I'm not sure if I can agree with this, but overall I think that it might be correct. For instance, we know that Rand can make the largest gateways in the series (as an individual). Stronger channelers can make bigger gateways (we have seen Logain judge Rand's strength based on gateways alone). However we know that he doesn't put 100% of his power into a gateway because he can make seven deathgates of the same size at the same time. I suspect that an AS who can barely Travel can only make one gateway and she needs to put all of her strength into it. Therefore in this example Rand would be maybe ten to fifteen times stronger than an AS but perhaps only have 2x her power. This is very theoretical and I suspect many posters would disagree with this, but I do believe that the gain in effective power isn't linear. This is due to my belief that high power channelers and channelers who are strong in specific flows/Talented have the ability to weave precision weaves that are much more effective.
I'm open to this idea, but only because we have seen now that you need to be only ~15% stronger than a channeler of the same sex to break their shield. Therefore if Galina can tear apart Micara's shield with a 20% higher strength, then it stands to reason that the levels between channelers are significant even if they seem small to us. I would therefore suggest that the tiers that RJ described are definitely present: Nynaeve at ~100, Egwene 90, Moiraine 80. Those were the original three tiers, and I believe that those strength differences are very significant to channelers, especially if one takes Galina as an example. In fact, Amys may have been less than 10% stronger than Egwene at that point in the series and she said she had to release her because the shield was about it break apart.
I'm not so sure about this. I don't think it's an error that affects the scale too much. Siuan said that she was weaker than many of the Accepted, and on the scale this holds true. At most they messed up by 5 levels, but I don't think the error is as catastrophic as you have made it out to be. RJ himself might have thrown it out there without much thought to merely show that Siuan was very much weaker than before. The quote does tell us, though, that the strongest women in the Tower were more than twice as strong as some of the other women. At the very least it tells us that Daigian was less than half as strong as Siuan.
A lot of things are suspect, we merely need to wade through what is less suspect than others. How about this...
TDR (Healing) - “I do not think I could handle half that much of the Power.” She paused as if she had just heard her own words – that she could channel half of what ten full Aes Sedai did with a sa’angreal…
This is a confirmed RJ quote, but it cannot hold up to the barest scrutiny. There is no way that Nynaeve is half as strong as ten women in a ring using Vora's wand! And worse, she thinks it's applicable to her strength at the time. It goes with Moiraine's statement that Nynaeve is a bonfire next to Egwene's candle! And then Asmodean...
TFOH (Pale Shadows) - “Perhaps in the grand scheme of the Pattern, it’s a balance for men being stronger… Some women have stronger arms than some men, but in general it is the other way around. The same holds with strength in the Power, and in about the same proportion… If two women link, they do not double their strength – linking is not as simple as adding together the power of each – but if they are strong enough, they can match a man.”
RJ clearly had different ideas early in the series. He wanted the highest levels to be enormously powerful, and he wanted men to be much stronger than women, even in effective strength. But he changed his mind. Siuan told Nynaeve that as she became stronger and stronger it would take more and more women to cut Nynaeve off from saidar, but now we know that two are more than sufficient even for the Forsaken. He introduced the dexterity component to even it out so that his early quotes were still 'true' but also 'not true'.
Now, it is interesting that you assert that Shielding someone of the opposite sex is much more difficult, (which we know of course), without extending the same allowance when it is males shielding females. And we have a very good example of just such a situation. I am talking, of course, about when Rand shields both Egwene and Elayne at the same time, while weaving about 10 additional weaves simultaneously.
So according to the sortable list based on the Companion itself, Egwene was supposedly a level 12 at this time, while Elayne was a level 35. Let me start by saying that I question these low ratings for both women at the time, as Egwene appeared significantly stronger than Moiraine even then, having been forced by the Seanchan, so placing her at level 12 is an absolute minimum and frankly, inaccurate in my view. Similarly Elayne, who is suggested to have gone from a paltry level 35 to a level 17 between the start and end of Shadow Rising. That is a whopping 58% increase in one book, despite no forcing taking place. That is not how female strength increases. Instead, it increases gradually, not in jumps.
Nevertheless, even though I disagree with the low estimates for Egwene and Elayne at the start of tSR, I will go with it, to illustrate the inconsistency of the way inter-gender shielding is treated in your approach. So with Egwene and Elayne at levels 12 and 35 respetively, that places them, according to the linear list, at 82% at 47% of the maximum strength respectively.
Together, that makes them 129% as strong as Lanfear at that point in time. So I ask you, if it is much more difficult to shield someone of the opposite sex, as Jordan has indeed stated, then how is it possible for Rand to hold shields on TWO females at the same time, who have a combined strength significantly in excess of his own? This while still managing 10 additional weaves at the same time?
To make matters worse, this is not Rand at Lews Therin's strength level. This is a Rand who only by the end of tSR mathches Asmodean, who is a level 3. So if everyone else is growing so rapidly during the course of tSR, then Rand, who is channeling constantly during that book, likely did quite a bit of growing himself before facing Asmodean. Therefore, at the time when he manhandled Egwene and Elayne, he was likely a couple of levels lower than that. Probably a level 5 or thereabouts. Remember, this is when he cannot even grasp the Source every time he tries to. Something that even Elayne can do consistently at that point in time.
