecting other's metals, wouldn't really be in danger of affecting itself.

 

Haha, now I've got the image of a nicrosil misting poking himself in the head and flaring his own nicrosil.  Who needs compounding, amirite?

Edited July 20, 2014 by Silus - Shard of Flame

[Swimmingly he/him]

You know, I wonder what would happen if you Nicrobursted a compounder with a stomach full of feruchemically charged metal that he was burning?

[Cstryon he/him]

His cadmium mind would have all the beer he could ever consume. Yay free beer!

[Kurkistan he/him]

You know, I wonder what would happen if you Nicrobursted a compounder with a stomach full of feruchemically charged metal that he was burning?

 

Nothing that special, I imagine. Duralumin doesn't actually add anything to the power of the metal, it just lets you burn it all a lot more quickly. So I guess you'd get a lot of that Feruchemical power at the same time, but nothing you couldn't achieve by compounding for a few minutes, storing it all in metalminds, and then surging the attribute to get all that power at once.

[king of nowhere]

It would depend on the metal. in some cases there would be no noticeable effects (gold, for example; you'd just be perfectly healty for a very short time), but in other cases the result would be spectacular.

 

For example, nicrobursting steel with speed accumulated would do nothing if you stand still, but if you try to move it would make you move so fast that you would ignite by contacct with the atmosphere, disintegrating into a fireball; a spectacular death that would probably take the nicroburst with you.

 

In the case of iron, you'd suddenly wheight thousands of tonnes. you'd sink into the ground, and then would die of suffocation trapped at a few dozens meters underground - the ground pressure would stop you from breathing, i think. or the hole woul collapse on you. maybe, if you're lucky, you can just end up trapped and needing rescue.

 

for atium, you'd probably be reverted back to an embryo, another highly spectacular way of killing someone.

 

For brass, you'd become so hot you'd take fire. or if tapping brass make you immune to your own heat, the air would catch fire around you. you may be able to survive if you can store a brasssmind fast enough. whether you survive or not, that would be lethal for the nicroburst.

 

for zinc, your mind would work so fast that those few seconds when you are nicrobursted would expand in your perception like they were years. the outer world would be like frozen in time. your body would move too slowly to be noticeable from yourr point of view; even your eyeballs wouldn't be able to rotate exxcept at the slowest of paces, so you'd only be able to see whatever object you were focusing, and all the rest would be a blur. sound would become a monotone background noise, the changes we associate with voices or sounds too slow to be noticed. This could be the most cruel fate of all; it is basically sensorial deprivation, a known torture that can drive a person crazy. think of spending a few years trapped in a body that is, for all practical purposes, paralyzed, hearing no sound, seeing nothing but a single object. even if you make it to the end with your sanity mostly intact, it sucks mightily.

 

If you are a gasper, your blood would suddenly fill with so much oxygen that it oversaturates and you'd explode. if the effect is general tissue oxygenation and not simply having oxygen in the blood, then you may die of oxydative stress; it will probably destroy your tissues in a way akin to radiation poisoning. if the metal only carries the good side of being oxygenated, instead, you'd have no effect.

 

if you are a subsumer (don't remember the metal), then getting so much nutrition may get you an instant art attack as your cholesterol level rises to "some traces of blood into it". or, you could suddenly become very fat. or it may have no effect at all.

 

If you were a copper compounder, that could be a good way to memorize a whole encyclopaedia in a few seconds. or, the sheer amount of informations that are crammed in your brain in such a short time may drive you mad. MAD!

 

if you stored luck, you could have a life-changing event right there. possibly the [person of appropriate sex and gender orientation] of your dreams just stumbles upon you, or a gold mine is discovered under your backyard.

[Kurkistan he/him]

You do raise a good point, king. I hadn't considered that this might be a way to bypass the "cost of compounding" (not to be confused with Compounding) that imposes an upper limit on how much you can do at once with Feruchemy. So while normally you might waste 90% of the energy from a big surge of <attribute> because of diminishing returns, you'd potentially get it all at 100% efficiency if you used Duralumin/Nicrosil.

 

So at the very very very upper end you might be able to achieve some novel effects. Most could be achieved just as easily by normal Compounding for a few minutes/hours/days followed by a single massive surge out of a metalmind, though, I think.

[David Coppercloud]

To the King of Nowhere.

 

I don't think that you would have an immediate infinite amount, it would probably be a proportionate amount of return compared with how much was in the metal mind you are burning. Though it would probably be compounding at a higher rate of return. Also I think it would still be possible to catch that windfall in a metal mind, if one has the knack for it. 

