Steel Allomancy (Coinshot): Metallic Art Optimisation Guide for the Cosmere RPG

Push on metal to launch yourself around the battlefield and hurl deadly metallic objects at your enemies.

At a glance

Steel allomancy talents

Knowing which talents are best and will work well for your character is more important in the Cosmere RPG than in D&D. This is because you have a lot more choice over which talents you take rather than the more rigid progression found in D&D classes.

To help you pick the right talents for your character, I’ve split them into the various bond and surge talent trees and I’ve also divided them by level. This shows the fewest number of levels you need to gain this talent when following the most direct path down the talent tree. This is just to help you know how quickly you can get each talent.

I’ve also rated each talent to give you an idea of how good I think it is. This is a rough rating. Some builds may find different talents more important or integral to their build so don’t be put off by a low score if you think it’s going to help your character or work for them.

Level 1 talents

Burn steel (3/5)

Knowing where metals are and their size is situationally useful. But if you’re clever, there’s quite a few situations for this. You could identify belt buckles on enemies, the presence of guns and weapons or even just where metal is that you can push.

In fact, detecting metals to push is the most important use for this talent. You’ll need this active to use steelpush just so you know where metal is.

There are limitations though. For instance, enemies trained to fight allomancers (or that know you’re a coinshot) likely won’t wear metal, but at least you don’t even need to expend investiture to actually use this.

Steelpush (5/5)

I think this isn’t generally as good as an ironpull as that would allow you to move and attack with the same action. Instead, this gives you the possibility of increased movement and/or vertical movement. It also grants a ranged, allomantic attack. I’d also say it’s better for vertical movement and a sort of “flight”, but iron can also help you gain verticality as well. Both are great, but I slightly prefer an ironpull, even if this gives a ranged option.

Level 2 talents

Coin scattershot (5/5)

Blast is pretty great. You can graze all other creatures in the area. It’s not a large area, but more investiture will help there giving this some flexibility. If you have ways of gaining opportunities more often (like being an agent), then this can work even better as those grazes against nearby creatures become hits. It’s not too hard to top up investiture if you do go for a big blast radius’.

Leveraging brace (3/5)

You can use brace to push larger things away from you if you brace against something large enough. I’m not sure how often that’s useful. I don’t foresee a lot of situations where you need to push away something really big that isn’t just immoveable anyway.

Advantage on ironpull or steelpush allomancy tests is less situational, but a standard ironpull/steelpush doesn’t tend to require a test unless you’re making a lurching strike or shoot coin action. Shoot coin is a little more guaranteed as an option than lurching strike as you can just carry coins around for this. I also think that bracing makes more sense for a ranged build which coinshots tend to be.

Level 3 talents

Pushed shot (5/5)

Make sure you’ve got a pretty strong ranged weapon and then enhance shots with it with this talent. Not only do you get a bit more range, but you also get more damage. It also stacks with other features like coin scattershot allowing you to shoot further and harder with a blast radius, for example, which will also enhance the graze damage from the blast trait.

Coin sharpshooter (5/5)

The better your allomancy skill, the better the increase from this feature. That damage boost is pretty nice too. This has some synergy with things like coin scattershot too, which will graze multiple creatures, meaning that your damage output quickly expands across multiple targets. There’s no extra investiture cost here which is even better!

Steelpush adept (5/5)

This expands your number of attacks nicely, so long as you can keep your focus topped up. With such powerful ranged attacks available, this can be quite substantial if you have the investiture available to keep blasting out powerful shots.

Stable footing is situational, but it basically means you don’t need to worry about unstable footing while you have investiture (so no disadvantage on ranged attacks when flying, for example, which you can do with true steelflight).

Level 4 talents

True steelflight (5/5)

Basically flight as much as you need it. Drop coins to ensure you always have something to push off of. This is excellent on a ranged build as you can just fly above the enemies and blast them from range while they’re forced to potentially use weaker ranged attacks to get you.

Bubble shield (3/5)

This is decent, but it’s usefulness depends on what enemies you face and whether they use metal projectiles. I’m not sure how frequently this would be (and that’s likely very dependant on the campaign you’re in). Part of the hard part with this one is knowing when to use it. As a basic rule of thumb, if you’ve got a lot of enemies firing at you, this is a good idea. It’s potentially a lot of investiture for what may just be a deterrent (though it is effective at reducing the effectiveness of shots at you).

Steel allomancers have a lot of demands on their investiture so this can be a pricey thing to maintain on top of that.

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Optimising for steel allomancy

In this section, I’ll give some advice on which options to consider when building around steel allomancy.

