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[Mailman]

5 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

The official Power ranking chart, puts Nynaeve's "Initial" power at #4 (potential of #3) and Moiraine (before Finland), at #13. Eggs is at #8.

On a linear scale, that makes Nynaeve 3x as powerful as Moiraine. If we use the scale used for Aging, she's 120% more powerful. (Another way of saying she's 20% more powerful than Moiraine.. which doesn't seem right?)

I haven't really seen any reference in the books that compares how much of the OP you can hold, to muscle training.
E.g. You have to train your body to be able to lift more weight/hold more power. 
We know there is mental training that helps with their endurance when actively weaving/using the OP, but that's slightly different then holding onto the most amount of power as possible and someone else weaving it for you.

I don't know if Book Nyn/Eggs had been introduced to linking earlier, would and experienced Channeler have been able to have them tap into the maximum they could hold?

 

From the books, it's definitely a leap to think they'd teach someone such a dangerous weave like that... Or that they'd even have seen it in use.

 

Also, from the books we have channelers creating weaves they were never trained to make in the first place. So who knows?

 

 

 

The passage about growth in the power to me that is the most telling was a discussion about how the power developed in male and female channelers. Cannot remember the characters exactly but it was one of the Aes Sedai who was bonded to the Ashman I believe and they described the progression of female channelers to be largely linear growth and was largely consistent and if you were stronger than someone else at the same point then you would be stronger than them when you attained your maximum potential. Male channelers however experienced far more of a choppy growth and would have large gains followed by lulls then another spurt.

 

Egwene was discussed as being forced to her potential faster by Siuan or Moiraine I think. So that suggests with risk you can push harder to your endpoint earlier, but that still took time to achieve and in the show she channeled for the first time 5 weeks earlier and was only able to singe Perrins bonds 1 week earlier. which indicates very low level of "muscle" build up.

 

As for the linking when the Seachan attack the tower and Egwene gathers her circle the group including Nicola (considered I believe one of the most promising and that included Egwene and Elayne potentially) and 2 others she still had less power than she normally had without forkroot. Nicola at this point had already done a lot of training with the Salidar Aes Sedai, additional lessons with Myrelle and training in the tower.

[Mailman]

9 hours ago, expat said:

This comes across as "I hate the show, so I'm going to take the worst interpretation of every scene, even when the books don't demand that interpretation".  Can't you see all the assumptions you have to make to reach your conclusion?  How is it even possible that someone could be in the Tower for several years as an Accepted and never see/learn any weave that could be used offensively?  In the show it was lightning, but it could have any of a number of other spells.  Would a fireball have worked better for you since we saw Amelisa light candles earlier, so we know she can create fire?

Moiraine didn't die (or burnt out) when facing the trollocs. 3 of the 5 in the circle died and the other two serious injured.  

I have made no attempt to hide the fact that I think the show is terrible but I have backed up my position in each thing with arguments that make sense.

 

Here you have a society that uses a magical means to prevent use of the power as a weapon except in very specific circumstances. It would make complete sense that they would not teach weaponized use of the power to those who are not going to be subject to that control. In this thread you have people advocating that it is Amelisa's control and teachings that allow the incredible destruction, people arguing that Amelisa's weakness means she has greater control because she has less power to work with usually.

 

The scene would have made far more sense if instead of a complete obliteration solely on the back of 5 almost completely untrained and weak wilders of 10,000+ trollocs they had worked say with the troops to tip the balance in the battle. Instead the display of power is at an insane level.

[king of nowhere]

21 hours ago, WhiteVeils said:

Basically, the way they did that 1) Showed the amount of power possible for channelers to do (including Rand, later) 2) Showed exactly why Channelers /don't/ use that kind of power to do that sort of thing and 3) Specifically for Egwene and Nynaeve, created the blocks and reasons why they don't have access to their maximum power levels until late in the series.   So it kind of solves the problem you presented in itself.

 

Yeah, I agree that the scene does have those intentions and positive traits (though 3 is not at all certain will be used). however, there were several problems with the execution.

if they had shown amalisa fighting with the men, the soldiers holding a line protecting her while she hurled lightning at the trollocs, that would have already been a lot better.

But especially

3 hours ago, MasterAblar said:

Honestly they should have just had Amalisa first throw weaker lightning, that was insufficient to actually stop the trollocs, and then in desperation to save her city, intentionnally pull far more than she can safely handle and boom big lightning and so on.

This. So much this.

Because the way the scene was presented, amalisa killed all the trollocs. then she wanted to draw more power, and she got burned. watching the show, one would think that if amalisa had more willpower to resist the addictive effect of the power - or if one of the other women had the presence to hit her on the head and knock her out - then she would have killed all the trollocs and nothing bad would have happened. which creates wrong ideas on the power level of channelers and what problems can be solved by throwing fire and lightning at them.

if they had made clearer that her death was a direct and unavoidable result of channeling too much, the scene would have better worked at introducing the limitations of the power.