 

Back to the topic in general, if Duralumin and the other auxiliary metal were all used up at the time of their burning, and each to their intended effect, wouldn't that mean that the amount that was burnt would be irrelevant, as the returns for a small amount would be the same as a large amount. That kind seems like it defeat the purpose of Allomancy requiring fuel.   

[Moogle]

Back to the topic in general, if Duralumin and the other auxiliary metal were all used up at the time of their burning, and each to their intended effect, wouldn't that mean that the amount that was burnt would be irrelevant, as the returns for a small amount would be the same as a large amount. That kind seems like it defeat the purpose of Allomancy requiring fuel.   

 

It might defeat the purpose, I guess, but aluminum burns itself and all other metals you have regardless of how much you consume (I think?) so there's sort of a counter-example there. Aluminum is just weird though.

 

Also, as Kurk notes, Vin uses duralumin repeatedly without consuming any more of it, and more importantly she keeps it burning for a long time when she's initially playing with it. She burns it, and keeps burning it, and nothing happens. If it uses itself up, you'd think she wouldn't be able to keep it burning long enough to activate it then wait a few seconds and try it with tin.

 

The MAG is wrong on this one.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Moogle

[king of nowhere]

 

Back to the topic in general, if Duralumin and the other auxiliary metal were all used up at the time of their burning, and each to their intended effect, wouldn't that mean that the amount that was burnt would be irrelevant, as the returns for a small amount would be the same as a large amount. That kind seems like it defeat the purpose of Allomancy requiring fuel.   

well, the amount of power you get from a duraluminium burn depends on how big are your reserves. if you do a duraluminium steelpush and are running low, you won't jump the hundreds of meters that vin did after drinking a new vial, but probably just a few dozen. or if you do a duraluminium steelpuush and are running short on pewter, you won't get enough strenght to survive the backlash and you'll exxplode in a spectacular shower of blood (yeah, there are a lot of ways to do that with duraluminium).

 

Also, I can't help but notice that the amount of power you get with duraluinium is much lower than what you get by regular burning. vin could jump hundreds of meters with a vial worth of steel, but if she used that steel for normal jumps she could go several kilometers. there's probably some phenomenon akin to feruchemical compounding here.

[Voidus]

well, the amount of power you get from a duraluminium burn depends on how big are your reserves. if you do a duraluminium steelpush and are running low, you won't jump the hundreds of meters that vin did after drinking a new vial, but probably just a few dozen. or if you do a duraluminium steelpuush and are running short on pewter, you won't get enough strenght to survive the backlash and you'll exxplode in a spectacular shower of blood (yeah, there are a lot of ways to do that with duraluminium).

 

Also, I can't help but notice that the amount of power you get with duraluinium is much lower than what you get by regular burning. vin could jump hundreds of meters with a vial worth of steel, but if she used that steel for normal jumps she could go several kilometers. there's probably some phenomenon akin to feruchemical compounding here.

In terms of distance travelled maybe but it's more about the force exerted, and also when you dural-push on something you only get the one push, the rest would get wasted while you're flying through the air, Duralumin just vastly increases the rate of burn it doesn't use it up instantly, otherwise Vin never would have noticed anything with Tin, the flash of increased senses would be over before her brain could recognise it.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Also the lost energy from air resistance will go up as Vin's speed does, so there's some inherent inefficiency there vs. using the steel more judiciously.

[David Coppercloud]

well, the amount of power you get from a duraluminium burn depends on how big are your reserves. if you do a duraluminium steelpush and are running low, you won't jump the hundreds of meters that vin did after drinking a new vial, but probably just a few dozen. or if you do a duraluminium steelpuush and are running short on pewter, you won't get enough strenght to survive the backlash and you'll exxplode in a spectacular shower of blood (yeah, there are a lot of ways to do that with duraluminium).

 

Also, I can't help but notice that the amount of power you get with duraluinium is much lower than what you get by regular burning. vin could jump hundreds of meters with a vial worth of steel, but if she used that steel for normal jumps she could go several kilometers. there's probably some phenomenon akin to feruchemical compounding here.

 

Perhaps my thought would be better illustrated with Aluminium and Chromium. Would it make a difference whether you are burning a little or a lot, the effect would be the same, particularly in the case of Aluminium, you're immediately out of other metals. Or is it not instant, and it does make a difference if your have a lot of aluminium in your system and/or are flaring it?  

[Voidus]

Perhaps my thought would be better illustrated with Aluminium and Chromium. Would it make a difference whether you are burning a little or a lot, the effect would be the same, particularly in the case of Aluminium, you're immediately out of other metals. Or is it not instant, and it does make a difference if your have a lot of aluminium in your system and/or are flaring it?  

Potentially for the other uses of Aluminium, you could perhaps get rid of stronger negative Investitures or something like that.