What Do Mindless Undead Do When Not Controlled?

[Dralnu]

Mindless zombies and skeletons, under the control of a cleric using his command undead ability, are fighting adventurers. In the midst of combat, the cleric dies. What should the zombies and skeletons do in this situation? Do they stand motionless, do they continue fighting?

[Fouredged Sword]

RAW states they Ether "follow thier last command" or "Go eat people" according to if you are useing "Necromancy is misuderstood but dangerous" or "Necromancy is evil" for your world.

[Keld Denar]

It starts with a B and ends in rains!

Om nom nom nom nom nom nom nom!

[Flickerdart]

Hang out at bars and talk about the weather.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Start traveling in the general direction of the PCs, or going to whatever their next dungeon is.

[Xerinous]

They play sports. Using the head of whoever draws the short straw as a ball.

[TriForce]

depending on how you treat magic in your campaign, you could even rule that if the cleric not only commanded them, but also was the guy/girl who actually animated them, the magic animating them dissapears with the death of its creator, this all the undead will fall apart.

this is a rather unusual way of treating magic tough, but i found that it can be interesting

[Coidzor]

Good question. (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?372441-Tome-of-Necromancy/page2)


Artificial Intelligence

When a necromancer creates even a lowly kobold skeleton when his necromantic control limit has already been reached, one or more of the undead creatures already under his control become "uncontrolled". That much is clear to everyone. But what does an uncontrolled zombie do? It's not intelligent, it simply runs a program that causes it to act in a predictable fashion to stimulus. Of course, what that program actually is has heretofore been left undescribed. The actions of uncontrolled undead depend largely on the moral option your game is using for necromancy in general.

Of course, it doesn't make much difference to uncontrolled Wights and the like – they are somewhat intelligent and wholly evil. So they'll be just like any other monster – as tactically savvy as the DM.

Crawling Darkness:

Under the Crawling Darkness option, undead are inherently evil, and act accordingly. The mindless undead hunger for life and are completely ambivalent to all else. If a skeleton has unbroken line of sight to a living creature or object, they will attack it. If living creatures and objects are both visible, the skeletons will bypass objects (such as trees) in order to attack creatures (such as people or horses). Non-living and undead creatures are unmolested unless the skeleton witnesses it attacking an undead creature. Skeletons prioritize targets that they can reach this round without provoking attacks of opportunity over other targets. Skeletons prioritize targets with more hit dice over other targets. Skeletons prioritize targets which are closer over targets more distant.

If a skeleton perceives an undead creature attacking another undead creature, it will attack whichever undead has been in its line of sight for less time. If a skeleton has seen both creatures for an equal amount of time, it comes in on a random side (even if it had previously seen one of the undead creatures in a previous context). If a skeleton is attacked by an undead creature, it will defend itself.

Skeletons wander around in a spiral search pattern attacking any living thing they find. They do not molest non-living things at all, so a skeleton will not open a door or tunnel through a wall unless it is made out of living wood or meat. If a living thing disappears from its vision, the skeleton will go to where the living creature was last seen and begin searching there – unless another living thing is seen (in which case the skeleton will simply move to attack it instead).

Skeletons do not question their perceptions, a closed door or even a curtain can be enough for a skeleton to abandon a pursuit. Skeletons have no sense of smell or irony, and a living victim is forgotten as soon as the skeleton moves to the point of last contact. A skeleton will not walk into what appear to be dangerous or solid objects unless it can see a way to get to a living target that it can currently perceive.

Don't attack unless…
Since skeletons are mindlessly evil and relentless in their quest to destroy all life, a skeleton is normally ordered to not attack unless specific criteria are evoked. The criteria could be anything from "walking through this doorway without invoking the name of Wee Jas" to "attacking someone wearing the garb of the chosen of Kyuss." If the exact criteria are not met, the skeletons will hold their blades. Most necromancers remember to allow their skeletons leeway to defend themselves, but sometimes even that is overlooked. Controlled skeletons, therefore, are usually under considerable restraints and will often hold their claws in check until after combat has been initiated.

Playing with Fire:

Under the Playing with Fire option, undead are dangerous, but not necessarily evil. Their behavior befits that. Uncontrolled skeletons follow their last set of commands exactly, and those commands are only of the most basic sort. A skeleton last ordered to follow the necromancer who created it will continue to do so – mindlessly marching in the necromancer's wake, its empty eye sockets staring vacantly. It won't make any move to assist the necromancer, nor will it take any further instructions, it will simply follow. Forever. Should a skeleton be last asked to guard an area, it will attack any creature entering the area, though it will make no move to attack creatures outside that area. A skeleton last ordered to chop wood will continue until the forest is splinters or its axe rusts away to nothing.

Skeletons will defend themselves if attacked, and will attack creatures that they perceive attacking other undead. As with the Crawling Darkness, if skeletons see undead attacking other undead, it can rapidly degrade into a free-for-all with skeletons smashing each other with abandon. But they will not instigate such behavior on their own. Skeletons will not leave areas they are assigned to except to pursue creatures which are attacking them.

Skeletons are not curious about their surroundings, and do not question events in their area that do not obviously interact with their latest orders.

I prefer automata myself, so they either go inert or follow their last command until it becomes impossible to do so.

[Calanon]

Mindless zombies and skeletons, under the control of a cleric using his command undead ability, are fighting adventurers. In the midst of combat, the cleric dies. What should the zombies and skeletons do in this situation? Do they stand motionless, do they continue fighting?

The perform the last command given to them until it becomes impossible to perform. this is actually a very funny way to get free labor :smalltongue:

command the zombie to build you a tower or a dungeon, releasing control, wait a couple months, you now have 2 or so towers/dungeons :smallbiggrin:

[The Glyphstone]

The perform the last command given to them until it becomes impossible to perform. this is actually a very funny way to get free labor :smalltongue:

command the zombie to build you a tower or a dungeon, releasing control, wait a couple months, you now have 2 or so towers/dungeons :smallbiggrin:

Zombies aren't skilled labor, though. Try this with a tower, and even assuming you provide a constant supply of materials, you'll end up with a 'tower' that is nothing more than a big pile of bricks/stones. A 'dungeon' built by uncontrolled zombies will probably be just a big, long tunnel leading down and down and down.

[Coidzor]

A 'dungeon' built by uncontrolled zombies will probably be just a big, long tunnel leading down and down and down.

So... Good for trolling the Drow when you've got some spare undead, eh? :smallbiggrin:

[Gullintanni]

The perform the last command given to them until it becomes impossible to perform. this is actually a very funny way to get free labor :smalltongue:

command the zombie to build you a tower or a dungeon, releasing control, wait a couple months, you now have 2 or so towers/dungeons :smallbiggrin:

"Dungeon" and "Tower" are complex ideas. Mindless things can not grasp complex ideas and therefore one of two things will happen:
1. Order does not compute. Unrecognized input. -Undead remain inert-
2. You will end up with a pile of rocks and a hole in the ground, since technically nothing requires a "Tower" or a "Dungeon" to be any more sophisticated than those things.

