be_cavalier

And now's when the rest of us Windows users get to sit by and watch how much fun the Mac users are having. For once

Quote: Originally written by Emperor Tullegolar: I have heard of an experiment done where a woman was blindfolded for several months. Brain activity in the eye section of the brain or whatever slowed to a halt, but after a week or so there was activity there again, hinting that that part of the brain was indeed being assigned to other tasks, hearing perhaps. I haven't heard of this experiment, but it'd be interesting to read up on. The only problem I can see is that some areas of the brain are very specialized and can't really adapt to other functions. The occipital lobe in humans is almost entirely devoted to sorting through visual information and sending it down the proper pathways. It would be hard for it to start decoding audible clues for instance. But if someone provided me a link to this or similar studies, I'd love to read it. And back to Geneforge, I agree that for the original way of Shaper life to continue, the intelligent serviles would have to be killed, and wiped out of history. But who's to say that the old Shaper philosophy would still work today? Now that the Shaper civilization has been through rebellion and freakish new creations, they're going to have to adapt to a new way of thinking. But I'm not sure if any of the factions in the Geneforge universe have gotten it completely right yet.

Quote: Originally written by Emperor Tullegolar: Be-Cavalier: First I must ask about this brain to body weight ratio. How does that make sense scientifically? If someone is born with no arms or legs, will they be smarter than the average person? This is actually a more general concept of intelligence, from species to species. Obviously you can have humans that have a huge brain but can be dumb as rocks. Brain size actually doesn't matter all that much when you're comparing it to other members of the same species. And I'm not sure about a blind person actually being able to hear better than a person who can see normally. Sight is our main mode of gathering information around us, and hearing is probably the second most important. People who are blind have actually just adapted their attention to focus more on what they hear. It's sort of similar to wandering around a dark room. Since sight is useless, you rely on a different sense more than you normally do: touch. It's sort of the same principle, as far as I'm aware. Also, I think my neuroscience professor actually made the comment that if human hearing were any better, we'd actually be able to hear Brownian motion. Which would get pretty irritating if you ask me

I just wanted to answer a thought that was posed quite a bit ago in the thread, since it's right up my alley of study. The most recent school of thought when it comes to intelligence is the brain to body weight ratio. Humans (expecially babies) have ridiculously large brains for our body sizes. Dolphins are right behind us in this regard. So depending on this ratio, serviles may not be all that dumb. If the world of Geneforge works the same as our world, then any creation that can talk and understand speech would fall under the "intelligent" category. Language is an incredibly complex human behavior. If you think about it, words are really just bits of noise that your brain is able to pick out and attach meaning to. The fact that serviles can communicate and understand language puts them at an intelligence level that is somewhat on par with an average human. Obviously even toddlers are able to form sentences, but they can't form and comprehend complex concepts like the smart serviles can. This is even hinted at by your character when talking to smart serviles for the first time. They'll usually make some remark that your character will point out is "very uncharacteristic of a servile." I guess what I'm getting at is that none of the serviles are technically dumb when compared to every other creature on the planet. When compared to humans, the average servile isn't as intelligent. But, ET, you don't feel that the smart serviles have actually earned a little respect for breaking out of the handicap that Shapers placed on them? By your logic, I would think the Shapers would earn a little less respect since they didn't design the servile model well enough to keep this intelligence from showing up. But that's just my thoughts.

Divine Host was always a sort of luck thing for me. I remember when you first get it, vengeful shades are actually somewhat useful, and the random divine shade is great. I think I had a divine shade wipe the floor with the big group of vengeful shades that the Shade of Ice summoned. I refuse to type the word shade one more time. Except that one.

Arcane Summon didn't seem powerful enough to fall into the "Arcane" category.

And didn't Identify cost a crazy amount of SP in Exile 3 that it didn't cost in Exile 2? I think it also worked on all un-identified items in your inventory in E3 though. I really don't miss having to identify items. Especially the ones that seem to be clearly labeled. "Hmm, this sword is on fire. I wonder what it could be?"

If you can get your hands on a heroic brew or two, use them on your main fighter(s). They're nice, albeit expensive, ways of getting your damage close to the cap. Also, for splitting enemies, what works for me is picking the copies off one by one, killing off the ones with the lowest health. Just wait until you get to the Abyss Slimes if you go after a certain crossbow. I think I actually swore at one because the last remaining copy killed my singleton.

Eh, summons could be useful. Slimes were absurdly powerful in the beginning of the game, and if you got lucky, you could summon one with a Call Beast spell. They didn't have too much health, but could shrug off most of physical attacks in the beginning levels. I found Divine Host to be much better than it had been in A1-A3, especially if you were able to summon a Divine Shade. I think that's what they're called, anyway...

The only thing interesting about playing a servile would be getting all the different continuity things in order. Like, would a servile be able to use a discipline wand? Cause if I remember correctly from G1 (it's been a while) the Awakened had one that they refused to use because it scared them too much. But I could be wrong. And if you could use magic, you'd have to be either a shaped servile, or one of the fanatic, crazy serviles. And as much fun as I'm sure that would be... *edit* Fun being the crazy servile, I mean.