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They could be balanced by having less raw power than the specialists, and a lack of advanced techniques such as Dark Vortex.

I think you're looking at this the wrong way. The argument shouldn't be "why does stimulate work on shadowlings if their brains are potentially different?", but "stimulate does work on shadowlings; therefore, shadowlings likely have brains similar to human brains". This is backed up by the fact that Duvalier was able to easily communicate mentally with Malis despite never having met a shadowling before, whereas a scorpion's mind was "a tangled knot of impulses that are utterly alien" to him.

Hm, good point. I feel silly for not thinking of it that way. So then, they must still have dopamine receptors and the like that heighten their psy capabilities when triggered, just like humans.

Well, now that that issue is cleared up, back to the original topic: How does it work on Rajav and Luca? Placebo effect?

Hm. By the way, would it be possible to have a class like an "elementalist" that has basic attacks from all four elements, but nothing else? So, they can hit any elemental weakness, but they lack the raw skill and power of a specialist. Would this be plausible? Or are you too far along to consider adding new classes now?

Aren't shadowlng just giant brains held in a round black bodies?  The shadowlings don't need a spine because their arms are practically attached to their bodies.  It is like not using a spine to use your eyes.

Their lack of a central nervous cord is actually very important if we're looking at evolutionary similarities. Spines are only possessed by animals in the phylum Chordata. Phylums are very high-level divisions; organisms in other phylums often have radically different physiology. This is especially important because we're talking about brain chemistry; organisms without spinal cords must have different ways of transmitting brain signals to their bodies. Even if their brains have the same receptors, it could have a different effect, or they could use a subtly different neurotransmitter.

However, since the skills do not magically produce the necessary chemicals, only entice the body to produce them, it is possible that Stimulate simply releases a different chemical for shadowlings that has the same effect, if necessary.

(In fact, this raises an interesting question: do shadowlings produce adrenaline at all? Since they are so psy-affine, it would make more sense if their bodies released some kind of psy-boosting chemical instead.)

You are putting way too much focus on the smoke part of their bodies. The smoke on a shadowling is like hair on your head.  Saying a shadowling is "made up largely of that intangible smoke stuff" is like saying a bear is made up largely of fur.

Hm, I suppose that is true. However, how can you be certain their heads are the same as human flesh? The fact that they refer to mammals as "fleshlings" implies that they do not possess it. In fact, judging from how they call themselves "shadowlings" and are naturally affine to the shadow element, it is not completely unprecedented to assume that they are, in fact, made up wholly of some kind of shadow matter.


Edit: Just to fix the bbcode (there was a "=" instead of a "]"). Ert.

Sorry for the double post, but edits don't bump the thread, so.

Anyway. I just completed the game, and
[spoiler]
I never fought Hakim. The mystery man didn't appear either. That's rather odd, Hakim's introduction scene felt rife with foreshadowing. Did Craig just decide to drop that plot point and keep it at Fernatus and Malekahin? Kind of disappointing that half the elements aren't represented.
[/spoiler]

That sounds like a description of feedback; mind shield just creates (or reinforces) a psychokinetic barrier.

This may sound off-topic, but I'd just like to say that I'm really glad you aren't capitalizing things at random. So, so many games will capitalize absolutely anything, to emphasize that it's important or just because the game writers felt like it, and it really bothers me. And then people capitalize the same terms in fanfic, even though it makes no sense, and D: (The Pokemon games are a particularly bad offender in this regard.)

Wait, is that how mind shields work? I thought it was just strengthening the target's natural mind shield...

That's because Cygnus has mental immunity. Feedback and Vengeance are mental attacks, and if used on something immune to mental attacks, the character won't be healed.

(Which actually doesn't make much sense given the explanation for how Feedback works...hopefully Craig will fix it in Telepath Tactics.)

Your comparison is not accurate. Shadowlings don't have a central nervous cord, which means they're a different phylum of animal at the very least -- and it seems quite likely wouldn't even be classed as animals. They do have a digestive system of sorts, but it seems very different from ours, and it looks like they don't actually need to eat physical food. They seem to sustain themselves by feeding off of emotions. How in the world would you classify something like that? "Multicellular sympatroph"? And I mean, do they even have brains as we know them? They seem to be made up largely of that intangible smoke stuff (psy energy, perhaps?), and their "head" may just be a solidified form of that for all we know. I think part of the problem is that we just know so little about shadowling biology.

That was kind of a tangent, though -- the main point that inspired me to create this thread was how it worked on spirits.

Hm. Interesting. I like many of the planned features...but I have to say I'm less than thrilled about the possibility of an evasion stat. I hate, hate, hate "miss" messages in RPGs. It's really unfair to completely negate a turn just out of a whim of the random number god. As I can personally attest to from my experience playing the horrible monstrosity that is Battle For Wesnoth, adding such game-changing randomization to a game that's supposed to be about strategy goes bad places fast. I have faith that you'll be able to work something out, though...I shall see.

I am rather intrigued by the new classes, though. Playing as an engineer or a mentalist sounds fun. Will psy healers be able to cure status effects,  though?

spoilery stuff

[spoiler]
It actually isn't completely unprecedented -- there was a game that did it before TSoG. In Planescape: Torment (a game which I suspect TRPG takes some influences from), you could also talk the final boss to death, so to speak -- in fact, there were multiple ways to do so! I do agree that it is a rather radical notion among modern game design, though, and I applaud Craig for giving us that option. I like it when I'm able to win by brains rather than brawn.

I do agree that convincing him that quickly is pretty unrealistic, though. I, too, am an atheist, and I know what you mean about religious debates. I think you could justify it as him just never thinking that far into things, though -- he took the words of the Iqon at face value, and didn't think to look further than he needed to. You're exposing questions that he never even considered, so he doesn't have a rationalization to counter it. His beliefs aren't completely shattered though -- to me, it sounded more like we exposed a chink in his armor that made him falter for a moment, but the ending montage shows that he goes on to continue preaching. So the debate shook him up a bit, but it didn't seem to change his core beliefs.
[/spoiler]

I created an article for the series as a whole a while back -- now that TSoG is out, I decided it deserved its own separate page.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TelepathRPGServantsOfGod

Hopefully this will get the game some publicity. If you're a troper, feel free to help out!

And another typo; at the beginning of the first Rajav/Luca scene, the narration says "Rajav is staring at Luca, a coy smile on his smile." I believe the last one was supposed to be "face", not "smile" again.

Apologies for the double post, but:

This isn't really a bug, but in the description paragraph when obtaining the crystal orb, there is one instance where "breath" is used instead of "breathe".

These are two of my favorite techniques, though there is something I find a bit confusing about them:

The descriptions of Fury and Stimulate say that they work by increasing the amount of certain neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain (this technically makes them very similar to a number of narcotic drugs, but that's neither here nor there). While this makes sense in most cases, how in the world do they work on Luca and Rajav, who don't have physical brains? And what about Malis, a shadowling? Surely her brain chemistry -- if shadowlings even have brains -- is wildly different than those of fleshy creatures.

(This could also tie in to the question of how Rajav is able to train his strength when he has no physical muscles to exercise, come to think of it.)