Mindless undead can not grasp complex instructions, unfortunately. This limits their utility somewhat, but as long as you can break your orders down into the simplest possible terms, you can probably achieve close to your desired results. It's just going to take a lot more steps than, "Build me an 'X'."

EDIT: Thrice Cursed Ninjas. All over the place! Why would I expect any different?

[Fouredged Sword]

Also you could just order them to follow your spoken instructions and then release them from your control pool. This is abuseable. I think the creeping darkness works better game wise. They are undead darn it, not just flesh golems!

[Andreaz]

It's left unclear. My group uses the following:
Spontaneous undead wander without purpose, bumping on things and attacking only what touches them, and only while it moves. (It'll try to bite the wall, for example. if you don't move after a bite they go away)
Conjured undead repeat their last command.

[Calanon]

Zombies aren't skilled labor, though. Try this with a tower, and even assuming you provide a constant supply of materials, you'll end up with a 'tower' that is nothing more than a big pile of bricks/stones. A 'dungeon' built by uncontrolled zombies will probably be just a big, long tunnel leading down and down and down.

Doesn't have to be a fancy dungeon :smallwink: just a place for your BBEG to plan his schemes for world domination! muwhahahahaha~

besides if its a dungeon you could always do the whole beholder thing and disintegrate other corridors and set up walls along that single passage way to make it more of a labyrinth :smallbiggrin: however for the tower... yeah you got me :smalltongue:

"Dungeon" and "Tower" are complex ideas. Mindless things can not grasp complex ideas and therefore one of two things will happen:
1. Order does not compute. Unrecognized input. -Undead remain inert-
2. You will end up with a pile of rocks and a hole in the ground, since technically nothing requires a "Tower" or a "Dungeon" to be any more sophisticated than those things.

sometimes the funniest Most creative Entertaining dungeons are in fact holes in the ground. Never expect the zombies/skeletons to do your exact commands hell i would order them to just dig into the side of a mountain, oversee there progress, than when they get far enough in i would order them to start digging beneath the mountain nothing complex just a simple whole to start with, than after they get deep enough i would start ordering certain ones to dig in another areas of that singular tunnel after there duties are complete I'd order them to wait until anyone that ISN'T ME to come by and just rip there faces off than you can perform finishing touches to your dungeon, set up traps, make extra corridors, set up walls, make Obstacles etc.

(Bonus points if your expedition accidentally unleashes a "darkness the world has never known")

Not a complex plan for them to perform but its fine enough to make a dungeon for the BBEG to live

[J.Gellert]

The "you can only control X number of undead at a time" rule always made me think that "uncontrolled ones TRY TO KILL YOU!"

Otherwise, what's the point? :smalltongue:

[Fouredged Sword]

And it make litchloved fairly pointless if undead don't automaticly attack non-undead. Why else would anyone bother to meet the prereqs.

[Coidzor]

And it make litchloved fairly pointless if undead don't automaticly attack non-undead. Why else would anyone bother to meet the prereqs.

If'n you want to get past a place guarded by mindless undead that have been left there as a kill room it's useful. But then, so is hide from undead (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/hideFromUndead.htm).

[BlueInc]

Usually (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BnOUOkcr9c) dance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA&ob=av3n).

Bonus points for Groovin' Dead (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55828&highlight=funky+square).

[marcielle]

Exploit for automata. Find black onyx mine. Tell half to mine, some to guard and remainder to sift throught excavated earth and seperate onyx...
Release and come back in a month.

[Person_Man]

Read the Twilight series?

[Zaq]

Read the Twilight series?

Mindless, not tasteless.

[Midnight_v]

Originally Posted by Tome of Necromancy
Artificial Intelligence
Crawling Darkness:
Playing with Fire:
Brilliant repost.

I remember this the most of that "you have to choose"

Zombies: Like Skeletons, Zombies must hunger for the flesh of the living or have no moral indictments. Either they sit and wait for their chance to devour your liver or they are Neutral. The Monster Manual version cannot stand. A zombie in the fields is either a figure of horror or comedy.

[Starbuck_II]

Zombies aren't skilled labor, though. Try this with a tower, and even assuming you provide a constant supply of materials, you'll end up with a 'tower' that is nothing more than a big pile of bricks/stones. A 'dungeon' built by uncontrolled zombies will probably be just a big, long tunnel leading down and down and down.

Isn't that what some dungeons are?

Be funny if adventures run into these zombies. About to fight them then noticing they are building something: players are likely to attempt to find out what before killing them.

[Worira]

Aww man, someone beat me to the "tear up your lawn" option.

[Steward]

Isn't that what some dungeons are?

Wouldn't a tunnel that just led straight down be just a hole in the ground? Why would any adventurer (who couldn't fly) go into something like that? There's probably no treasure and even if there was you couldn't carry most of it out.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Wouldn't a tunnel that just led straight down be just a hole in the ground? Why would any adventurer (who couldn't fly) go into something like that? There's probably no treasure and even if there was you couldn't carry most of it out.

It's called the Underdark. So many necromancers commanded their undead to dig, that they eventually linked up and made vast tunnels and caverns.

[Steward]

It's called the Underdark.

Ah, gotcha. It might be tricky pulling that off using mindless undead outside of your control, but I'm sure there's a way to work around that.

[Keld Denar]

Don't turn the zombies! They're working!

[Infernalbargain]

Caution: Zombies at work.

[elonin]

Both of the options (inert or following last command) both sound moronic to me. If a necro dumps undead from his control then they do what undead would be inclined to do in the wild.

For an example of a zombie workforce see "cast a deadly spell" featuring HP Lovecraft.

[No brains]

I had a big spiel planned, but it went too far off topic, so I'll self-snip it to this:

With no Int score, how does a zombie do anything an ooze cant?

[Hiro Protagonest]

Step 1. Supply them with shovels.
Step 2. Command them to dig.
Step 3. Have as many spellcasters as possible do that, at random points in the world.
Step 4. ????
Step 5. Underdark!

[tyckspoon]

Both of the options (inert or following last command) both sound moronic to me. If a necro dumps undead from his control then they do what undead would be inclined to do in the wild.


Stand around inert is what mindless undead would do in the wild- at least, it's what they'll do if the DM has decided that Always Evil mindless beings are stupid and necromancy doesn't work like that in his world. They're mindless and they don't have any biological urges; they're just bodies waiting for somebody else to show up with the power to give them a command. If nobody ever does, they'll stand in one place until their bodies are destroyed or the magic gives out.

If the DM wants raising the dead to actually be evil and dangerous, he can make it that way- skeletons and zombies will be invested with a drive to do *something*, probably hunt and destroy life- but if it was obvious in the books that this was so then there wouldn't be a question to make this thread about.

[AMFV]

http://shirtoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/zombie-dance-crew.jpg

[JaronK]

Considering how they seem to behave without controllers in dungeons, I'd say they just sort of wander aimlessly and very slowly (enough to become a random encounter) without opening doors or anything like that (so they'll just stay in a room if the doors are closed), and will attack anything living they see (but probably lose interest as soon as they no longer detect anything).