Ancestry

Both the Human and Koloss-Blooded ancestries work for iron allomancy. It’s worth being aware that Kandra are not able to take talents from Metalborn paths.

Human: Humans will get you heroic talents quicker as you’ll be able to choose extra talents from heroic paths as you progress levels. This may be useful for beefing yourself up into a higher damage combatant more quickly. You’ll get an extra talent at levels 1, 6, 11, 16 and 21.

Koloss-Blooded: Koloss-Blooded characters can have higher strength earlier in their character progression so work well for steel allomancers that want to use heavy weaponry. They also get extra talents they can use on enhancing their koloss-blooded nature, or for using on heroic path talents.

Heroic paths

Matching up capabilities between your allomantic arts and heroic paths can be important as it allows you to focus more on a few different attributes and skills rather than spreading yourself too thin across many areas.

For steel allomancy, you really want a build focused around ranged combat with physical attributes, more opportunities and more investiture being particularly important. I’d recommend the following paths and specialties:

• Agent: Rebel and thief both work reasonably well here. You’re more likely to roll with opportunity as an agent and thief goes a step further by allowing you to raise the stakes by spending focus. Coin scattershot gets even better if you can roll with opportunity making it a good option here. You’ll likely be building more around speed and light weaponry if you play as an agent.
• Hunter: Sharpshooters are geared entirely around long range shots and once you have pushed shot, this all combines nicely. They’re probably your best hunter option.
• Warrior: A gunslinger is your best option here. Again, pushed shot will help enhance your gunslinging.

Attributes

Recommended attributes

Speed and/or strength: You’ll want a good speed or strength for attacks. Which you choose will be more dependant on whatever heroic path you might have or the type of weaponry you want to use. Speed for light weaponry, strength for heavy. Both will help with your physical defense too, but evasiveness may be just as important as your physical defense for steel allomancers.

Willpower: The strength of your allomancy will in part be down to willpower. You’ll also have more focus through this too which will help you make more attacks through steelpush adept.

Awareness: You’ll need at least some capabilities in a spiritual attribute and I see steel allomancy as leaning towards being a scout due to their movement capabilities so I’d go with awareness.

Attributes to avoid

Intellect is the one that’s going to crossover the least with your capabilities. You could swap out awareness for presence, but I think you’ll struggle trying to invest in both of these and think awareness will usually be your better option.

Skills

You’ll want to focus on skills that lean into your strengths. It’s generally better to have specialists in different areas in a party than lots of generalists.

Primarily, this means you’ll want skills related to strength and speed and perhaps willpower and awareness too. Of course, much will come down to your chosen heroic path as well, but the best heroic paths for a steel allomancy will share many of these aspects in common.

I’d recommend investing skill ranks in the following skills:

• Heavy weaponry or light weaponry: You’ll want to invest heavily in one of these at least eventually as a pushed shot will be more powerful than a standard steelpush attack.
• Athletics or agility: You’ll likely make a good scout so will want one of these as are likely to be involved in physical skills.
• Stealth: If you’ve also invested in speed and want to play a scout, then this will work well.
• Thievery: The same goes for thievery.
• Intimidation: If you have a high strength and potentially solid willpower, you should be a good fit for intimidation if you need to flex those social muscles.
• Perception: If you’ve invested in awareness, then this is your most important skill for scouting.
• Allomancy: You’ll want this for strong allomancy tests, especially as you may make a lot of attacks with your allomancy rather than weapon attacks.

Expertises

Expertises can grant some special knowledge or benefits when using certain items. Largely, you can take whatever expertises fit your character, but there are a couple of things to consider:

• Armor expertise will depend on your strength: You’ll need armore for increased protection. Armor expertise will help you access better armor without becoming encumbered. Which you choose will largely depend on your strength score though.
• Gain weapon expertise in a ranged weapon: Steel allomancers are built for ranged attacks. For this reason, you’ll want expertise in a ranged weapon. Which you choose depends largely on whether you’ve invested in light or heavy weaponry.
• Use utility expertises to fill expertise gaps in the party: Depending on your focus might affect what utility expertise you want to take.
• Take whatever cultural expertise you like: You can take whatever cultural expertise fit your character best. You may want to consider taking cultural expertises that fill knowledge gaps in the group, but it’s not overly important.

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While any character can use steel allomancy and enjoy its benefits, it works best on evasive, ranged characters, especially if you intend on taking lots of the talents available. Because you can gain a semblance of flight and a load of utility, this can be a fun, high damage allomancy art to take.

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