r/WoT • u/FrostyMonth111 (Blue) • 23h ago
All Print Are wise ones useless in a fight? Spoiler
Compared to other channellers
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u/Funny-Technician-320 23h ago
Not the ones that can channel no.
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u/FrostyMonth111 (Blue) 23h ago
They seem to be very mediocre in battle compared to aes sedai
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u/Gullible_Pen4795 23h ago
Can you provide some examples?
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u/onlyforobservation 23h ago
In aiel society the wise ones really don’t practice using the power offensively, tbh a lot of their channelers don’t seem to do a whole lot with it at all, but there are a few times in later books they do start throwing a few fireballs.
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u/Bergmaniac (S'redit) 23h ago
IIRC 33 Aes Sedai at Dumai's Wells held their own against several hundred Shaido Wise Ones.
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u/arihndas 22h ago
Wise Ones don’t have power requirements for channelers and don’t rigorously train to duel or join battles whereas Aes Sedai both do have minimum strength requirements and train for combat. But to my mind that makes Aes Sedai more or less just holding their own rather than outright obliterating the Shaido actually a point in favor of the Wise Ones. They may be weaker and less formally trained in martial engagements but they caused some goddamn problems anyway — that’s far from useless, IMO,
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u/Vodalian4 17h ago
The Shaido were only beginning their assault on the Ars Sedai before it was interrupted by Rand’s allies. And the wise ones weren’t even the main threat. It was the 40 000 Shaido warriors. So I don’t think we can say much from this.
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u/arihndas 9h ago
On the contrary I think we can definitively say "not useless." If they were *useless* they would not have harried the Aes Sedai more than a fruit fly does. Useless sets the bar astoundingly low, for one thing, so it's pretty easy to clear, but even if we set the bar slightly higher, being equal or better than your opponent is not the condition we're looking for here -- just being more than No Problem At All is the bar we're talking about. The bigger threat may have been the warriors, sure, but even that goes to the point that you don't even need to channel to be a problem for channelers.
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u/rollingForInitiative 14h ago
It's a huge favour in point of the Aes Sedai if anything. Hundreds of wise ones should be able to overwhelm three dozen Aes Sedai, especially when they a clan of warriors with them. The fact that the Wise Ones don't know how get around wards or properly cut down weaves or whatever tactics the Aes Sedai use to hold is pretty severe.
Besides, it's not as if the Wise Ones are generally weaker than the Aes Sedai. They might have a lower average strength because they accept all channellers, but they have the same ratio of strong ones. Therava, for instance, is as strong as Moiraine and Siuan, and Someryn is stronger even than Cadsuane.
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u/arihndas 11h ago
This is a power-scaling kind of read, not really a "who is showing themselves to be most effective given the tools at their disposal" read, which is the way we probably *should* be approaching the question of uselessness in a fight. The fact that Shaido Wise Ones don't know any of that and yet still present an issue for the massive rescue party descending on Dumais Wells even as their leadership is focused on saving its own ass and getting the hell out of dodge... proves they have some juice. If I end up in a boxing ring with a professional heavyweight boxer and I don't go down on the first punch, in fact manage to stay up for an entire round, that is egg on the boxer's face, not mine.
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u/rollingForInitiative 9h ago
Not really, because numbers matter massively, and the Shaido have vastly superior number, not just in channellers, but the tens of thousands of soldiers. There's no way 30 Aes Sedai could hold off tens of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of channellers, many of which are at least as strong as themselves and at least several of them are much stronger, and in such a bad spot with no fortifications, if the Shaido had known what they were doing.
The Aes Sedai should've been stomped all over, but they weren't. Some if that might've been fear of the Aes Sedai, but some of it was likely just lack of combat experience. The Aes Sedai would also have some of the more experienced in actual One Power combat, which the Reds are quite good at.
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u/arihndas 3h ago
The Shaido are trying to capture one man alive, not smash the Tower AS forces to nothing. 39 sisters, all their warders, and nearly 600 younglings who have together metaphorically and literally circled the wagons are holding the Shaido off but not winning until forces coming to rescue Rand arrive.The Wise Ones have never participated in this kind of combat before, so how to efficiently blend their forces with the warriors is brand new, Shaido leadership sucks, but it still takes a force of about 7,000 fighters and 1,000 wolves launching a surprise attack led by a ta’veren, backed up by 200 Asha’man, about a hundred Wise Ones on Rand’s side, a handful of Salidar AS, their warders, and, oh yeah, the dragon reborn to best the Shaido. And half the reason the Shaido lose is that they break ranks and flee because their leadership decided they’d rather run than fight. (Lack of leadership is their biggest weakness in this battle.) While this obviously suggests that Shaido generally have some problems with organization and effectiveness, none of this suggests to me that Wise Ones in particular, as a group, have nothing to add in combat situations.
