Eat knuckle, ooze!

[Infiniti2000]

...it may be incapable of motion for a time after a blow...

Has anyone seen hong lately?

 

[pawsplay]

An amoeba is a single-celled organism. It has no nervous system. "Pain" as we understand it is a response of the nervous system to a stimulus.

While it may be stunned in that it may be incapable of motion for a time after a blow (how do you strike a single amoeba to test that?), I don't think the term "knocked out" can apply to a critter who does not have conscious and unconscious states.

I have personally rendered amoebae inert using a variety of temperature changes and solutions.

The idea of states of consciousness is both outside the rules and logically inconsistent; unconcious characters can take nonlethal damage, as can those with severe ability damage to Intelligence.

"Pain" is nebulous to define, but suffice it to say, that amoebae will recoil from heat. As I understand it, that's pain.

 

[Solarious]

To experience pain, one must have a conciousness from which the idea of pain comes from. Pain is a psychological state: not the reaction of organisms to stimuli. Even if amoebae recoil from heat and subtances that harm or repel them for whatever reason, they can't feel pain as we understand it. If they flee, it is because they are alive; it is one of the definitions of life, after all.

Speaking of which, I join those who say Oozes are relatively immune to nonlethal damage. As much as I love frankthedm's idea, cold damage is usually lethal to living organisms as we know it, since the expanding water bursts cells, and destroys enzymes needed for their survival processes. Of course, since when has real life stopped us from using cool ideas? Oozes don't even exist in real life, they're a biological impossibility. Cold nonlethal damage to oozes FTW!!!

 

[pawsplay]

I have a BA in Pyschology, and I just TA's a class on Perception last year, in which we covered nociception. Obviously, pain in a human is different than pain in an amoeba (just as it is different in humans who lack some ability to feel pain due to a genetic condition). While you could define pain as suffering, and make suseptibility to physical pain a subset of that, I tend to view pain in terms of a reaction to stimulus that causes avoidance of injury.

Certainly, the view that pain should be viewed as a particular conscious state is problematic. That is because is is extremely difficult to operationalize a definition of a particular state, such as "being in pain." And then there is a question of states that cause a reaction without awareness versus states of which we are aware.

 

[Solarious]

So... that means we're moving into the realm of theoretical psychology and should move on before we get too serious for our own good?

 

[dungeon blaster]

an ooze that you drink...i think I'll call it booze

 

[pawsplay]

So... that means we're moving into the realm of theoretical psychology and should move on before we get too serious for our own good?

Affirmative, captain.

 

[Delta]

Or, another tweak to the ingestion ooze angle - after a certain point in the life cycle, the ooze animates the body, supplanting the muscle structure as it slowly feeds, and letting it amble about in search for more bodies to 'seed' into.

I give you: Olive Slime -- http://www.enworld.org/cc/converted/ooze/olive_slime.htm

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'm not so sure about that. Then again, I tend to view oozes as a vast collection of amoebas or other single cellular organisms. I'm not so sure about that. Then again, I tend to view oozes as a vast collection of amoebas or other single cellular organisms.

Oozes as slime moulds, perhaps?

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/slime1.htm

That might explain the ability of some of them to divide into smaller, working organisms after being struck, too...

 

[Plane Sailing]

an ooze that you drink...i think I'll call it booze

Nice one!