The one power is cheap

[bloodandbloodyashes]

Anyone else hate how the One Power is too powerful in the series? i mean you can have epic battles of armies tens of thousands strong, and than a few channelers come in to the picture and just obliterate the adversary. Arms are just a distraction to them, and i find that takes away some of the epicness the series could have (with the One Power alot less powerful).

 

Like take this scenario: Lan and his army put up a valiant fight at Tarwin's Gap against impossible odds of trollocs, they are actually wining thru strength of will. They are acheiving victory, but oh wait! 20 dreadlords appear out of a gateway and completly destroy the army, how cool was that! ::)

 

Think about the regular Joes!

[Balefire to da face!]

I've never found it to be too overpowering.

 

Moiraine was just about the most powerful AS out there at the open of the series, and even with an angreal she had to run from about 100 Trollocs.

 

In the later books we get to see Rand, Nyn, Cads, Eqwene, and other really powerful channelers run around with rediculously powerful sa'angreal so I think you might be overestimating what 20 average dreadlords could do.

[bloodandbloodyashes]

okay maybe i was exgerating abit, but if u compare Moiraine but alot of the channelers later in the series, shes not that all powerful. It just the fact that 1 man/woman is equal to a thousand man that really bugs me. u can have a warrior that trained his body and mind his whole life to become a living weapon (ex: Lan)and then some boy who has been training for 3 months comes up to him and explodes is brains...

[OptimusPrime]

Anyone else hate how the One Power is too powerful in the series? i mean you can have epic battles of armies tens of thousands strong, and than a few channelers come in to the picture and just obliterate the adversary. Arms are just a distraction to them, and i find that takes away some of the epicness the series could have (with the One Power alot less powerful).

 

Like take this scenario: Lan and his army put up a valiant fight at Tarwin's Gap against impossible odds of trollocs, they are actually wining thru strength of will. They are acheiving victory, but oh wait! 20 dreadlords appear out of a gateway and completly destroy the army, how cool was that! ::)

 

Think about the regular Joes!

 

I tend to disagree about this. I feel that the One Power and the sheer strength of some of the channelers is what makes some of it so epic. The fact that so many channelers are so immensly powerful makes it believable that they could actually counter the Dark One. Look at how much the Cleansing was built up. Every channeler in the world felt that IIRC. It had to be that way for it to feel realistic that they were undoing the Dark Ones work.

 

There is a slight thing that I agree with you on this though.

 

Why is it that the Forsaken havent been going for Mat or Perrin seriously, when even a god damn Myrddraal knew how important they both were in the first god damn book? I'll tell you why. ts because there is not a single reason why Mat or Perrin would walk away from an encounter with any Forsaken if that Forsaken were trying to kill them. Mat and Perrin are regular Joes compared to any Forsaken.

[Nightstrike]

I don't find it problematic in any way. The channelers are rare, and most of them are really weak. At least compared to Moiraine and those even stronger than her. There are more novices now than there are Aes Sedai. Most of the novices are too weak to become Accepted. Most of the Aes Sedai can't even make a Gateway that is big enough for them to put an arm through. Sure, there are some super-strong channelers. But there are several Forsaken that can counter them. And we also have the DO, the gholam, Shaidar Haran, Fain and hordes of other enemies. It doesn't matter how strong you are if you're taken by surprise, or if you're not fast enough to kill a draghkar that comes at you. Or something else, for that matter.

 

So, yes, the story has room for unexpected events.

 

 

[OptimusPrime]

Plus the strongest Aes Sedai might have Darkfriends surrounding them without having a clue. Look at how strong Elayne is, and look who ended up becoming head of her personal guard for a time.

[mb]

Most of the battles during Path of Daggers, they seemed to take some time and both sides had channelers.

Also Dumai's Wells (Lord of Chaos Chapter 55).  And Perrin's attack on the Shaido (Knife of Dreams Chapters 28 through 30).

The Shadowspawn attacks in the Waste (Shadow Rising & Fires of Heaven) also seemed to take some time and Rand was involved in each.  The Shaido battles around Cairhien (Fires of Heaven) also took some time; in one Rand/Aviendha/Egwene channeled (Chapter 43).

 

[Xcom788]

I liked the way Terry Goodkind used magic in battles. He made it clear that you still need large armies to fight. Wizards will spend most of their time countering each other to do major damage on the battlefield.

[Ashaman Kovan]

I liked the way Terry Goodkind used magic in battles. He made it clear that you still need large armies to fight. Wizards will spend most of their time countering each other to do major damage on the battlefield.