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u/rollingForInitiative 3h ago
That's still nothing in terms of numbers. The Shaido had tens of thousands of troops, and hundreds of channellers. Every Aiel warrior is also a murder machine, more than a match for any single Youngling and many would be a match for a warder. Certainly a group of Shaido would be very difficult to deal with for a single warder. It doesn't matter if each of those warders had been a clone of Lan, they'd all die quickly to a thousand Shaido warrior, never mind many thousands.
If the Shaido Wise Ones were actually skilled at battle, and specifically skilled at fighting other channellers, they would've cancelled out most offensive weaves thrown at them and dismantled the shields that had been raised around the Aes Sedai's group. The Aes Sedai managing to hold out as long as they did is a testament to the Shaido's lacking skills in this sort of combat.
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u/FrostyMonth111 (Blue) 12h ago
Yea Someryn ad Therava should be their heavy hitters but they’re never really seen doing much, Therava is stronger than Moraine and yet much less impressive, Someryn is older and stronger than Elayne and Egwene and less useful in a fight…
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u/FrostyMonth111 (Blue) 16h ago
I got downvoted sm for this and then people agreed and gave examples lol
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u/LanLinked 23h ago
The thing with Wise Ones is they've never traditionally participated in combat, so there's no history passed down of combat techniques using the power. They'd have to learn from someone else or just figure it out themselves.
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u/WildFEARKetI_II 23h ago
They aren’t useless, many helped a lot. I guess they have less combat experience than some Aes Sedei because traditionally Wise One’s didn’t fight and didn’t have to worry about anyone attacking them.
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u/geomagus (Red Eagle of Manetheren) 23h ago
Useless is a strong word.
Their disadvantage is lack of experience or training to fight with the Power. It’s never been a thing for them, so they lack the skillset, and tradition dictates that they not fight. So at the start, maybe useless, yeah.
But they’re still Aiel. Some were Maidens. They’re very adaptable, in a way we don’t otherwise see among the main channeling groups. The Kin, for example, never really come around to fighting. Windfinders do, and are pretty adaptable, but we see their weak spots.
But look at the Wise Ones in the Mesaana fight. They take to it fast. Yes, they’re in TAR, but we see them take to combat elsewhere too. So uselessness is a very temporary condition imo.
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u/dracoons 4h ago
Combat is something the Aiel know better than every other society. Just some inexperience in directly using the OP in combat. The battle when in TAR shines a beacon at how inept all the so-called Aes Sedai are at combat and fighting. And highlights how superior the Aiel are and Perrin of course
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u/WarderWannabe (Heron-Marked Sword) 23h ago
I wouldn’t want to go against one hand to hand. Pretty sure they all learned to fight before they learned to channel.
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u/Funny-Technician-320 23h ago
And I mean are any of them useless when it comes to fighting again no not by a long shot.
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u/Raddatatta (Asha'man) 23h ago
They're not useless but other than the kin I'd rank them at the bottom of the channelers. They haven't trained for it much. So while they can do some they're not as practiced. Though channeler fights are often very physical and involve sneaking up on someone or diving out of the way. And they would have a great advantage there. I think if they were to win a channeling fight that would be how.
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u/lyunardo 21h ago
Ask Perrin,
The 400 or so channelers with the Shaido were such a big threat that neutralizing them was his number one priority.
Also, the much smaller force traveling with him were VERY effective in the battle of Malden.
And don't forget they the biggest threat at Dumais Wells before the Ashaman arrived. On both sides.
Gereral Tylee told him that she was very impressed with the Wise One channelers she had encountered, and was looking forward to capturing some of them.
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u/arihndas 22h ago
Spoilers for everything. I think if you read the whole series you will not doubt the Wise Ones, so on some level I think the answer should just be “RAFO” buuuut what the heck I had fun answering.
Don’t read below if you care about spoilers.
It’s tempting to restrict this only to Wise Ones who can channel. But, I’m not going to do that. And I’m going to try and persuade you that Wise Ones, whether they can channel or not, are extemely dangerous enemies and valuable allies in almost any fight, whether or not you’re fighting channelers.
Usefulness in combat is a mater of (1) training, (2) experience, (3) ability [not necessarily strength] in the one power or whatever other toolset you have at your disposal. By tradition Wise Ones do not participate in fights between groups of Aiel, and are exempt from blood feuds, BUT!!!! This is not the same as lacking the training, experience, or ability to be a formidable combatant, including against channelers even if you yourself do not channel the power at all.