JaronK

[awa]

keep in mind that digging mines and tunnels is more then just taking a shovel and moving away the dirt if you don't brace it and so on it will just collapse and crush your zombie.

[Infernalbargain]

keep in mind that digging mines and tunnels is more then just taking a shovel and moving away the dirt if you don't brace it and so on it will just collapse and crush your zombie.

Actually that's unlikely to happen. If they mindlessly dig, then they will be simply reach a point and be unable to progress further because the dirt will continually fall back in.

[John Campbell]

All they want to do is eat your brains. They're not unreasonable here. I mean, no one's going to eat your eyes.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Usually (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BnOUOkcr9c) dance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA&ob=av3n).

Bonus points for Groovin' Dead (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55828&highlight=funky+square).

Sorry, but in each example, the zombies were being controlled by a Bard/Dread Necromancer. Inspire Courage can get quite obnoxious when combined with a horde of disposable minions.

Personally, I just go with the 'attacks anything alive that is currently within sensory range, otherwise stand there immobile until something does'.

[Coidzor]

Both of the options (inert or following last command) both sound moronic to me. If a necro dumps undead from his control then they do what undead would be inclined to do in the wild.

Well, if you're talking about the tome of necromancy excerpt, there's another option, but that's if you're going to make the bit where mindless undead are evil genuine, and then it's the spiral search pattern destroying all life it can get its claws on, creatures preferable to objects.

...Unless you wanna have situations where trees make excellent distractions for skeletons and zombies for either a free hit before they resume attacking one's self or an easy way to run away as they get distracted by defoliating urges.

But if they're going to be nothing more than bone/meat-robots, well, what does a computer do when it has no input and no running programs?

[AMFV]

On a more serious note: RAW-wise only certain undead have any compulsions or desires. Undead with cravings likely attempt to fulfill those. Mindless undead without cravings likely do nothing at all. There's not really a reason to, and unlike oozes they don't need to eat or move at all, and there's no want for them to want to, they also need to expend effort to eat and since they don't eat is unlikely that they would hunt other creatures without a reason.

[J.Gellert]

On a more serious note: RAW-wise only certain undead have any compulsions or desires. Undead with cravings likely attempt to fulfill those. Mindless undead without cravings likely do nothing at all. There's not really a reason to, and unlike oozes they don't need to eat or move at all, and there's no want for them to want to, they also need to expend effort to eat and since they don't eat is unlikely that they would hunt other creatures without a reason.

RAW-wise no creature even needs to eat or drink.

So I guess wolves, manticores and basilisks also do nothing at all until PCs happen to stumble on them?

:smalltongue:

[2xMachina]

Not needing to eat?

They'll definitely not be working(hunting), and will just play all day. :P

[Zaq]

RAW-wise no creature even needs to eat or drink.

So I guess wolves, manticores and basilisks also do nothing at all until PCs happen to stumble on them?

:smalltongue:

DMG pg. 304 would like a word with you. Sure, perhaps it can't actually kill you, at least not directly, but if you're not immune to encroaching nonlethal damage that's incurable until you eat or drink something, it can still ruin your day.

[Amphetryon]

Given the parameters of Lifesight, I always figured they just piled up tragicomically at the bottom of staircases.

[Eldan]

I had a big spiel planned, but it went too far off topic, so I'll self-snip it to this:

With no Int score, how does a zombie do anything an ooze cant?

On the other hand, they are about as smart as the equally mindless vermin. Some vermin (e.g. Bees) are pretty smart and able to learn new things on their own.

[Frozen_Feet]

It should be noted, though, that D&D's rules for animal intelligence are pretty screwed up. Looking at real-life behaviour of animals suggest many of them should have Int of 3 or higher, but rules say they can't.

This is not helped by mental qualities being further divided to Wis and Cha.

[ThiefInTheNight]

It should be noted, though, that D&D's rules for animal intelligence are pretty screwed up. Looking at real-life behaviour of animals suggest many of them should have Int of 3 or higher, but rules say they can't.

This is not helped by mental qualities being further divided to Wis and Cha.
As someone who studies animal cognition, I'm calling [Citation Needed] on that. Some animals, sure: chimps and a few other primates, maybe dolphins and/or elephants, but for the most part animals' brains work differently, and much more simply, than human brains, even damaged or underdeveloped human brains.

In other news, don't believe what you read in popular science articles, especially in this subject. Just a couple of weeks ago National Geographic ran an article on elephant intelligence: overall, they didn't state anything inaccurate, but they definitely implied things that we do not have direct evidence for.

Human beings naturally anthropomorphize everything, especially animals that we respect. Most anecdotes in this field, even from professional animal researchers, are more in the mind of the narrator than in that of the animal.

In terms of D&D, Int 3 means "capable of learning a language". Gorillas and chimpanzees have been taught sign language, though for the most part neither seems very interested in conversation; they'll use the language if it gets them what they want from the humans, but they don't use it amongst themselves nor do most use it other than to try to get something.

Communication is not language: honeybee circle dance is very impressive communication, especially for an invertebrate, but it is not a language. Most social mammals have a fairly wide variety of calls that allow decent communication, but they are not language.

Linguistically, language requires grammar and syntax: rules by which new ideas can be put into words. Honeybees have a dance for a given direction and distance, but you could not convert this paragraph — or indeed, anything unrelated to the distance and direction of food — into circle dance. Some mammals have different calls for everything in their environment: wolf, hawk, bear, food, etc. You still wouldn't be able to use them to say anything other than "X, over there!"

Even chimps and gorillas, apparently mentally capable of processing language, don't seem to have one. They have a very wide variety of calls, but they can't be strung together into coherent sentences. There is one species of primate — the name escapes me at the moment — that seems to have a very little basic syntax in their calls (a prefix that can be applied to say "I heard the X species call for Y" instead of "I saw Y", which is both impressive because it's a form of syntax and because it's interesting that the species considers the source of information relevant), but that's about it. Of course, we can't really make heads or tails of whale and dolphin songs; they're undoubtedly complex but it's almost impossible to say if there's grammatical and syntactic structure to it since it's really, really hard to know what they may be trying to communicate with them (oceans are not a great environment for research).

[Frozen_Feet]

A dog can understand a vocabulary up to 200 words, and some have been succesfully taught to read. A case can be made for a lot of dogs understanding their owners better than their owners do them.

The reason a lot of animals don't talk the way we do is not because they're unintelligent, but because it's physically impossible for them to do it in a manner we would recognize as language. (This trait should, logically, apply to many non-human monsters with Int above 3, but is often glossed over.) In addition, linguistics is not the be-all-end-all of intelligence in real life; as noted, dogs can comprehend human language, but looking at their overall functionality, wolves (same species, different breed) are sharper, but lack specialized parts of brain meant specifically for interpreting human commands.

So, on one hand, wolves are incapable of reaching the "benchmark" for Int 3, but should be rated above dogs, who are capable of it. You start seeing the problem? Then we get to rest of kingdom animalia and the great variety in mental capabilities of different species. D&D's Int range of 0, 1 and two hardly does it justice.