 

13 hours ago, Sir_Charrid said:

Anything else really doesn't matter for the TV show because every additional rule you add in then needs to be explained to the audience when they ask "but why". What do the audience care ...
 

Because magic has got to have rules and it's got to have limitations.

Sanderson discusses this very well in this "laws of magic" essays. basically, you can have soft or hard magic; soft magic has no rules, at least no rules that the reader know. hard magic, magic works under strict and well-understood rules. of course, there is a middle way too.

anyway, you can use magic to solve problems only if the reader understands it. otherwise it's a cheap deus ex machina. in stories with soft magic, magic creates problems that the protagonists have to solve without magic. look at lord of the rings, how many problems are solved by gandalf using magic? very little. if gandalf had snapped his fingers and destroied the orc army at helm's deep, the story would have sucked.

instead, in hard magic stories we can enjoy magic being used to solve problems because we know magic can be used like that. it's like a toolkit, and we enjoy seeing how it's used creatively. it's like in a james bond movie when he's presented with some gadgets at the beginning and he uses them creatively during the movie. If we were not shown that he had an exploding pen and then his pen suddenly exploded, it would be a terrible scene.

In the same line, limitations are more interesting than powers. ok, the hero is all powerful and stuff. so the hero snaps his fingers and solves the plot, all trollocs fall dead. congratulations, you have a boring invincible hero. the hero must have limitation, he must have stuff he cannot do, obstacles he must circumvent because he can't just brute force his way through them.

and to enjoy a story with hard magic, the capabilities and limitations of magic must be made clear.

 

Now, I don't expect to have the same level of details as the books. but some explanations on why some things can be done with the power and some cannot are fundamental to keep the story consistent.

 

13 hours ago, Mailman said:

Clearly not we have the Green Ajah who I would expect to train those and practice destructive weaves

actually, seeing how poorly the aes sedai fared agains the seanchan, I would expect that the greens didn't really practice all the much, if at all. which is part of the background, of course; aes sedai grew complacent and mostly resorted to politics, rarely using the power. when they do have to use the power, it's never against a prepared opponent; at most they lay waste at trollocs or they take on men who are by definition untrained wilders. So, when they faced an opponent who was on their same power level but did not grow complacent, that opponent got to mop the floor with arrogant aes sedai.

aes sedai failing at upholding their mission, being remarkably incompetent when push came to shove, is a common theme in the books. I mean, if I was the green ajah head I would send a hundred sisters in the borderlands to help the armies against trolloc attacks; and if they had done that, maybe malkier would not have fallen because instead of aes sedai coming by boat and being too late (and then pretending that they intentionally betrayed a stalwart ally because they figured that was better than admitting failure), they would have been already there.

If I was the head of the yellow ajah, I would send a few sisters in every major city to open a free hospital healing anyone for free. build up goodwill among the population, and look for girls with the spark while you're there.

Aes sedai sucked at being aes sedai.

if amalisa had been on the walls helping to repel trollocs regularly, then i'd expect her to be a lot more competent at combat channeling than most green ajahs.

 

[expat]

Quote

Here you have a society that uses a magical means to prevent use of the power as a weapon except in very specific circumstances. It would make complete sense that they would not teach weaponized use of the power to those who are not going to be subject to that control.

I don't recall any instances in the book where someone was strong enough to become an Accepted, but wasn't strong enough to become a full Aes Sedai, so Amasila's situation was a (minor) change from the books.  However, the books clearly articulated conditions where Novices and Accepted, while strong enough in the power, were banished from the tower.  These included failing the Aes Sedai test and failing (or refusing) the Accepted test. So, in the books, there are former Accepted running around the world meaning that even if the rationale was iffy, Amasila's situation was not.

 

There was no indication from the books that they prohibited Accepted from learning offensive spells because some would be banished prior to becoming full Aes Sedai.  An alternative way to prevent banished Accepted from using offensive spells inappropriately would be to have the Accepted swear some version of the three oaths on the oath rod prior to being expelled.  There is exactly as much evidence (zero) for this alternative as there is for your speculation that they don't teach Accepted offensive spells.

 

You are also ignoring the fact that channelers learn spells on their own (i.e, a quote from the book was that each channeler (wilder?) had their own tricks).  Nyn learned some healing, Liandrin learned a form of compulsion, Moiraine learned both balefire and remote listening etc.

 

The reality is that we don't have any evidence on when and how Amasila learned lightening, but there are several ways within the book cannon that it could have happened.  Speculation, with no support from the books or previous material in the series that Amasila couldn't know lightening, is not a "sensible" argument.

 

I didn't like the scene and am not really defending it, but knowing the weaves didn't break anything. 