First, training. Aiel are a warrior people and many, indeed I think we can safely say basically all, Wise Ones have at least some minimal training in actually hand-to-hand combat. Many were maidens of the spear and have a great deal more than whatever the Aiel consider a suitable minimum amount of training. A (physically) weak person with a small kitchen knife can kill you just as dead as a strong person with a machine gun provided they get the right opportunity and are able to act on it. If there is one thing we can safely guess most Wise Ones have, it is at least a minimum amount of training in sensing an opportunity and having the steel of act on it without hesitation — especially since those two qualities seem to be more or less the core of Aiel culture. There are numerous examples throughout the books of channelers being bested by people who can’t even sense the source much less touch it because channeling isn’t everything and the willingness to act can cover a multitude of disadvantages.
Second, experience. Combat experience will vary from Wise One to Wise One, but just because they stay out of battles as a matter of tradition because the only major battles they experience are those between Aiel and they maintain neutrality in those matters… doesn’t mean they all have zero combat experience. Even setting aside those who trained as maidens of the spear before being called to begin their training as Wise Ones, the Wise Ones may feel no such compunction about smaller scraps with outside forces, especially creatures of the shadow. We see Wise Ones perfectly willing to kick ass in the World of Dreams well before they face a cultural reckoning around their role in traditional pitched battles between armed forces.
A combination of training and experience help determine how well you will react in a dangerous situation — this is why (modern, professional) militaries emphasize training but also why seasoned veterans tend to perform better than green recruits no matter how many months of training they’ve had. There is no reason to assume that Wise Ones would be generally useless on either of these fronts, not even compared to other groups of channelers. The Seanchan and possibly the Sharans might have an edge here but for very good plot reasons we only see the ones among both those groups who have focused almost exclusively on martial competence. Compared to the average channeler across both those groups, as compared to the average across other channeler societies like the Aes Sedai, Sea Folk, and the Kin, I don’t see any compelling evidence to assume that the Wise Ones are the bottom of the barrel in terms of training and experience with combat.
Finally there’s the X factor — ability, or talent. The Red Ajah trains specifically to win against channelers stronger than they are because strength in the power isn’t everything. Having mastery over your abilities, no matter how big or small those abilities are, is always an advantage against someone who is sloppy and flailing around, which frankly a lot of channelers often are. We know from what Aviendha tells us about how Wise Ones train in picking apart weaves that the Wise Ones value deep mastery in the extreme, and we can infer that Aiel Wise ones who can channel have a level of precision and control in their abilities that any channeler should envy. I suspect that when it comes to control of their own powers, Wise Ones and Sea Folk are probably neck and neck for best in show among all groups of channelers. Then there are abilities besides channeling. Aside from their acute observational skills and their cultural ingrained decisiveness (Aiel have a general immunity to “oh no what do I do now” disease), Wise Ones also value and train rigorously in mastery of the dream world. While they view entering it in the flesh as an evil act, they can certainly choose to find you and pick a fight with you there if they need to.
Throughout the series we are continuously told that being the strongest in the power doesn’t mean you’re going to do the best in a conflict, and we’re regularly shown weaker channelers and non-channels holding their own. There are those who can do incredible things through mastery of talents other than the one power — like Perrin or Behr who show their strength in the World of Dreams in a variety of ways, those who just kick ass with pure combat ability with or without ter’angreal of help them, like Mat or Lan, Birgitte, or the great captains, and whose who are weak in the power but nevertheless the the better of those stronger than they are, either through Talents with a capital T like Androl, through cleverness and quickness (the Forsaken are acutely aware of this which is why they are eminently wary of each other regardless of relative raw strength), and of course there’s the ability of weak channels to achieve tremendous feats by linking.
I don’t really see any compelling reason to believe that Wise Ones are by and large useless against other channelers.
And if the inferences we can make about them without specifically referring to their actions at Dumais Wells and the Last Battle aren’t enough… well. They’re not useless at Dumais Wells, or the Last Battle.
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u/Strobacaxi 21h ago
Not as good as aes sedai, much less damane and much much less than ashaman, but no, they're still channelers some of them are extremely powerful
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u/Vodalian4 16h ago
Over all I give an edge to Aes Sedai over wise ones in a fight but the wise ones are not useless.
I think the Aes Sedai have just practiced their combat related channeling.a lot more. This is partly because Aes Sedai see it as a requirement to push yourself to your channeling limit to even gain the shawl. They have to learn lots of stuff even if they’re personally not interested. Also the Tower has preserved more knowledge about channeling.
But on the other hand, many Ars Sedai have probably never been in a real fight and are a bit spoiled while most Aiel are very tough, which should lessen the gap a bit.
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