Finally, we get to humans who can undeniably speak and read, but otherwise are so mentally impaired that they could not adapt and survive in the nature or even their own society without help, something several speechless animals manage easily. You can say this is because such survival skills are dictated (in D&D terms) by differences in Wis or Cha instead of Int, but as noted, that's part of the problem. You can't separate the three from real-life behavious of animals well enough to say they should all fall in Int range of 0 to 2.

[ThiefInTheNight]

A dog can understand a vocabulary up to 200 words,
Understanding individual words is not the same as understanding language. This goes under the same heading as calls in other species.


some have been succesfully taught to read.
Define "read". "Recognize forms as a type of call"? I haven't seen it, but I'd believe it without much trouble if shown a solid study of it. "Understand the symbolic meaning of characters and strings thereof, parsing together a sentence"? Not a chance. If you claim otherwise, cite me something (peer-reviewed, let's be serious here).


A case can be made for a lot of dogs understanding their owners better than their owners do them.
Which says more about how poorly the owner understands the dog than the other way around. I don't dispute this point, though.


The reason a lot of animals don't talk the way we do is not because they're unintelligent, but because it's physically impossible for them to do it in a manner we would recognize as language.
I didn't say "unintelligent", because "intelligence" has no definition. I said "differently" and "more simply" — both of these are objective facts. The underlying structure of the brain is different, in some cases very different, and the human brain is demonstrably more complex than any other brain we have studied.

Now, by "physically impossible", are you referring to inability to vocalize as we do (which should be obvious but is largely irrelevant), or are you referring to their inability to process 'language' as we do? Because the latter statement is well backed by scientific evidence, but you seem to be rejecting it, hence asking for clarification. The vast majority of animals on this planet do not possess the processing ability to manage something like a language (complete with grammar and syntax and vocabulary), because they do not have the (fairly unique) specialized structures found in the human brain for these things (Broca's area, Wernicke's area, etc.).

Everything in this subject needs a general caveat — we do not understand how the brain works all that well, there are a lot of unknowns — but the evidence strongly suggests that the majority of animals would not be physically capable of the mental processing required for language, because the areas of their brains that humans use for this are not developed, either at all or not nearly as much, nor do other areas seem to be picking up that slack (as in, the same physical places in the brain light up when the animal is communicating or being communicated with, but the relevant structures are far simpler), and because behavioral tests back this up by indicating that their communication cannot rise to the level of language-using.


In addition, linguistics is not the be-all-end-all of intelligence in real life;
Dubious claim, but regardless off-topic: Int 3 in D&D is defined as capable of knowing a language.


as noted, dogs can comprehend human language,
False. Knowing words, even their written forms, is not the same as knowing language. There have been no studies that show a dog is capable of understanding the underlying structure of human language and able to parse sentences, to my knowledge. If you know otherwise, please link.


but looking at their overall functionality, wolves (same species, different breed) are sharper, but lack specialized parts of brain meant specifically for interpreting human commands.
You need to define what you mean by "sharper". Presumably something along the lines of "cleverer" or "using more cunning", but as with all things in this field, discussion here is plagued by the inability to define what intelligence actually is.

Certainly wolves have greater survival skills, but I don't think that's particularly relevant.


So, on one hand, wolves are incapable of reaching the "benchmark" for Int 3, but should be rated above dogs, who are capable of it. You start seeing the problem? Then we get to rest of kingdom animalia and the great variety in mental capabilities of different species. D&D's Int range of 0, 1 and two hardly does it justice.
Your premises here are both flawed (as the first is untrue, dogs do not meet that benchmark, and the second is dubious and requires further definition of what you mean by "intelligence"), nor do your conclusions follow from them particularly well, in my opinion.

Your argument is that wolves are smarter than dogs, and then your conclusion is that animals need to be allowed to have higher Int to match that. However, your conclusion posits a granularity problem (that a single point of intelligence ought to be a fine enough statistic as to differentiate between the two), which you have given no evidence or logic regarding. Even if wolves are demonstrably smarter than domestic dogs by some definition of intelligence that you convince us all is worth using, you still have to show that the system needs to be able to be able to show this difference, which I don't buy because the two are very similar (in general, including in intelligence), and it is acceptable to me that this be too fine a distinction for the Int system to handle.


Finally, we get to humans who can undeniably speak and read, but otherwise are so mentally impaired that they could not adapt and survive in the nature or even their own society without help, something several speechless animals manage easily.
I... object to several things in this sentence. First, you assume that the problem of a human being surviving in the wilderness is mental, a statement that you have given no evidence for (and are unlikely to find, seeing as it is not even remotely true). There are few — no, here I'll make an absolute statement and say no — species that are as adaptable, especially mentally adaptable, as Homo sapiens.

You further assume that animals which survive solitarily do so on their mental gifts, which is extraordinarily dubious since one of the major driving forces behind intelligence in the animal kingdom is the need to coordinate with others in a social structure.

The problems a human being would have in the wilderness are twofold. First, human beings are born helpless and underdeveloped, utterly dependent on their parents/society. The reason for this is because human beings are specialized to develop much, much further than other animals, and to do so entirely before birth would result in an utterly absurd gestation period (which human beings already have to a certain degree), plus would cause physical problems for the mother during the birth (which we already do, as I'm sure everyone is aware). This is a necessity for the greater development that we undergo after birth. Second, human beings are born, more-or-less, without instincts (depends on your definition, again, but under most definitions human beings have few-if-any true instincts); this is another trade-off in favor of adaptability (which, as noted, we are not deficient in by any measure).

A healthy adolescent human being, even without any particular training in wilderness survival, has a significant, if not particularly good, chance of thriving. A human being in his prime could become an apex predator trivially if he was careful. Though rare, there have been reported instances of so-called "wild children" surviving from a very young age without any interaction with society, which brings me to my next point.

Studies of wild children have shown that they are incapable of learning a language. Your brain does have a certain amount of "use it or lose it" to it — especially in children. A child blind from birth will have his optical cortex co-opted by the rest of the brain and used for other things (this is, from my understanding, poorly understood and I don't know the details, but I know this is a thing), and a child who never learned languages will have those areas of the brain that are intended for that used for other things. They can be taught a little, but ultimately they are permanently (and tragically) impaired when it comes to language.

More importantly, both for their well-being (which, sad to say, is not good) and for the sake of the point I'm making, the lack of language directly impairs their ability to think, to learn things completely unrelated to language (even non-lingual learning such as learning-by-doing), and to adapt to new situations. We literally use language internally as a tool to organize our thoughts, memories, and so on, and lacking it makes us less intelligent.

This is relevant, because it shows how "whether or not you can learn a language" is a very good "threshold" of intelligence.


You can say this is because such survival skills are dictated (in D&D terms) by differences in Wis or Cha instead of Int, but as noted, that's part of the problem. You can't separate the three from real-life behavious of animals well enough to say they should all fall in Int range of 0 to 2.
Instincts are not particularly governed by any of the three, in my opinion. Instincts are (at least almost) completely foreign to humans, and therefore are not likely to be described well by anything used to describe human mental ability.

