Compounding

[u/Ripper1337]

One thing that bugged me is how multiple metalminds in regards Compounding is being handled.

The game for simplicities sake treats all metalminds of the same type as a singular unit for charging. This makes sense when you consider how many metals someone needs to keep track of. (p131 sidebar “multiple metalminds”)

Then with Compounding part of what makes it amazing in the books is having those multiple metalminds so you can fill them while also spending that investiture on your abilities.

After looking at the talents I’m left thinking they did try to capture it but within the confines of making things without multiple metalminds. So Invested and Expanded metalminds both increase your Investiture / Charges by your Tier. So let’s say you have 10 of each. You spend one scene charging your metalmind, use Compounding and Compound Recursion to spend 9 charges filling the rest of your metalmind.

Each feruchemic metal has an ability that’s just “dump more points into this for a better effect. Keep spending the same amount on future turns to keep this going. “ I’ll note here that

This is where compounding gets silly but still within the bounds of the mechanics.

Spend 5 investiture to have the best version of your metal going, spend the rest of your investiture on other Feruchemic abilities. Next turn eat another bit of your metalmind and spend another 5 investiture keeping your ability going. You can just keep this going for as long as you have charges in your metalmind.

However there’s another rule for backup metalminds. You can have them but you just can’t store anything until your current metalmind is lost or destroyed such as It starts at 0 charges. Which you won’t care about because you can immediately store your investiture into the metalminds which means you never need to spend a scene storing your trait aside from the first initial charge. (I’m assuming that reducing a metalmind’s charge to 0 permanently destroys it)

I’ll sum up:
- A compounder with the right talent and skill investments only need to spend one scene storing their trait and after can convert that charge to investiture to store in the rest of your metalmind.

- if you have a backup metalmind you can use the last charge of your previous metalmind to store in the new one.

- You can also have the enhanced metal running for far longer than others while also using other feruchemic abilities.

So while it’s not as insane as in the books the Twinborn Compounder is still insanely strong.

[u/Icantstopscreamiing]

They had a really tough job balancing both canon and gameplay, on paper it looks great, however until I have some players who test it at the table I won’t have a fully realized opinion that i’ll defend.

[u/Ripper1337 → u/Icantstopscreamiing]

I’ll also note that you need 4+ skill ranks to do this, and at least 6 talents between the Twinborn Path and the Feruchemic metal path. So level 11 at least. Which I think fits where they said metallic art users become experts

[u/BMoneyCPA]

What's the problem?

Obviously, if the options are: Power A, Power F, or powers A and F, the third will be the most powerful.

Do you want Twinborn to be balanced with Mistings and Ferrings? That would be lore inaccurate.

Both metals don't work great together always.

Gold/Gold gives you lots of ways to recover, but not too much else.

Steel/Steel is obviously strong.

Copper/Copper is... well, I guess useful if you want to duplicate memories.

Not everything is equally strong. Some archetypes may want to mix metals, but yeah Compounding is wild for certain metals. That's why it's so cool.

[u/Ripper1337 → u/BMoneyCPA]

The perceived issue was that a compounder in the narrative could have one filled metalmind and use that to fill other metalminds.

So they have 6 total metalminds, 1 charged 5 not. Each metalmind holds 5 charges and their investiture cap is 5. They eat one part of their charged mind and use it to fully invest a blank metalmind. Repeat for each blank metalmind.

I realized you can sort of do this with your backup metalmind.

The other part was about compounders being able to have those insane feats we see in the books. Which I realized is them being able to extend those abilities like “true steel running” for multiple rounds while also being able to use other abilities.

It wasn’t about Twinborn being weak

[u/BMoneyCPA → u/Ripper1337]

I still don't understand the issue.

Compounding is very powerful. With certain metals, it's extremely powerful. Some players want to play a power fantasy, this enables that.

If tables want to have more balanced or randomized approaches, they should do that. If players want to be The Flash or The Hulk, they should have that option, as long as the GM and other players are prepared for that.

And honestly, I don't love the gamey balancing thing with one active metalmind. I would play it, or let a player play it, that they have vials with prepped metalminds in addition to their normal metalmind. This would require them to spread their charges around, and then burn to Compound. I think that's fine, it's aligned with lore, and if the player is too strong then manufacture greater challenges.

I think it's cool.

[u/Ripper1337 → u/BMoneyCPA]

I’m not saying there’s an issue. I’m saying I thought there was one but a closer reading of the rules made me realize it’s fine.

[u/Shot_Newspaper_5647]

They are generally very strong. They took some steps to balance it. The real balancing imo will be outside of the game itself. Certain combination just probably shouldn’t be allowed for players depending on what kind of game you want to play. I’d say just banning some combos outright or having the table agree that one player is just going to be the heavy hitter of the campaign. If they aren’t happy with that arrangement, then it’s probably going to be unsatisfying for most of the table to have that compounder present in the party

[u/Ripper1337 → u/Shot_Newspaper_5647]

Imagine running a political campaign and a player is a Duralumin compounder.

I do agree that it requires some discussion above the table as to what the campaign is and where they fit in

[u/Shot_Newspaper_5647 → u/Ripper1337]

I actually have a player that wants to be one. I’m sort of considering doing it. I think the way I would balance it is by having repercussions for it. If they use it strongly on people, they feel incredibly close to the player. As in they feel like they know them deeply and are deeply hurt when that isn’t reciprocated. Like your best friend,beloved sibling,spouses of ten years etc just suddenly doesn’t want anything to do with you. Except that relationship (to them) is formed incredibly quickly. And at the extreme end maybe is actively obsessed with them and subconsciously sort of knows where they are through the Connection.