 

Oh great sir. Just wait and see what you possibly started with that comment......Lol.

[DemandredFO]

first of all that TG comment is heresy around here.  Second, I'm sure many armies have complained that the enemy is too strong or had a super advantage.  War is not fair, your object is to win, no matter if it's so-called honorably or dishonorably.  Besides it only takes a distraction long enough for an arrow or a knife to get into rangte and advantage negated.

[Hot_Soup]

Like take this scenario: Lan and his army put up a valiant fight at Tarwin's Gap against impossible odds of trollocs, they are actually wining thru strength of will. They are acheiving victory, but oh wait! 20 dreadlords appear out of a gateway and completly destroy the army, how cool was that! ::)

 

Think about the regular Joes!

 

Like take this scenario: You are a Myrddraal who is leading a horde of trollocs that have put up a vailiant fight at Tarwin's Gap against a well trained tough Sheinaran force of heavy cavalry. You're winning and may finally push through after thousands of years in the Blight and win favor among your dark lord master. You are acheiving victory, but oh wait! Some tall red headed dick who didn't even know he could channel 5 minutes ago pops out of nowhere after using the 3000 year lost art of traveling and totally destroys your great army even though he's never channeled before and shouldn't even be able to channel that much after learing how to 5 minutes ago.

[WWWwombat]

I liked the way Terry Goodkind used magic in battles. He made it clear that you still need large armies to fight. Wizards will spend most of their time countering each other to do major damage on the battlefield.

 

eueuaehauheuaehuaehueahuaheuahueahuauaeuheuaheua I can't wait for the backlash.

[redbj]

it might be being a a bit picky but i agree with the sentiment of the opening post.

 

in the first few books...well...first book i thought that was a good amount of power, where morainne still had to walk small around trouble etc etc.

 

i think ultimately, in my opinion, this is one of Jordans biggest failings...he let the power of the 'wizards' in this series get way too powerful....or....too many people with too much power, and i think its just spiralled out of control.

 

where as morainne seemed an ultra rare person, now we have societies around every corner with hundreds of people with the ability to level whole towns.

 

the biggest drawback for me is travelling. now that any tom dick and harry can just zap whoever to where ever he/she wants whenever he/she wants theres no mystery or real 'excuse' for the central figures to have any miscomunication...

 

 

the other thing that is just as bad as travelling is the micro excuses for making reasons that peopkle dont do things....like,say flying.if you can pick up a rock with the power...why not just pick up a human?not that they even need to fly anymore because they can just open a weave that destroys whole mountains with the wiggle of a nose.

 

why would rand bother with the seanchen peace? just open a gateway, put one of those ridiculous bubbles around himself and level the whole seanchen heirachy....hell, if he left after breakfast he'd be home for lunch....

 

obviously theres a bit more grey to it than that, but if the writer can use it as an excuse to bail out his hereos when times are tight, then to me, its up for debate.

 

summary...hell yeah, the power is way to 'cheap' in the context the opening poster meant.

[scott_swampy]

I liked the way Terry Goodkind used magic in battles. He made it clear that you still need large armies to fight. Wizards will spend most of their time countering each other to do major damage on the battlefield.

 

First of all: Die in a hole!

 

 

Secondly: If you look at the bigger battles through the series to this point, those that had chanellers on both sides at least, the channelers main objective is to stop the opposing channelers doing too much damage and the arms men’s job is to stop the opposing arms men killing the channelers.

 

i think ultimately, in my opinion, this is one of Jordans biggest failings...he let the power of the 'wizards' in this series get way too powerful....or....too many people with too much power, and i think its just spiralled out of control.

 

I would agree that it has become a little cheap, but we have to keep a few things in mind first that rand is the strongest channeler of all time reborn, and the series is based around him. Secondly the people that have been trying tho kill him are Thirteen of the most powerful channelers ever.

 

the biggest drawback for me is travelling. now that any tom dick and harry can just zap whoever to where ever he/she wants whenever he/she wants theres no mystery or real 'excuse' for the central figures to have any miscomunication...

 

And on the issue of travelling if RJ hadn’t put it in most of the books would have been about Rand moving from one place to the next. I mean look at how long it took him to get from the Two Rivers to Caemlyn, imagine how long the trips he has taken to and from Tear, Illian and Cairien would have taken. It wouldn’t have fitted into 112 books. And RJ was never just going to say “next rand travelled half the known world, I took eight weeks and nothing happed”. It is just not his style. And at least he put restriction on who could use it.