[Steward]

Well, if you're talking about the tome of necromancy excerpt, there's another option, but that's if you're going to make the bit where mindless undead are evil genuine, and then it's the spiral search pattern destroying all life it can get its claws on, creatures preferable to objects.

...Unless you wanna have situations where trees make excellent distractions for skeletons and zombies for either a free hit before they resume attacking one's self or an easy way to run away as they get distracted by defoliating urges.

But if they're going to be nothing more than bone/meat-robots, well, what does a computer do when it has no input and no running programs?

Join a botnet and start mindlessly sending spam all over the Internet?

[myancey]

I imagine they drool a lot and huddle together for warmth...'cause it's cold being a zombie.

[Steward]

On the other hand, they are about as smart as the equally mindless vermin. Some vermin (e.g. Bees) are pretty smart and able to learn new things on their own.

And some vermin (like certain Neogi from MM2) are very stupid. I think it really depends on the creature; the categories just give you a general overview over what the type can do but you have to look at the individual monster to know what it actually would do.

[Starbuck_II]

Understanding individual words is not the same as understanding language. This goes under the same heading as calls in other species.


Define "read". "Recognize forms as a type of call"? I haven't seen it, but I'd believe it without much trouble if shown a solid study of it. "Understand the symbolic meaning of characters and strings thereof, parsing together a sentence"? Not a chance. If you claim otherwise, cite me something (peer-reviewed, let's be serious here).


Which says more about how poorly the owner understands the dog than the other way around. I don't dispute this point, though.

Dubious claim, but regardless off-topic: Int 3 in D&D is defined as capable of knowing a language.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18dog.html?pagewanted=all
I'll quote the important parts.
"Chaser, a border collie who lives in Spartanburg, S.C., has the largest vocabulary of any known dog. She knows 1,022 nouns, a record that displays unexpected depths of the canine mind and may help explain how children acquire language.
He would show her an object, say its name up to 40 times, then hide it and ask her to find it, while repeating the name all the time. She was taught one or two new names a day, with monthly revisions and reinforcement for any names she had forgotten.
It was hard to remember all the names Chaser had to learn, so he wrote the name on each toy with indelible marker. In three years, Chaser’s vocabulary included 800 cloth animals, 116 balls, 26 Frisbees and a medley of plastic items.
Dr. Pilley addressed the question by teaching Chaser three different actions: pawing, nosing and taking an object. She was then presented with three of her toys and correctly pawed, nosed or fetched each one depending on the command given to her. “That experiment demonstrates conclusively that Chaser understood that the verb had a meaning,” Dr. Pilley said.
The 1,022 words in Chaser’s vocabulary are all proper nouns. Dr. Pilley also found that Chaser could be trained to recognize categories, in other words common nouns. She correctly follows the command “Fetch a Frisbee” or “Fetch a ball.” She can also learn by exclusion, as children do. If she is asked to fetch a new toy with a word she does not know, she will pick it out from ones that are familiar."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/25/nazi-dogs-read-write-jan-bonderson_n_866784.html

Again, important. He types!
"Rolf the Airedale terrier, who was said to be able to discuss religion, contemplate complex mathematics and communicate with humans by tapping out an alphabet code using his paw."

Both studies involving dogs and showing that they can understand a language. But like a "Wild child" human cannot speak it.

[2xMachina]

I wonder what current AI's Int score clock in at?

They're reasonable at language, sometimes, but can be extremely stupid with it too (those chatbots can derail pretty far).

And search engine can't do context. Sometimes words have multiple meanings, and the search engine pops out some irrelevant things.

[ThiefInTheNight]

I'll quote the important parts.
You're wrong about which are the important parts. The important parts are these:

nytimes.com

huffingtonpost.com
These are precisely the sorts of sources that are absolutely useless in this conversation. Popular science reporting is notoriously bad, especially on this subject.

Anyway, be that as it may.


"Chaser, a border collie who lives in Spartanburg, S.C., has the largest vocabulary of any known dog. She knows 1,022 nouns, a record that displays unexpected depths of the canine mind and may help explain how children acquire language.
He would show her an object, say its name up to 40 times, then hide it and ask her to find it, while repeating the name all the time. She was taught one or two new names a day, with monthly revisions and reinforcement for any names she had forgotten.
It was hard to remember all the names Chaser had to learn, so he wrote the name on each toy with indelible marker. In three years, Chaser’s vocabulary included 800 cloth animals, 116 balls, 26 Frisbees and a medley of plastic items.
None of this disputes anything I stated. I am not surprised by the finding.


Dr. Pilley addressed the question by teaching Chaser three different actions: pawing, nosing and taking an object. She was then presented with three of her toys and correctly pawed, nosed or fetched each one depending on the command given to her. “That experiment demonstrates conclusively that Chaser understood that the verb had a meaning,” Dr. Pilley said.
I disagree with Dr. Pilley here; it is not conclusive. She may have learned "fetch-ball" as a new word, rather than as a string of two words, for example. Moreover, the article also expresses considerable doubt on these points, which you have neglected to quote.

Nevertheless, this is closer to what I was talking about, if we take it at face value. Even if she truly does understand what's being said, I'm not sure (as I am not a linguist) that a single syntactical structure ("Verb object") is sufficient to consider this a language. That's somewhat a matter of semantics, though: even assuming she does understand, and that it does count in a technical sense as a language, this puts at very borderline, and only through massive specialized training.


The 1,022 words in Chaser’s vocabulary are all proper nouns. Dr. Pilley also found that Chaser could be trained to recognize categories, in other words common nouns. She correctly follows the command “Fetch a Frisbee” or “Fetch a ball.” She can also learn by exclusion, as children do. If she is asked to fetch a new toy with a word she does not know, she will pick it out from ones that are familiar."
Impressive, but not terribly surprising given what the relevant parts of the brain in play here are intended for.


"Rolf the Airedale terrier, who was said to be able to discuss religion, contemplate complex mathematics and communicate with humans by tapping out an alphabet code using his paw."
"Said to be," especially within a popular science article, does not make for a convincing argument. Not even close.


Both studies involving dogs and showing that they can understand a language. But like a "Wild child" human cannot speak it.
Both are case studies that have not been reproduced (the former's quite recent, though, so that's not too surprising; the latter we don't even know for sure if it was done once, much less ever again).

But a "wild child" is not merely incapable of speaking. They also cannot understand the language. They do not (as most humans do) think in words. And this is very important, because it massively affects their cognitive skills.


I wonder what current AI's Int score clock in at?

They're reasonable at language, sometimes, but can be extremely stupid with it too (those chatbots can derail pretty far).

And search engine can't do context. Sometimes words have multiple meanings, and the search engine pops out some irrelevant things.
Chatbots and search engines are definitely not intelligent, they are merely mathematical weightings of the statistical likelihood that a given response will be appropriate. The programs are basically making a somewhat-educated guess about what to say next/return for your search. Int —. Actually, that applies even to Watson, if I understand what the interviewed IBM technicians were saying correctly. Watson wasn't really an AI experiment, though, from my understanding, but rather an experiment in language-recognition software. Something like Watson would be a component of any truly intelligent AI, but only a part and on its own was not.