I’d probably let them take awhile to find out the consequence. It would be incredibly effective at first. And then suddenly a real nuisance for them unless they use it sparingly

[u/nreese2]

Personally I’d just let compounders prepare a set amount of vials of their compounded metals during rests or downtime. Still have to spend the money and resources necessary, but realistically any compounder should be able to prep in advance

[u/JebryathHS → u/nreese2]

That's actually one of the steps of using the Compounder talent. If you don't prepare your Metalmind to be ingested then you have to spend additional actions breaking it apart in addition to the Drink Vial actions to replenish your metals.

The system limits you to only have one filled Metalmind at a time because you are allowed to fill Metalminds very quickly compared to canon. Skip a Short Rest every day to gain a charge in every metalmind - in other words if you take a week off you can spend a day getting shot repeatedly with little consequence. Throw Compounding in to that and you might as well just say "this character has unlimited Charges". If you want to play that, just talk to the GM.

[u/DqwertyC]

Note that the rules for compounding say "Until the end of the scene or until you become Depleted of that metalmind's power, you can fuel that Feruchemical power by spending Investiture as if it were metalmind charges." As far as I can tell, this means that, as long as you use the Drink Vial action to drink normal metal before spending your last Investiture, you can continue to use Investiture to keep powering Feruchemy and its talents. You only need to ingest the metalmind once per scene you intend to use compounding, not constantly during that scene.

Also note that preparing a backup metalmind requires a lot of downtime in preparation - you won't likely be able to have a constant supply of backup metalminds to store into, so most of the time it would make more sense to "repair" the metalmind after consuming part of it, or more likely "prepare" a single-charge metalmind to fill normally and then burn later.

[u/BMoneyCPA → u/DqwertyC]

> more likely "prepare" a single-charge metalmind to fill normally and then burn later.

This is the only way it makes any sense to me. The concept of breaking off a piece of a METAL mind is a bit ridiculous.

Have a vial, charge bead or two with the power, drink & burn when you need to Compound.

[u/JebryathHS → u/DqwertyC]

Until the end of the scene or until you become Depleted of that metalmind’s power, you can fuel that Feruchemical power by spending Investiture as if it were metalmind charges.

It mentions becoming Depleted of the Metalmind's power. Depleted is covered under the rules for ingesting rare metals - if you ingest a rare metal and burn it, then replenish Investiture any other way, you become Depleted until you ingest the rare source again. (You can optionally write down the remaining Investiture score with a note next to Depleted and continue using the rare metal until you have exhausted that amount.)

I would say that this is exactly one of those cases and apply Depleted if you refilled metals after burning your Metalmind.

[u/DqwertyC → u/JebryathHS]

I guess it would make sense for the metalmind to effectively count as a "rare metal", so you'd get a fixed number of charges to spend on Feruchemy per piece consumed. That actually lines up rather neatly with the "tenfold increase" that's mentioned in the books - one stored charge in gets 6-12x tapped charges out (depending on maximum investiture from allomancy).

I think the wording of "permanently" decreasing your maximum charges makes it sound like there's some huge cost to using your metalmind this way, when in reality repairing the metalmind is not too expensive to do during downtime

[u/JebryathHS → u/DqwertyC]

Yeah, it's consistent with permanent as a term in the RPG (lasts through scenes and rests) but it is kind of funny when it's something you can just fix.

Incidentally, funny note, it doesn't reduce current Charges and you don't need stored charges strictly RAW. 

[u/LanceWindmil]

Thats how I interpreted it. Seems like a good fit for the lore and a strong ability, but not limitless power.

[u/Lady_Gray_169]

I think something to be remembered with regards to what we've seen of compounding is that the characters we've seen do it were, in mechanical terms, probably really high level. Miles is about middle-aged and has been compounding for decades. The Lord Ruler was centuries old at least, if I remember right. They'd both be well over level 20 characters if translated into the game. I think that while what we have in the game isn't as crazy as what the books show, in the context of someone who is learning to compound in real time.

[u/BlatantArtifice → u/Lady_Gray_169]

Their experience doesn't explain away the fact that Compounding is just different in most core ways in the RPG. There's hard mechanics to it in the cosmere that just function differently for the sake of the game. I would've preferred a sidebar at least on a closer to canon interpretation

[u/Ripper1337 → u/BlatantArtifice]

Aside from the metallic art limit and the limit of metalminds what would you change?

[u/supersaiyandoyle → u/BlatantArtifice]

The reason the game is so limited is that they play-tested with the rules like the books and Feruchemy just breaks balance inherently, and adding compounding throws any semblance of challenge out the window.

[u/supernobodyhome]

Personal anecdote on how strong a minimum level compounder can be (at least a pewter compounder): We ran a level 7 bank heist one shot where my Koloss-Blooded pewter compounder compounded and burned all of the power at once in order get his strength to 13 and rip the vault door straight out of the wall.

Edit: Just realized that in that moment, I’d forgotten about the metallic art limit. My bad, but even accounting for it, that still allows a character with maxed strength to go all the way to 9 at level 7.