 

[nnokwoodeye]

I think you are forgetting that the enormous power of channellers is important to the premise of the series. Without it the breaking would have looked something like this:

 

Soldier: sir, what happen to you? You are full of mud.

Officer: I was talking with John Doe sedai when he suddenly went insane and blew up an ant hill, so I stunned him with my shock lance.

Soldier: do you want me to put him in the cells?

Officer: no they are full, take him to Jane Doe sedai, the hull of servants have authorized the severing of all the crazy males.

Soldier: is that really necessary?

Officer: of course! This is wartime we can't have millions of crazy men running around setting fire to small bushes and carving rude drawing into stone buildings!

Soldier: you are right. I just glad even the most powerful channellers can be taken down by a squad of well trained soldiers. Can you imagine what would have happened it they had the power to blow up mountains?

Officer: that's just crazy talk. You watched too many science fiction movies

 

[nnokwoodeye]

why would rand bother with the seanchen peace? just open a gateway, put one of those ridiculous bubbles around himself and level the whole seanchen heirachy....hell, if he left after breakfast he'd be home for lunch....

 

Because that would be murder. Rand might be hard, but he is not Semirhage.

[Mr. Dragon]

I think you are forgetting that the enormous power of channellers is important to the premise of the series. Without it the breaking would have looked something like this:

 

Soldier: sir, what happen to you? You are full of mud.

Officer: I was talking with John Doe sedai when he suddenly went insane and blew up an ant hill, so I stunned him with my shock lance.

Soldier: do you want me to put him in the cells?

Officer: no they are full, take him to Jane Doe sedai, the hull of servants have authorized the severing of all the crazy males.

Soldier: is that really necessary?

Officer: of course! This is wartime we can't have millions of crazy men running around setting fire to small bushes and carving rude drawing into stone buildings!

Soldier: you are right. I just glad even the most powerful channellers can be taken down by a squad of well trained soldiers. Can you imagine what would have happened it they had the power to blow up mountains?

Officer: that's just crazy talk. You watched too many science fiction movies

 

 

nice

[DemandredFO]

besides, at the Manor in tear there were no channelers with the trollocs.  conversely, Elayne's rescue in KOD, if 8 linked windfinders hadn't interfered the good guys would have died.

[Samudor]

  That little scenario is hilarious!!! I don't really agree to be honest. I think that Jordan planned from the beginning for the channellers to be the stars of the show. However, don't forget that there are barely a million channellers in the entire world. Also do not forget how Perrin neutralized 400 channeling Wise Ones. Or, how The Wolf(KOD prologue) eliminated a damane from a fight before she had a chance to do anything at all.

 

  As for the Terry Goodkind comment: sorry bro I don't think Goodkind really did anything that well in his series. I certainly don't think he understands war nearly as well as Jordan, and a lot of the things he did were simply contrivance or just flat out, "oh I've seen this before." He was far too busy using his characters as a soap box for justifying violence, and for explaining to the entire world why religion is the real motivation behind every evil act since man's awakening.

 

   In some ways, I understand what you're saying. Yes, some deusch bag who's been channeling for three months can squash Lan like a bug, but so can a grizzly bear. I think one of the many things that makes the Wheel of Time special is things like that- life just isn't fair. Some people are stronger than others naturally, faster naturally, or smarter, etc. Do we cry foul? Or do we say, "Hey awesome!!!" Life isn't fair, and Lan simply has to find a way to catch Joe Shmoe moron channeller by surprise. Look how easily Rand was smacked around in that battle with the Seanchan in Path of Daggers. He was hit from behind and would have died for sure without help. Everyone, no matter how wonderful they are or how awesome they are, has a ceiling on what they are capable of. Everyone's ceiling is a little different, and in order to make a difference in our lives and do things, we have to figure out how to work with our limitations. Funny, how in the series, the people who are successful are the one who know their limitations and understand how to work around them. But, hey who am I to say such things? Maybe it is too unbalanced. Let's make it all fair so that we can be bored, shall we?

 

   

[devildawg07]

I think the number and power of channelers just puts the fighting in the series into a more modern context along the lines of if you're seen, you get hit.  So don't be spotted first.  I think the balance will level out a bit more if/when Mat gets some firearms into production.

[Phariah]

i have enjoyed the growth of the channeling added to the war. dumai wells was a good example imo.. smaller but better trained in combat the WT AS were holding off a superior amount of WO Shaido. even with the oaths, they were countering a larger number of channeling at them.