Actual A.I. research is harder to say. Depends a lot on how you define Int, most likely. But in any event, it would be low. A.I. research has not been even remotely as productive as originally expected; it turns out to be much more difficult than the pioneers expected. Some very impressive things have been done, but it's all just baby steps.

There's a fair number of people in computer science (from what I understand, this is not exactly my area of expertise here) that believe that we are going to need some kind of truly revolutionary breakthrough before we get truly intelligent A.I.: merely incremental improvements in existing hardware and techniques will not suffice.

[NNescio]

Again, important. He types!
"Rolf the Airedale terrier, who was said to be able to discuss religion, contemplate complex mathematics and communicate with humans by tapping out an alphabet code using his paw.

Nazi research has been notoriously... unreliable. Even the historian himself expressed severe doubt:

"The Nazis were sentimental enthusiasts who were really fond of animals and liked the idea that dogs were intelligent and could communicate with people." [1] (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/25/nazi-dogs-read-write-jan-bonderson_n_866784.html)

"There is no evidence it ever actually came to fruition and that the SS were walking around with talking dogs." [2] (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8532573/Nazis-tried-to-train-dogs-to-talk-read-and-spell-to-win-WW2.html)

"I'm sure that the Nazi generation of animal psychologists genuinely thought they'd tapped into a hidden innate intelligence within many animals." [3] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13568270)

"More recent research has however revealed that what they thought were dogs and horses communicating via pointing to letters or barking in code, were in fact examples of the clever Hans effect; a horse who responded to almost microscopic cues from their owner, in order to please them with the desired response." [3] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13568270)

Note the Clever Hans effect. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans)


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18dog.html?pagewanted=all
I'll quote the important parts.

Interestingly, you omitted the parts of the same article that expressed doubt.

"Haunting almost every interaction between people and animals is the ghost of Clever Hans, a German horse that in the early 1900s would tap out answers to arithmetic problems with his hoof. The psychologist Oskar Pfungst discovered that Hans would get the answer right only if the questioner also knew the answer. He then showed that the horse could detect minute movements of the questioner’s head and body. Since viewers would tense as Hans approached the right number of taps, and relax when he reached it, the horse knew exactly when to stop. "

"People project their expectations onto animals, particularly dogs, and can easily convince themselves the animal is achieving some humanlike feat when in fact it is simply reading cues unconsciously given by its master. Even though researchers are well aware of this pitfall, interpreting animal behavior is particularly tricky. In the current issue of Animal Behaviour, a leading journal, two previous experiments with dogs have been found wanting. "

"The danger of Clever Hans effects may be particularly acute with border collies because they are bred for the ability to pay close attention to the shepherd. Dogs that ignore their master or the sheep do not become parents, a fierce selective pressure on the breed’s behavior. “Watch a collie work with a sheepherder and you will come away amazed how small a gesture the person can do to communicate with his dog,” said Alexandra Horowitz, a dog behavior expert at Barnard College and author of “Inside of a Dog.” "

"But the experiment’s relevance to language is likely to be a matter of dispute. Chaser learns to link sounds to objects by brute repetition, which is not how children learn words. And she learns her words as proper nouns, which are specific labels for things, rather than as abstract concepts like the common nouns picked up by children. Dr. Kaminski said she would not go as far as saying that Chaser’s accomplishments are a step toward language. They show that the dog can combine words for different actions with words for objects. A step toward syntax, she said, would be to show that changing the order of words alters the meaning that Chaser ascribes to them. "

[ThiefInTheNight]

Thanks, NNescio; I took Starbuck's quoting of the article on its face too readily it seems.

[Frozen_Feet]

For things about dogs and wolves, see the next few articles to get you started. Don't hold your breath for peer-reviewed articles, though - my original sources are on paper, in Finnish, and finding the data on the net in English is much more trouble than I'm willing to see for the sake of a casual conversation like this.

An alleged reading dog. (http://www.peoplepets.com/people/pets/article/0,,20493186,00.html)
Of wolves and intelligence. (http://www.wolfandwildlifestudies.com/intelligence.php)
Dogs and smarts. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1026/p17s02-sten.html)
More on dogs and smarts. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810025241.htm)
A Finnish article on how dogs are like wolf puppies (http://kotisivu.surffi.net/~heltel1/pentususi.htm), based on work and opinions of Raymond Coppingfer (http://www.puppyworks.com/speaker/coppinger.html).


I didn't say "unintelligent", because "intelligence" has no definition. I said "differently" and "more simply" — both of these are objective facts. The underlying structure of the brain is different, in some cases very different, and the human brain is demonstrably more complex than any other brain we have studied.

"Differently" is a fact. "More simply" is debatable, and varies by field of intelligence, which obviously varies by species. Processing sensory information is part of intelligence - for example, language is based on analysis of sounds. Save for some cetaceans and songbirds, humans seem to be on the top... but what about other types of communication?

For example, dogs have much better sense of smell, and communicate through varied scents. This is not language as we understand it, but is it simpler than spoken or written language? Hard to say. In any case, a human would need highly specialized equipment to even begin understanding scent signals - to a species relying on them, we would seem oblivious and pretty dumb for our inability to comprehend them.

Which is my problem with using ability to speak and read as benchmarks for intelligence. As you yourself noted, they are partially based on biological make-up, not just rational thought. Case in point, some mentally impaired humans who lose ability to produce speech, despite retaining all other cognitive faculties. Or people who can't learn to read, despite being fluent in spoken languages.


I... object to several things in this sentence. First, you assume that the problem of a human being surviving in the wilderness is mental, a statement that you have given no evidence for (and are unlikely to find, seeing as it is not even remotely true). There are few — no, here I'll make an absolute statement and say no — species that are as adaptable, especially mentally adaptable, as Homo sapiens.

First, I have to clarify: I did not mean humans as a whole. Sorry for that slip-up. I meant some humans, those mentally impaired to the point they can't function on their own, but can still process speech on its rudimentary level. (Benchmark for Int 3.)

And yes, survival in the wild is a mental quality. Spatial understanding, processing sensory information, problem solving and pattern recognition, all important parts of intelligence, are fundamental to the life of large predators, just to give an example.


Instincts are not particularly governed by any of the three, in my opinion. Instincts are (at least almost) completely foreign to humans, and therefore are not likely to be described well by anything used to describe human mental ability.

This, I can prove false simply by pointing out our brain structure: under the complex surface structures of our brains are the simple core, or "lizard brains" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_ganglia), which we share with a lot of different animals. While there are undeniably areas of human brain not shared by other animals (and vice versa), several structures that govern our action and thought are shared between us and other species.

As such, the idea that humans don't have instincts is ludicrous. If other animals have them, we should have them as well. They are still there, just buried and often by-passed by conscious thought.

