Quote Originally Posted by Frostwulf
I would agree with what your saying, except I cant find any historical documents on the Gaesatae and I havent seen anyone but me put any historical reference to them.
It might be more productive to ask the EB guys about that.
Im familiar with it, it does happen in sports as well such as MMA, Boxing and other Martial sports. In some of these sports, especially if you face someone like Bob Sapp, you can see fear in their eyes. But regardless the person may start of with a disadvantage due to fear but the training takes over and they can overcome which has happened many times. From my understanding soldiers who are well trained can over come this because "their training takes over" -Andy McNab SAS.
To a degree, yes. But I would rather imagine few people had much opportunity to train for the kind of psychological offensive the sorts of Geasatae put out, coupled with the detail most of the Mediterranean cultures at least found the nudity alone jarring. The Celts and other "barbarians" themselves may have had less issues with the actual nakedness, but on the other hand would have been much more familiar with its symbolic and magical aspects amounting to more or less the same end result.

Plus of course the nekkid nutjobs themselves can be counted to not be particularly overawed by anything, so even if they're not necessarily able to thoroughly intimidate particularly crack troops at the very least that'll just be even then.
The Gaesatae may be good on the attack but they didnt even do to well against javelins. If they cant defend against javelins how do you expect them to avoid constant thrusting and slashing from swords or spears?
Basic difference: javelins are not that easy to parry with your sword or similar, and reasonably close-order infantry will have to rely on shields and armour to stop such projectiles as they won't have much room to dodge. Anything that get through or around those, hurts you.

In hand-to-hand combat the very fact you're also attacking puts a limit on the other guy's effective attacks - if nothing else your weapon will simply be getting in the way, and there exists the very real possibility you may literally "do unto him before he does unto you", that is, manage to land a telling enough blow while his attack is still "in process". And yes, this sort of thing can lead to "mutual slaying", as the Japanese called it.

It's the difference between being subjected to an archer's arrows, and exchanging blows with that archer up close. Surely the difference in the dynamics is blatantly obvious ?
Not all the soldiers are going to be paralyzed with fear, they will fight back. Depending on the soldiers these attempts are hardly feeble, a thrust to the heart a cut off head and other places are for the most part an instant kill. The Gaesatae were dieing to javelins! They were not just waltzing through them.
I don't think anyone claimed they were invulnerable supermen. The point is just that unlike troops in a normal state of mind they cared rather little about their injuries, and instead kept going until their whole system gave out. Unconcern with odds and casualties doesn't even require anything more than sheer bravado and lack of concern with death (something which, judging by some other elite formations like the Solduri, the Celts weren't half bad at conditioning for), rank stubbornness, and so on as perfectly possible for more normal troops.
As far as fear is concerned, the Gaesatae did break when they were pushed back.
Pretty much anyone cracks eventually. Humans are built that way, and I personally suspect the somewhat over-exuberant mindset their funny concotion and "hyping up" put them into rendered the Gaesatae somewhat more volatile in this regard than fanatical "elite guard" type units and similar groups.
Now for the drugs. Most drugs now are much stronger now because of the technology we have, everything now is enhanced. The drugs the Gaesatae were raw and primitive, therefore most likely not nearly as effective as has been claimed on these forums. Yes they could help over come fear, but they most likely will not make you immune from pain. If it did think of novacane and trying to talk with that in your mouth! If you want to say adrenaline that I can understand up to a point.
I'd actually say they'd get pretty far on just relatively mild psychoactives in any case, so long as those allowed them to put themselves in a state of mind where they believed themselves immune to such things. Autosuggestion, basically. People have literally gnawed their own arms off (or down to the bone anyway) in sufficiently deranged states of mind and only fainted of the blood loss; I wouldn't be surprised if the prime effect of the Gaesataes' war-drug was to put them in a suitably, uh, altered mental state to allow assorted personal and group psychological tricks to produce the results, with some helpful chemical side support. I understand the Celts were fairly good at applying certain kinds of intentionally produced group-hysteria effects.