Mental attacks

[ArtDrake]

All attacks are mental, in a way. Even Physical attacks are the result of sending messages down to the nerve centers in your arms, which relay the message to the right parts, meaning you slash someone. This form of Mental attack is just sending electrical signals through an object, breaking it down, or in the case of living beings, overloading it with information. With feedback and Vengeance, their origins are very similar to that of Shadow attacks; using negative emotions to deal damage, but still classified as Mental. With the orb, Duvalier would be able to see where a negative transmission might do the most damage, in a similar way to Shadow. So Mental attacks aren't that wrong from my point of view. To you, it might not sound like a good idea, and I respect that. I just won't be swayed in my argument.

[SmartyPants]

All attacks are mental, in a way. Even Physical attacks are the result of sending messages down to the nerve centers in your arms, which relay the message to the right parts, meaning you slash someone. This form of Mental attack is just sending electrical signals through an object, breaking it down, or in the case of living beings, overloading it with information. With feedback and Vengeance, their origins are very similar to that of Shadow attacks; using negative emotions to deal damage, but still classified as Mental. With the orb, Duvalier would be able to see where a negative transmission might do the most damage, in a similar way to Shadow. So Mental attacks aren't that wrong from my point of view. To you, it might not sound like a good idea, and I respect that. I just won't be swayed in my argument.

In order for it to be a mental attack, then it has to attack the brain directly.  Physical attacks can't be considered a mental attack, because your brain might interpet the pain of being hit, but the brain remains undamaged.  If an object lacks a mind or brain, then it shouldn't be damaged by mental attacks with or without an orb.

[ArtDrake]

I'd argue that the mental attacks directly attack the mind of humans, not the brain, but on inanimate objects they attack it through eletrical impulses. Note that all of these destructible battlefield objects had living or dead cells in them. Even cracked boulders have algae growing in them, and the Telepath can tell the algae, the nervous centers of dead plant cells (for treasure chests), or the living plant cells in a diseased tree to grow and damage the main destructible battlefield object. If you zap a dead frog's leg, then it twitches. Even the electrical excitation of the dead plant cells making up the chest might be enough to get a treasure chest to crack open.

Physical attacks attack the brain directly if they shove a sword through the skull.

[SmartyPants]

I'd argue that the mental attacks directly attack the mind of humans, not the brain, but on inanimate objects they attack it through eletrical impulses.

Do you mean that any upsetting attack could attack the mind?  If that is the case, then maybe we should have a name=calling attack.

Note that all of these destructible battlefield objects had living or dead cells in them. Even cracked boulders have algae growing in them, and the Telepath can tell the algae, the nervous centers of dead plant cells (for treasure chests), or the living plant cells in a diseased tree to grow and damage the main destructible battlefield object. If you zap a dead frog's leg, then it twitches. Even the electrical excitation of the dead plant cells making up the chest might be enough to get a treasure chest to crack open.

Dead or alive, plants do not have nervous systerms, so putting electricity into a plant wouldn't do anything (maybe it could catch on fire).

[bugfartboy]

I'd argue that the mental attacks directly attack the mind of humans, not the brain, but on inanimate objects they attack it through eletrical impulses. Note that all of these destructible battlefield objects had living or dead cells in them. Even cracked boulders have algae growing in them, and the Telepath can tell the algae, the nervous centers of dead plant cells (for treasure chests), or the living plant cells in a diseased tree to grow and damage the main destructible battlefield object. If you zap a dead frog's leg, then it twitches. Even the electrical excitation of the dead plant cells making up the chest might be enough to get a treasure chest to crack open.

Physical attacks attack the brain directly if they shove a sword through the skull.

I've got to agree with him on this. It was my slilent line of thinking and he said it. Water doesn't have a brain, but if you put enough ZAP in it, it will evaporate. We are Gallic about mental attacks affecting inanimate battlefield objects, right?

I'd argue that the mental attacks directly attack the mind of humans, not the brain, but on inanimate objects they attack it through eletrical impulses.

Do you mean that any upsetting attack could attack the mind?  If that is the case, then maybe we should have a name=calling attack.

Note that all of these destructible battlefield objects had living or dead cells in them. Even cracked boulders have algae growing in them, and the Telepath can tell the algae, the nervous centers of dead plant cells (for treasure chests), or the living plant cells in a diseased tree to grow and damage the main destructible battlefield object. If you zap a dead frog's leg, then it twitches. Even the electrical excitation of the dead plant cells making up the chest might be enough to get a treasure chest to crack open.

Dead or alive, plants do not have nervous systerms, so putting electricity into a plant wouldn't do anything (maybe it could catch on fire).

Yet if the energy from the mental attack were to partially bring the dead cells to life, they could weaken the overall structure of the object. Dead trees trying to grow again and break the dead part by warping.

[ArtDrake]

No, I'm saying that the attack directly attacks the mind with an overload of information, reducing their health. The brain remains intact.

Plants have nuclei in their cells, the equivalent of a nervous center for the cell.

[SmartyPants]

I've got to agree with him on this. It was my slilent line of thinking and he said it. Water doesn't have a brain, but if you put enough ZAP in it, it will evaporate. We are Gallic about mental attacks affecting inanimate battlefield objects, right?

Yes, is true that electric volts could turn into heat energy that would evaporate water, yet mind blast is not a massive lightning bolt that could do massive physical damage.

