It's difficult to answer without knowing what kind of magic and abilities her opponents have. Egwene is one of the more powerful magic-users of her universe, but the Wheel of Time series is set in a standard medieval-ish fantasy setting: if someone starts firing bullets at her she's going to die before she realises what's happening. And yes she has qualms about killing. Assuming everyone is human, they'd have to be directly threatening her life for her to kill them and even then she'd try things like immobilizing them first.
And honestly direct combat is probably the least interesting use of the Wheel of Time magic system. Invisibility, illusions, wards and teleportation mean Egwene will be hard to surprise, difficult to find if she's hiding, and can attack you from anywhere. Her weaknesses are that she doesn't have any kind of super strength or endurance, can't heal her own wounds and can't use her magic if she's too tired.
Can she heal others? If so, how quickly? So I assume she can turn invisible and create illusions from what you said. Someone else had also mentioned teleportation. How long would it take for her to use these abilities? Instantly, a few minutes, or a few hours? Do they have any specific limitations to them, such as she can only stay invisible for a few minutes or can only teleport so far?
Thanks for the info by the way. As she is part of a fantasy team in the challenge, this should actually help a lot, as other characters can tank and protect her while she casts some of her spells or abilities.
Egwene isn't a great healer. It's a talent and some have it to a greater degree than others. She could probably manage some bruising or minor lacerations. Nearly all magic including healing, invisibility and teleportation can be done in seconds.
I should go into more detail about the teleportation - she doesn't move herself, she opens a sort of dimensional door and steps through it to the other location. To teleport instantly you have to know your starting point very well, you can't just do it anywhere. If you know your destination well but not your starting point that's a different kind of teleportation called skimming, and it takes longer. You travel through this grey non-dimension for a while and then arrive. She can transport others, too, as long as she travels with them. She can travel anywhere long as you don't want to go to another planet or something.
I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned but Egwene's magic isn't inherently part of her. It's an external force that you connect to and use at need. You can't be connected to it all the time (you'd get addicted), trying to use more of it than you can safely handle can kill you and the magic users of this universe have ways of blocking each other from using it at all. Spells are literally woven from 'strands' of this power, some are very complicated and if they go wrong they can unravel and potentially even explode. If Egwene loses her connection to the magic source, through interference or exhaustion, any spells she's holding will dissolve. You don't want to be halfway through a teleportation doorway if this happens. There's also a limit to how much she can do at one time. Immobilization or fireballs are quick and easy; invisibility and teleportation are intensive and tiring.
There are physical ways to cut off her magic abilities. For example, some kinds of drugs might temporarily leave her powerless
Also, using magic can be exhausting. More powerful magic takes more out of you. Using a lot of magic, or even just a few powerful "spells", can leave you as tired and powerless as if you had just finished running a marathon.
There are magical objects which increase your capacity to use magic, called angreal. That is, you can use more of it safely and you can use it without wearing yourself out so quickly. And when I say "increase" I mean many times more than normal. Egwene uses a particularly powerful object of this kind, and I think you could argue that it is hers. I don't know if you're allowed to have characters use items, but if so then you want this one. :)
"Vora's sa'angreal" is the only name I think it is given. It's mentioned toward the end of Egwene's wiki article and has its own page here. Probably best to read the articles on the One Power, saidar, and angreals.
Egwene channeling through the Vora's sa'angreal against a to'raken
For other uses of the words "white" and "rod," parts of a former name of this *ter'angreal, see White and Rod.*
Vora's sa'angreal, once known as the white rod, is a female sa'angreal in the form of a fluted white wand. It is the most powerful sa'angreal currently in the White Tower's possession. The rod is kept in a storeroom in the Tower with other objects of the One Power, inside a narrow unadorned wooden box nestled in red silk. The wand itself is about the length of a woman's forearm, made of an unknown material that looks as though it could be bone or ivory, though it is neither.
ParentcommentercantoggleNSFWordelete.Willalsodeleteoncommentscoreof-1orless.|FAQs|SourcePlease note this bot is in testing. Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it is just a bug report! Please checkout thesourcecodeto submit bugs
That is, you can use more of it safely and you can use it without wearing yourself out so quickly.
Actually one of the reasons her sa'angreal was so powerful is because it didn't have the safety buffer. I actually think by definition, sa'angreal do not have any buffers at all. Only angreal have buffers. The Choedan Khal have their buffers in their access keys, not the sa'angreal themselves.
As far as i can recall, Sa'Angreal is basically a classification inside the definition of Angreal, meaning they are Angreal, that surpass a certain (undefined) amount they can increase a channeler's ability by. Otherwise it would be quite unreasonable to state that the Choedan Khal are the most powerful Sa'Angreal to have ever been made. It is possible though that Sa'Angreal can increase a channeler's power to a point where it is impossible to handle all of it for a single human being. Unfortunately, there are not really any tasks performed inside the story, that require ALL the power the Sa'Angreal can supply, apart from fighting the dark one. But when it comes to that, Rand is so powerful that he can do quite a bit of destructive fun without any augmentation of his powers.
And for our kind guest:
Egwene Al'Vere is considered immensely powerful even before being properly trained in using her abilities. Later on, we rarely see her doing anything great in terms of using the One Power without any augmentation of her ability, so it's quite difficult to give distinct information about her power. With the aforementioned Sa'Angreal, she should be able to destroy a decently sized medieval town by herself though.
All of the sa'angreal that we ever see in the story specifically lack the buffer. So far that really seems to be their defining characteristic. When Verin is discussing the Choeden Khal she even mentions that only a handful of Aes Sedai are powerful enough to safely handle them. Even this implies that it drags so much of the power into a channeler that it would harm them which means no safety buffer in the sa'angreal itself. It's not until later that we learn the buffers are in the access keys.
Second, Egwene is level 15. We actually have very distinct information about her power. She is equal in the power to Elayne and Aviendah but is weaker than all the Forsaken, Nynaeve, several windfinders, Sharina, and Alivia.
With the aforementioned Sa'Angreal, she should be able to destroy a decently sized medieval town by herself though.
On several occasions she summons massive lighting storms and huge bolts of lighting. It's pretty damn obvious she could wreck a small town.
2
u/sennalvera Nov 23 '14
It's difficult to answer without knowing what kind of magic and abilities her opponents have. Egwene is one of the more powerful magic-users of her universe, but the Wheel of Time series is set in a standard medieval-ish fantasy setting: if someone starts firing bullets at her she's going to die before she realises what's happening. And yes she has qualms about killing. Assuming everyone is human, they'd have to be directly threatening her life for her to kill them and even then she'd try things like immobilizing them first.
And honestly direct combat is probably the least interesting use of the Wheel of Time magic system. Invisibility, illusions, wards and teleportation mean Egwene will be hard to surprise, difficult to find if she's hiding, and can attack you from anywhere. Her weaknesses are that she doesn't have any kind of super strength or endurance, can't heal her own wounds and can't use her magic if she's too tired.