Gaesatae way too overpowered

[Watchman]

Not to mention that such "breach assault" situations are where tough elite infantry like Gaesatae really shine. Outflanking next to impossible and numbers mainly good as "attrition absorbers" (and irrelevant once the unit breaks), of course they will cheerfully eat up normal troops, burp rudely and ask for more. And their "frighten_foot" attribute only makes the hapless enemy infantry break that much sooner, as if the stark disparity in attack, defence and lethality factors wasn't enough.

I really would hesitate to call them beserkers in the traditional sense.

Good job missing the point, which was not the specific nature and operating principle of the "fanatic" shock infantry in question but rather the general principle and phenomenom.

The beserker-gang in history was typically a teutonic thing(with some exceptions). From what I have read the Gaesatae didnt behave like beserkers at all. The beserker works himself into a frenzy(biting shield,howling etc.) then charges into combat. The Gaesatae are very well ordered and disciplined, the beserkers are neither of those. Also the Gaesatae fought with big numbers, historically you rarely find that many beserkers, let alone fighting together.

"Make the sacrifice" shock troops haven't been an all that unusual thing in history, actually. Although the exact techniques used rather varied. Anyway, the Gaesatae work by a combination of applied chemistry and sheer bad attitude, whereas if I've understood correctly the Viking bärsärkagång was at least partially a neurological issue. In any case I've read the Vikings at least typically formed their various crazed warriors into small shock units which were employed as "forlorn hopes" to lead assaults and take down enemy leaders.

As far as the projectile situation, as you said its a dumb object. The missile may not have fear but the thrower might even though he may be further away.

Such crazed loons are way less intimidating from a distance, especially to a skirmisher who knows he won't have to tackle them mano y mano and can most likely just outrun them if need be anyway. The Roman velites seem to have had no particular problems turning the Gaesatae at Telamon into pincushions anyway.

In hand to hand combat you have humans feinting and other tactics, not just a dumb object falling out of the sky.The human in melee combat has more opportunities to inflict damage and death.

I take it you're not very familiar with the basic principles involved ? Having a psychological edge over your opponent, particularly through fear, is a major advantage in hand-to-hand combat. Moreover there is, as it was taught to me, the fact that generally you can parry about three successive blows, tops; after that you'll either need to break contact or launch an effective attack of your own, forcing the other guy onto the defensive, because else your chances of being able to keep up with the other guy's successive attacks will start falling fast.

Now, it's a given fanatical maniacs on combat drugs like the Gaesatae aren't going to be particularly intimidated by about anything (short of an elephant anyway), but they're going to be damn scary to face especially for troops who already have some issues with the ferocious and intimidating Celtic way of doing battle. And being skilled swordsmen unconcerned with pain, fear and fatigue they're going to be real whirlwinds on the attack, and the Celtic longsword was doubtless a most unpleasant device to be at the receiving end of at the best of times. Good luck trying to get them to even pay much attention at your feeble attempts at landing in a blow (especially given their large Celtic infantry shields) - they'll probably quite happily take a down the road lethal wound in exchange of slicing your head off anyway, and not even notice it...

I still state that if the individual that was drugged would be worse off in combat due to his numbed state.
"A UK television programme in 2004 tested the possible use of fly agaric and alcohol by training a healthy volunteer in the use of Viking weapons, then evaluating his performance under the influence of fly agaric or alcohol compared to no influence. It was shown that use of fly agaric or alcohol severely reduced his fighting ability, and the tentative conclusion drawn was that berserk state was achieved psychologically; otherwise, berserkers would have been too easy to kill. Of course, this does not take into account the mindset that the berserker likely would have attempted to place himself in." -wikipedia. Granted this is most likely not the stuff the Gaesatae used, but other studies have been done with similar results(on reflexes and etc.)

Alcohol is, whatwasitnow, a depressant. While it was actually fairly often used to relieve fear, officially or not, its effects on the nervous system are notoriously debilating.

It's not like there was any shortage of toxic substances available from Momma Nature anyway. Fungi and many plants produce one kind or another, as do many reptiles (although most forms of snake venom are so distinctly hotile in their qualities they can be safely counted out), and a lot of fairly venomous chemicals tend to result from all kinds of human activity and industry. The Celts may have simply stumbled upon a combination which had the desired pain-inhibiting and psychoactive effects (and given the warrior culture's psychological conditioning for warfare, I doubt if all that much chemical assistance was required to produce the sort of excessive bravery of the Gaesatae...) that may well have had some quite nasty side effects down the road and whose recipe was later lost. It's not like we knew what exactly "Greek fire" was made of either, and that was used by numerous high cultures that actually bothered writing such stuff down.

And given the Will Die For Glory basic attitude of these guys, I sincerely doubt if they were very concerned with any long-term side effects. The buggers probably planned to "live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse" from the start anyway, judging by what I've gathered of the Celtic concept of afterlife and the mindset of some of their other elite warrior groups.

And I talked in another thread of a fungus in Cereals wich caused alucinations and beastly behavior closelly conected to werewolves and vampires.

I rather doubt if it was that pesky one. By what I know of it the hallucinogenic states it brought tended to be rather disabling, and people busy scampering around on all fours, drooling a lot and with most of their higher brain functions turned off don't really sound like prime shock trooper material. Didn't keep those afflicted from thinking they had committed all kinds of horrible deeds in their delirium of course, and it looked pretty darn disturbing, and given how these stories tended to grow in telling...