[Mailman]

14 minutes ago, expat said:

I don't recall any instances in the book where someone was strong enough to become an Accepted, but wasn't strong enough to become a full Aes Sedai, so Amasila's situation was a (minor) change from the books.  However, the books clearly articulated conditions where Novices and Accepted, while strong enough in the power, were banished from the tower.  These included failing the Aes Sedai test and failing (or refusing) the Accepted test. So, in the books, there are former Accepted running around the world meaning that even if the rationale was iffy, Amasila's situation was not.

 

There was no indication from the books that they prohibited Accepted from learning offensive spells because some would be banished prior to becoming full Aes Sedai.  An alternative way to prevent banished Accepted from using offensive spells inappropriately would be to have the Accepted swear some version of the three oaths on the oath rod prior to being expelled.  There is exactly as much evidence (zero) for this alternative as there is for your speculation that they don't teach Accepted offensive spells.

 

You are also ignoring the fact that channelers learn spells on their own (i.e, a quote from the book was that each channeler (wilder?) had their own tricks).  Nyn learned some healing, Liandrin learned a form of compulsion, Moiraine learned both balefire and remote listening etc.

 

The reality is that we don't have any evidence on when and how Amasila learned lightening, but there are several ways within the book cannon that it could have happened.  Speculation, with no support from the books or previous material in the series that Amasila couldn't know lightening, is not a "sensible" argument.

 

I didn't like the scene and am not really defending it, but knowing the weaves didn't break anything. 

The quote also listed that the majority of wilders learnt spells that fell into only those 2 catergories eavesdropping or compulsion with the 2nd being beaten out of them.

 

Moiraine in the first episode uses lightning on incredibly smaller scale. Being one of the strongest in the tower and being only able to summon such a small amount in comparison would indicate that Amelisa would not have had the ability to practice it prior to her linking.

 

Yes there would be situations in regards to failures that would be outside the system but for someone that could not progress they would not teach those spells. 

 

It is a sensible argument.

[bringbackthomsmoustache]

Really kicked one off here with an off the cuff remark eh? 

On the subject of training it is stated in the books that sisters can tell who taught another sister the fireball weave from seeing the specific gesture that accompanied it - I took that to mean that the weave was taught to all (for self defense) and presumed that it was taught in a novice or accepted class.  Regarding the lightning weave it has also got peaceable uses since it could draw off the lightning from a potentially dangerous thunderstorm and direct it into a harmless location so might well be taught with that rationale (and it is also stated to be easier to do that than to build up the potential for lightning in a clear sky which appears to be what Moirane had to do in E1).  

[Mailman]

58 minutes ago, bringbackthomsmoustache said:

Really kicked one off here with an off the cuff remark eh? 

On the subject of training it is stated in the books that sisters can tell who taught another sister the fireball weave from seeing the specific gesture that accompanied it - I took that to mean that the weave was taught to all (for self defense) and presumed that it was taught in a novice or accepted class.  Regarding the lightning weave it has also got peaceable uses since it could draw off the lightning from a potentially dangerous thunderstorm and direct it into a harmless location so might well be taught with that rationale (and it is also stated to be easier to do that than to build up the potential for lightning in a clear sky which appears to be what Moirane had to do in E1).  

Weather weaving was difficult and had the potential for side effects, early book 2 i think talked about the Amriyln boats using conjured winds which resulted in flooding along the river path.

 

Enhancing an existing storm would of course be easier. trying to predict and direct natural bolts would be very difficult much easier to simply raise something to attract them to a target than directing said bolts.

[WhiteVeils]

Verin isn't very strong and manipulates the weather.  No one is saying Amelisa could do much with lightening if not plugged into two of the strongest channelers in 1000 years, only that she could be particularly good at it relative to her own own strength, or have tried hard to study it.

[SinisterDeath]

9 hours ago, Mailman said:

The quote also listed that the majority of wilders learnt spells that fell into only those 2 catergories eavesdropping or compulsion with the 2nd being beaten out of them.

 

Moiraine in the first episode uses lightning on incredibly smaller scale. Being one of the strongest in the tower and being only able to summon such a small amount in comparison would indicate that Amelisa would not have had the ability to practice it prior to her linking.

 

Yes there would be situations in regards to failures that would be outside the system but for someone that could not progress they would not teach those spells. 

 

It is a sensible argument.

In the books, we have channelers using very complex weaves like balefire (Nynaeve) without being taught.

So... there's no pre-requisite that a channeler from the tower had to have been taught any specific weave to use one. 

[DaddyFinn]

3 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

In the books, we have channelers using very complex weaves like balefire (Nynaeve) without being taught.

So... there's no pre-requisite that a channeler from the tower had to have been taught any specific weave to use one. 

The One Power is there for channelers to use and come up with whatever weaves they require at certain moments. That's how it felt for me.