So I come back to the point, which is that if 5 female Aes Sedai need to significantly exceed the strength of a male to hold a shield on him, then the same must apply to a male who tries to hold a shield on a female, let along on two females. In fact, Egwene on her own, at level 12, would have been at 81% of Lanfear's strength at the time. Therefore she would have been at an even higher proportion of Rand's untrained strength at that time, according to the Companion that is. He should not even have been able to hold a shield on her alone, going by the inter-gender shielding difficulty theory, let alone be able to shield Elayne and handle 10 other weaves as well.
The only way this can make sense, is if Egwene is not that close to Rand's level in strength, and is in fact below half his strength at the time.
The Companion does say, though, that women don't always gain strength in a linear fashion. This surprised me, but apparently they can also be unpredictable but not to the extent of males.
Secondly, I don't think that you're right about your assumption that the cross-gender shielding issue works both ways. I think that women find it difficult to hold men, but men hold women with ease. It's based on the same premise as physical strength differences between men and women. You probably need two average women to physically hold down a man - maybe even more, but most men can hold a woman physically against her will. I believe this is based on the volume of the Power that men can hold. I think many men can hold the same volume of Power as women even of Egwene's strength or higher, and this mass is enough to easily cut women off from the Power and keep them shielded. Rand's statement about his strength implies that his connection to saidin is very strong and it requires a huge weave of saidar to cut that off. Remember at the Cleansing the Ash'aman held the Aes Sedai easily, and according to most Sources it takes men on average 15 years to gain their strength, so all of these men were pretty weak and none of the Sisters could get free. We've also seen the AM shield a whole group of invading Aes Sedai. It seems relatively easy for men to accomplish this.
With Egwene/Elayne we can't be sure of all the factors. Rand was still above 90 even if he was at level 4, so he could hold someone of greater than 100. LTT was also a remarkable Aes Sedai so I'm not sure what Rand's abilities are regarding shielding - but he personally thought that he could shield seven women, though LTT had his doubts. That said, I don't want to seem obstinate, and Rand does seem to be extremely powerful in this scene.
I addressed this above.
This is explained nicely by the fact that, as Rand stated, to cut him off once he already holds the Source, you need to exceed at least 200% of his strength. Two Forsaken together could not do it. But 3 could. And they obviously wanted to be sure of being able to do so. This ties in with Asmodean's quote, that 13 Daigian's should be able to do so to Rand too. To be fair, Daigian is exceptionally weak for an Aes Sedai, and given Asmodean's limited knowledge of exact Aes Sedai strengths, he might well have been talking about women slightly stronger than Daigian. But even if we use Daigian, for the sake of argument, then 13 Daigians need to exceed around 200% of Rand's strength. Meaning each one needs to be around 15% as strong as Rand.
I'm not sure where you got the 200% from. If three Forsaken want to take him it implies that closer to 300% is needed, as I stated in my original theory. As I said, we have already seen that skilled Forsaken can face more than 200% of their strength. It makes sense that Rand could too, and thus the smothering factor is about 300%.
Okay but I fail to see how you can prove any of this mathematically. We have 66 levels and they must range from 1 to 100. We also know that slowing is practically linear to strength in the Power, so we therefore know that the gap between each of the 66 levels is equal.
I just want to point out too that you shouldn't forget that my list is effective strength. Remember that in terms of raw strength Rand is probably at 120, and Moiraine at 80. All of the male Forsaken are above 100, and I suspect that a great deal of the Ash'aman are between 80-100.
I realize that it still seems rather paltry, but remember that Moiraine said that Cadsuane isn't much stronger than her in NS, and we also know that Egwene isn't much stronger than Cadsuane - she merely exceeds her. And considering Nynaeve can't shield Elayne, it seems like my list is really accurate, because it shows that Nynaeve is within 10-20% of Elayne's strength in the Power.
Actually I started noticing changes as early as LoC.
I have thought about the Demandred quote. Remember, the Demandred quote disproves your theory very significantly because it means that one Ash'aman and two Aes Sedai of middling strength are equal to Demandred in power. There is no real evidence that Flinn is very strong - we know that he can Travel but that's it. There are also several possibilities. The first being that Flinn didn't launch all his power at Demandred immediately. This is actually very likely because as Demandred gets forced back there are stray weaves that start destroying trees around him. This implies that the initial weave hit him at 100% Demandred strength but Flinn then started drawing more and more, continued to hit Demandred with at least 100% but that much of the power missed Demandred and damaged the environment around him. The second alternative is that Demandred is strong in all the five powers and that his effective strength exceeds 100% - this is not unlikely considering who he was in the AOL. Remember that Rahvin and Demandred could have similar strength in the Power but if Demandred is very skilled or strong in more flows, he could technically have a strength of greater than 100. This is all theoretical.
One thing you haven't addressed is the trend of circles. Rand says he can handle 3 women who aren't as strong as the FS - if one is Moghedien (L4) then he's got trouble. When he saw a 4th AS face he went pale. Now look at the Cleansing... Graendal, Demandred and Aran'gar were defeated by circles of three and four. This means that the Forsaken are not a match for this level of strength and considering they are all very highly skilled, we have to assume that circles of three and four exceed them in strength to the same degree that Alivia exceeded Cyndane. You cannot seriously believe that a circle that matches the Forsaken in strength is sufficient to defeat them - they have so much knowledge and are so proficient with the Power.
Fan of Lanfear
- 19/12/2015 05:52:29 PM
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*NM*
- 18/12/2015 05:50:08 PM
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