Mindless Commanders?

[RonD]

A golem with a Crown of Command is a true mindless commander.

[DrPraetorious]

Mindless isn't actually a tag - any unit with a morale of 50 is mindless.

Personally, given that mindless undead are still capable of function in some capacity, the existence of mindless commanders - which have no mind just the ability to relay their orders - doesn't bother me.

[Nick_K]

Ah, but does 'relaying orders' really count as 'reason'? The existence of mindless commanders is fine with me, but I think gift of reason should remove the ability. It's true that I don't know what should be done with morale in that case.... anyway, it's not an issue that arises often enough to be worth much programmer time

[Ygorl]

"Reason: the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic" - this is getting a bit philosophical, perhaps, but could such power arise without a mind? Maybe from a really powerful computer, say? I can certainly imagine such a device evaluating a battlefield and issuing orders; at what point does that become thinking? Does that mean it has a mind? I think, anyway, that there's enough philosophical gray area that one can reasonably imagine a construct reasoning without having a conventionally-understood mind (that would be subject to twisting, damaging, corrupting...)

[NTJedi]

Nick_K said:
Ah, but does 'relaying orders' really count as 'reason'?

No... another example would be a robot following a script of commands. The robot can be given thousands and thousands of commands which could take years to complete, but it would also lack reason the same as a mindless commander.

[Tichy]

And then there's this oddity. Mindless commanders can go insane.
Give a golem one of those unique astral staff things and see.

[MaxWilson]

Tichy said:
And then there's this oddity. Mindless commanders can go insane.
Give a golem one of those unique astral staff things and see.

Well, since mindlessness has just been compared to a computer...



-Max