Not that human-specific instincts don't exist as well. You know of mirror cells? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron) They are key elements to recognizing faces and emotions of other humans. But as should be obvious from the name, this ability is cellular in part; as such, it stems directly from our DNA and physical make-up. It is not something learned - it's an inherent quality.

If instinct is defined as "An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli" (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/instinct), then recognizing faces, and recognizing objects as other humans, are human instincts. As is our ability to form language, if you didn't notice so far.

Instincts are fundamental to intelligence, both in humans and animals. They are represented by the three mental abilities of D&D, they must be, since you can't divorce instinct from intelligence of a creature as a whole.

And that's one more reason why D&D models animal intellect poorly.

[ThiefInTheNight]

For things about dogs and wolves, see the next few articles to get you started. Don't hold your breath for peer-reviewed articles, though - my original sources are on paper, in Finnish, and finding the data on the net in English is much more trouble than I'm willing to see for the sake of a casual conversation like this.
Then don't hold my breath on me believing you. Just looking at the domain names of the links you're offering, I wouldn't trust anything that any of them said, no matter how well they support your argument. Not a one of them is reliable.


"Differently" is a fact. "More simply" is debatable, and varies by field of intelligence, which obviously varies by species. Processing sensory information is part of intelligence - for example, language is based on analysis of sounds. Save for some cetaceans and songbirds, humans seem to be on the top... but what about other types of communication?
I was referring to brain structure. Human brains have more neurons, and massively more connections between neurons, than any other animal (proportional to overall size... I think this statement is also true on an absolute scale but I know it is on a proportional scale. The sheer size of a blue whale's brain on a physical level may necessitate more neurons, but those neurons are literally just patch cables passing information through the larger space, rather than actually adding cognitive capacity).

If there are more neurons connected together in more ways, then the system overall is more complex. This is a fact, at least based on a definition of complex that I find reasonable (i.e. based on the number of connections).


For example, dogs have much better sense of smell, and communicate through varied scents. This is not language as we understand it, but is it simpler than spoken or written language? Hard to say. In any case, a human would need highly specialized equipment to even begin understanding scent signals - to a species relying on them, we would seem oblivious and pretty dumb for our inability to comprehend them.
Scents could very easily be used for a language. Dogs' ability to communicate through scent, however, is not a language. Yes, I can say this with a fair degree of certainty, because of studies of dogs' brains. Yes, their noses are more sensitive and their cortex devoted to the sense of smell is more developed. This... does not have a lot to do with their ability to think. Scent could be a viable language-transmission mechanism, and any species using such would need a more advanced sense of smell than we have (possibly even more nuanced than dogs'), but there is no evidence that dogs are that species.


Which is my problem with using ability to speak and read as benchmarks for intelligence. As you yourself noted, they are partially based on biological make-up, not just rational thought. Case in point, some mentally impaired humans who lose ability to produce speech, despite retaining all other cognitive faculties. Or people who can't learn to read, despite being fluent in spoken languages.
The benchmark we're referring to is thinking in language. I assure you, any human being who cannot do that will be severely impaired on a cognitive level, on a wide variety of tasks that can have nothing to do with language skills.

If there is a mental or physical problem preventing vocalization or whatever, that's not the same. What's probably most key (at least on a basic level) is the rehearsal loop: the amount of time that a thought remains in your head if you aren't rehearsing it mentally (in words, that is) is literally on the order of seconds. Our very ability to pay attention to something is dependent on our ability to "talk it out" in our heads. Wild children, for example, do not have this tool, and therefore exhibit a great deal of trouble maintaining focus. They can focus on some things that they know well (survival skills, for instance), because they have some rudimentary idea there to focus on (something like "quiet, quick, careful" but without words, more just feelings that have become associated with those ideas while hunting or whatever).

The biological make-up is crucial to rational thought. Evidence strongly suggests that without language, self-awareness, consciousness, and deliberate executive action as a human being understands it are greatly limited if not impossible. Our very concept of "self-hood" is dependent on the voice in our head (that is "us").

While this is presumably not the only mode of intelligence that is possible, it does seem to be by-far the most effective one, based on the evidence available (comparisons of humans and animals on various tasks).


First, I have to clarify: I did not mean humans as a whole. Sorry for that slip-up. I meant some humans, those mentally impaired to the point they can't function on their own, but can still process speech on its rudimentary level. (Benchmark for Int 3.)
I maintain that a creature capable of language, and therefore of internal dialogue, is capable of much more significant mental feats than a creature that is not. Even if operational cortices of the brain are so damaged that the creature cannot fend for itself, its thought processes are going to be more complicated and able to do more things.

Meanwhile, most creatures don't have "thought processes" at all, at least as humans know them. Urges, drives, instincts cause responses to stimuli without that in-between step of metacognition. Everyone has had moments where they stop and say "wait, what am I doing?" — that is the metacognition faculty kicking in, where for a lot of animals it never does (and doesn't exist). Rather, they are constantly behaving without awareness of why they are behaving that way.


And yes, survival in the wild is a mental quality. Spatial understanding, processing sensory information, problem solving and pattern recognition, all important parts of intelligence, are fundamental to the life of large predators, just to give an example.
OK, I'm going to have to get a little more technical here, because you're conflating two very different things.

The forebrain (in mammals, anyway) consists (simplifying some things) of two layers: the cerebral cortex ("gray matter") and association areas ("white matter"). The gray matter is the outer layer of the brain (though the surface area is enhanced by the folds), and is itself is divided into several lobes (frontal, temporal, parietal, occipital), each of which has a few cortices (visual cortex, motor cortex, etc.). The white matter is below the gray, in the interior of the cerebral cortex.

Cortices (mostly in the gray matter) are devoted towards completing certain operations: coordinating muscles, analyzing sensory input, and decision making. The white matter underneath, the association areas, are far more heavily involved in linking information together, creating coherent thoughts and ideas, and more abstract things. This includes language, though language is very complicated and parts of lingual processing happen in a fair number of different parts of the brain — some of the most well-known and important parts (such as the aforementioned Broca's and Wernicke's areas) are purely white matter, however.

The reason that I bring this up is because a lot of the examples you mention utilize primarily gray matter: analyzing scents, processing sensory information, etc. etc.. These are very different from more abstract things that the association areas (primarily) handle: things like language, and also mathematics, and problem solving and pattern recognition, if we're talking about linking a variety of past experiences with what we're currently experience and extrapolating various pieces of relevant information.

Now then, you're asserting the existence of individuals who are capable of mastering language, but not capable of these survival skills. In terms of anything related to cortical areas of the brain, this is obvious: if you can't coordinate your movements or analyze sensory information, you're not likely to survive unaided. This has little direct interaction with how one thinks, however, and in terms of D&D, has little to do with Int: Wis, and on some level Dex, covers these things.

However, when we're talking about problem solving and pattern recognition, language is itself an application of those skills. To be capable of language, but not of something more mentally trivial (tracking an animal given requisite knowledge and awareness, learning from past experience, etc) requires severe and very specific problems. Probably more related to obsessions/compulsions than to inability. I am somewhat dubious about the existence of someone who can think in a language, but cannot put obvious clues together to form a conclusion, barring some form of compulsion that prevents them from thinking about it (I'm not sure if the distinction I am making here is clear; let me know).