 

and the whole Illian campaign was cool it was mainly soldiers protecting the Asha'man. and they were going up against Damane. also the power was screwy around Ebou Dar.

 

and the manor combat was basically let's see the power unleashed for fun imo . lol. that was channelers having open shots on a charging force with no cover. it's the one were you make bets on the body count your gonna rack up.

[bloodandbloodyashes]

I guess its also a matter of preference on what you like to see.

 

But redbj explained it well, the first books i thouhgt well managed the power of the channellers. And I dont mind what Rand did at Tarwin's Gap, the eye was a ressource meant to be used in that way, and he is after all the Dragon Reborn. The way Moiraine fought also didnt bother me because it was on a nice scale with the battles she was in.

 

But in the later books it starts getting out od control, both with the number of channeller that i think is to big (the first books said that it was a REALLY rare gift... 1 million channellers is alot), and with the size of power they have.

 

Sure the AoL was a time were there were plenty of channellers who did amazing stuff, but now the setting is an age were the power is supposedly weaning out. It seamed well put out is the first few books, but after that it seemed like the author completly forgot about it because we started seeing all powerful channelers everywhere, and even some that could match the Forsaken, and that just took out alot of the appeal that channelling had.

 

But like i said its also a matter of preference. I love medeival style battle scenes, but like some people have said, the channelling brings a more modern aspect to the fighting.

[Muad Cheade]

Just think of it this way, would you think it was unfair if Mat and the Band defeated an army with Aludra's dragons while the enemy had none? No. It's warfare.. there's a reason why every new technological advancement throughout history has been applied to the military arts. One of the key tenets of war is that you use whatever superior weapon you have against the enemy regardless of if he has the same. War is not "fair."

 

If the army Mat and the Band faced had Aludra's Dragons too, then the battle would be more balanced. The same goes for channelers. If one side has them and the other doesn't, it's going to be more lopsided. If both have them, it will be more balanced. Look at the Battle of Dumai's Well where a few dozen Aes Sedai and a few hundred Younglings were holding out against several times their number of Wise Ones and 40,000 Aiel.

 

It will be interesting to see how both sides position their channelers as they can turn the tide in battle.

[Arath Faringal]

Sure the AoL was a time were there were plenty of channellers who did amazing stuff, but now the setting is an age were the power is supposedly weaning out.

 

Ah, but you forget.  That is according to the Aes Sedai.  Not only did their recruiting methods suck, but from what we've seen of the story they are wrong more often than not.  They assume that channeling is a dying ability because there are fewer and fewer Aes Sedai, and they come across fewer channeling men.  They never stop to consider that maybe girls have just stopped going to Tar Valon, and that the only men they ever find are sparkers.  They never touch the learners out there. 

 

Yes, there are fewer channelers overall then there were in the AoL, but 1% of the population is still a fair amount.

[Mr Ares]

i find that takes away some of the epicness the series could have (with the One Power alot less powerful).

Malazan Book of the Fallen is even more epic, and makes a lot more use of magic. So heavy magic use doesn't take away from the "epicness" of the series.

 

u can have a warrior that trained his body and mind his whole life to become a living weapon (ex: Lan)and then some boy who has been training for 3 months comes up to him and explodes is brains...

Such is life. Or death, I suppose.

 

the biggest drawback for me is travelling. now that any tom dick and harry can just zap whoever to where ever he/she wants whenever he/she wants theres no mystery or real 'excuse' for the central figures to have any miscomunication...

We are capable of miscommunication today, with faster communications than they have.

 

the other thing that is just as bad as travelling is the micro excuses for making reasons that peopkle dont do things....like,say flying.if you can pick up a rock with the power...why not just pick up a human?

Well, picking up a human isn't flying. If I lifted you up, I would be carrying you. If I put you in a catapult, you'd fall....Can I put you in a catapult? I promise there'll be a mattress to catch you...A pile of bricks at the very least.

 

why would rand bother with the seanchen peace?

Because he needs the Seanchan. Them not fighting him anymore isn't enough, he also needs them fighting the Shadow.

 

But in the later books it starts getting out od control, both with the number of channeller that i think is to big (the first books said that it was a REALLY rare gift... 1 million channellers is alot), and with the size of power they have.

It's 1% of the population. And we haven't yet seen channeler numbers reach anywhere near 1 million.

 

I liked the way Terry Goodkind used magic in battles.

Heretic! Burn him!