Yet if the energy from the mental attack were to partially bring the dead cells to life, they could weaken the overall structure of the object. Dead trees trying to grow again and break the dead part by warping.

Once cells are dead, they don't come back to life.  When cells die, they are replaced or the organism goes without them.

Plants have nuclei in their cells, the equivalent of a nervous center for the cell.

I am sorry, but you don't understand your biology.  Yes, both plants and animal cells have nuclei, but the nucleus doesn't work like nerve cells.  I am not going to explain to you the diffrence between them or how each works, because I don't want to give you a 8th grade science lesson.

[Ertxiem]

Discussion moved from New Orb Ideas.


I consider thet the psy attacks are somehow related to the ability of moving electric charges in the target.
In the case of a gifted person being able to mind blast someone, the explanation is based on overloading the brain synapses by sending the target unpleasant thoughts. The way I see it, this is accomplished, at a physical level, by the ability of moving electric charges to certain regions.
If we expand this possibility a bit, we can have the elemental blasts, when our control is higher at the atomic level.
If we go a step further, we may be able to expand this effect to the mental attacks by being able to affect non sentient beings by moving their electric charges in a way that damages the target. Either by affecting metallic parts of the target, more prone to be affected by electromagnetic fields, or by being able to split the links between molecules or even breaking the links between the atoms in a molecule.

When a "dead" tree regrows, it means that at least some of their cells were still alive (perhaps in a dormant state while the weather conditions were unfavourable). When a cell is dead it means that their active content is chemically quite different in a way that's not reversible (at least with our current knowledge).

Indeed the nerve cells are quite different from the cell nuclei. Without going into detail, let me remind you that many cells (including nerve cells) have a nucleus inside.

[ArtDrake]

The nerve cells of a body create and transmit messages. The nucleus of a cell (animal or plant) controls to some extent what happens within the cell, concerning DNA replication, translation, and other things. The Psy could send an electrical signal which told the cell to come back to life, and warp the wood, causing a crack. I recently had an 8th grade biology lesson. I would know.

[bugfartboy]

The nerve cells of a body create and transmit messages. The nucleus of a cell (animal or plant) controls to some extent what happens within the cell, concerning DNA replication, translation, and other things. The Psy could send an electrical signal which told the cell to come back to life, and warp the wood, causing a crack. I recently had an 8th grade biology lesson. I would know.

I already stated that. Unless you are mocking me. If you stop looking at the target itself you would notice the microorganisms on the target. These would be affected by mind blast and many would damage the target by realeasing an damaging compound that would affect the target. And don't say that there might not have been microorganisms on the target. They are everywhere. And you would be lying to say otherwise.

[SmartyPants]

The nerve cells of a body create and transmit messages. The nucleus of a cell (animal or plant) controls to some extent what happens within the cell, concerning DNA replication, translation, and other things. The Psy could send an electrical signal which told the cell to come back to life, and warp the wood, causing a crack. I recently had an 8th grade biology lesson. I would know.

You continue to compare apples to oranges.  Have you got the lesson on how dead things stay dead? 

If you stop looking at the target itself you would notice the microorganisms on the target. These would be affected by mind blast and many would damage the target by realeasing an damaging compound that would affect the target. And don't say that there might not have been microorganisms on the target. They are everywhere. And you would be lying to say otherwise.

How did you go from Mind Blast to microorganisms realasing an damaging compound?  Why would mind blast do that when microorganisms don't have minds.  Plus, there wouldn't be enough microorganisms to release enough damaging compounds to do any serious harm to anything.

[bugfartboy]

Here are millions on your finger right now. And they multiply fast. The electric current affected by mind blast causes the microorganisms to respond releasing the compound.

[Ertxiem]

Let me try to be more clear: after some time, in a dead organism almost all the cells are so degraded that they're unable to do anything (even if we supply them all the energy and nutrients in the Universe). The cells that happen to be not very damaged are so scattered that they will be unable to work together (even if we gave them everything they need). And if the cells don't work together, we don't have an organism (and do complex things, like grow).

The second point is: even if we provide everything to an organism, it can't make a thing they were not capable of. So, I may accept (although I don't like the following idea too much) that if we use our Psy powers carefully in some termites we might be able to command them to degrade faster a wooden chest. We may even command micro-organisms to accelerate the degradation of a rock. But, the way I see it, that wouldn't be fast enough to use during a battle.

In a battle I would want my attacks to work fast, so I want something that affects my targets, either by dealing them physical damage or damaging their brain. The way I see it, growing stuff is usually too slow (perhaps with the exception of the Tig).

In the orb suggestion thread, we were discussing about the ability to remove immunity against mind attacks on objects. The discussion derived to how mental attacks work and if, with the help of an orb, they could be expanded to affect objects. So, I think it would be more fruitful to have more suggestions that could be applied to all objects and not only wooden ones.

[ArtDrake]

What about using Psy to analyze the molecular structure of an object quickly, and applying electrical charges (in the same way you would give mental signals) to excite certain atoms within the structure at key points, starting to degrade or critically degrading the integrity of the structure? This would work for wood, stone, anything except a noxious gas cloud.

[bugfartboy]

What about using Psy to analyze the molecular structure of an object quickly, and applying electrical charges (in the same way you would give mental signals) to excite certain atoms within the structure at key points, starting to degrade or critically degrading the integrity of the structure? This would work for wood, stone, anything except a noxious gas cloud.

That makes some sense, and why and when would be be fighting a noxious gas cloud?