This, I can prove false simply by pointing out our brain structure: under the complex surface structures of our brains are the simple core, or "lizard brains" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_ganglia), which we share with a lot of different animals. While there are undeniably areas of human brain not shared by other animals (and vice versa), several structures that govern our action and thought are shared between us and other species.
That's certainly true, but the parts of the brain that we have that govern things like thought, mindfulness, and learning, have overridden those related to instincts.


As such, the idea that humans don't have instincts is ludicrous. If other animals have them, we should have them as well. They are still there, just buried and often by-passed by conscious thought.
Show me a way to access those instincts and we'll have something to talk about. Note also that "instinct" has a specific, technical definition that I am referencing, that is different from things like "reflexes" or "drives" or similar things.

The fact that an infant shark already knows how to chase and hunt prey (and, in most species, to get away from/avoid the mother!) is an example of instinct. They are born swimming, never need to learn or practice. They catch a scent and chase and bite and kill and eat, never having any question about how any of these things is done.

A human infant, on the other hand, knows nothing. If it gets hungry, it will cry as a reflex, but will not know how to find food. There's a reflex that causes them to suckle, even, but it's literally a thing that doesn't even reach the brain: a caress in the right spot causes it automatically. It will work even if they're not hungry; they'll stop soon after starting, but the first turn and suck is automatic. A baby does not know how to walk; its muscles aren't developed enough to anyway, but even if they were it takes a lot of practice to get everything coordinated (fun fact: an upright bipedal walk with no tail or wings for balance is really hard, on a mental level). These are the sorts of activities that many animals have instincts for, that we do not.

This is, by the way, not precisely unique to humans. Many of the more-advanced mammals, especially those with the benefit of a social structure, have ditched instinct in favor of learning, because it allows greater adaptation.


Not that human-specific instincts don't exist as well. You know of mirror cells? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron) They are key elements to recognizing faces and emotions of other humans. But as should be obvious from the name, this ability is cellular in part; as such, it stems directly from our DNA and physical make-up. It is not something learned - it's an inherent quality.
Which is not the same as an instinct.


If instinct is defined as "An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli" (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/instinct), then recognizing faces, and recognizing objects as other humans, are human instincts. As is our ability to form language, if you didn't notice so far.
The definition is not the technical one I was referencing (actually, I was specifically not referencing a particular technical definition of instinct because there are several, not all of which are that similar; this is a difficulty similar to those we had earlier with "intelligence" itself). Further, humans do not have an instinct to create language: wild children do not talk to themselves in some made-up language, they just don't have one. That is explicitly learned.


Instincts are fundamental to intelligence, both in humans and animals. They are represented by the three mental abilities of D&D, they must be, since you can't divorce instinct from intelligence of a creature as a whole.
False, at least in the former. The second sentence is based on faulty premises and also false.


And that's one more reason why D&D models animal intellect poorly.
What is? With this you've completely lost me. Do you mean your assertion that you cannot separate instinct from intelligence? If so, then that is not a valid conclusion, since it's both false, and not very widely believed to begin with. Most people recognize instinct as different from real intelligence as we think of the thing.

[Pokonic]

I would say that they slowly wander to places of negitive/necromantic power, drawn by same dark forces that animate it. Places like a temple to Orcus or where a great war was fought naturaly draw undead as well, being attracted to places where atrocitys where commited or where regular use of evil magic was common.

[Frozen_Feet]

ThiefInTheNight, what domains would you consider "reliable" for purposes of scientific discussion?

[ThiefInTheNight]

Peer-reviewed, scientific journals. What else would be reliable? Especially in this field. You linked a website about pets, a website about animals, a news site, and a popular science site. The last site looks like it might be serious, but I can't read it.

[Frozen_Feet]

Does not answer my question. Do you know where to find those archived on the net, in English, in form accessible to both of us? EDIT: Is there are source you frequently visit / trust for science news?

[Vemynal]

they tap dance

[subject42]

Gorillas and chimpanzees have been taught sign language, though for the most part neither seems very interested in conversation; they'll use the language if it gets them what they want from the humans, but they don't use it amongst themselves nor do most use it other than to try to get something.

I can't find any citations at the moment, but wasn't there some indication that Washoe taught other chimps sign language?

[CTrees]

Watch JerseyNeverwinter Shore marathons?

Just try and tell me that one girl isn't a wererat

[Infernalbargain]

Does not answer my question. Do you know where to find those archived on the net, in English, in form accessible to both of us? EDIT: Is there are source you frequently visit / trust for science news?

www.scholar.google.com is usually a good place to start. Also if you live near a university, usually you can just hop onto one of their public computers and have access to those exclusive sources such as Science and Nature.

[NNescio]

Does not answer my question. Do you know where to find those archived on the net, in English, in form accessible to both of us? EDIT: Is there are source you frequently visit / trust for science news?

These should be good enough:

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622782/description

http://www.springer.com/life+sciences/animal+sciences/journal/10164

http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=22544&tip=sid

Secondary resource:

http://animalbehaviour.net/About.htm

[Physics_Rook]

*Discussion between ThiefInTheNight and Frozen_Feet.*

So this is what zombies do when no one is around... :smalltongue:

But I kid, the discussion you two are having has been very interesting to follow (especially since it's been very cordial). :smallcool:

OP:
I use two variations on undead in the same campaign, and their automatic behavior varies depending on which it is.

Var1: Undead are powered and influenced by a neutral force with no sense of intelligence behind it. In this form, a zombie would continue its last commands for as long as it was able (and given that it's a decaying corpse, that wouldn't be very long at all). In this sense, they're more like robots.

Var2: The undead are created by a force of evil malevolence that constantly tries to usurp control of the undead acts of evil. In this form, the undead follow commands only for as long as the commander can keep control of them, otherwise they go on an evil-fueled evil-spree, guided in part by the evil energy coursing through them.

The real fun comes from when you mix and match them against players. :smallbiggrin:

[JackRackham]

What Do Mindless Undead Do When Not Controlled?


The Hustle? The Dew? Maybe they Just Do It?

Really though, I'm pretty sure they volunteer as extras in reenactments of the greatest music video of all time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA

[Calanon]

*Discussion between ThiefInTheNight and Frozen_Feet.*

So this is what zombies do when no one is around... :smalltongue:

But I kid, the discussion you two are having has been very interesting to follow (especially since it's been very cordial). :smallcool:

I can HONESTLY imagine Zombies having a deep and intellectual conversation about brains :smallwink:

Still believe that they follow there last command until "commanded" to do until otherwise :cool:

[Dr.Orpheus]

they take the emacipated spawn prestige class witch reminds me if you ever getkilled by a void of fire as a fire elemental and have final strike[fire] you could risk killing your self to kill the void of fire to become a winterwight and then become an emacipated spawn and gain your old abilitys back if you weaken it with a fireball and explode when it dies you can gain some big ECL doing this