I mean, in martial arts, is a fight EVER decided by simply who can bench the most weight?

Of course strength helps, but it's one of many factors- dexterity, confidence, how well you perform under pressure, intelligence, how well you can adapt...

And that doesn't even take into account Talents! Talents in Wheel of Time have always been kind of... ill-defined. Sometimes they count as a special ability, like Foretelling, or Having Stretchy Shields, or Making Ter'Angreal, or Aviendha's Thing.

Sometimes it just means you are able to use a weave- Traveling is apparently a talent, even though, once you know how to do it, it's basically just another weave.

And THEN come the elements. If you want to have a "who's the most powerful channeler" contest, do you make them lift a rock with threads of Air? Except everyone has different levels of "strength" in Air.


Bah. It just bugs me, especially with all the recent bell curve nonsense. Sure, you can get a general aggregate "feel" for raw strength, but that means next to nothing against the first Aes Sedai who figures out how to pull asteroids down out of the sky.