The fresh maker! … No.. wait…
It’s the Fresh-Maker!
You’re going to Fold the Board?
Tim R. and astro – this thread has been going on for two days, and you two decide now to have the same bright idea?
Dang. I’ve read the book twice and seen both movies. You’d think I’d have noticed that somewhere along the way. :rolleyes:
So what’s the downside then? Why doesn’t everyone become a mentat?
Nah, Andy Rooney is a Highlander. The guy is in his 90s now and has outlived many of his detractors who, long ago, expected old age to take him at any time.
He is The One!
Very few people have the innate qualities to even become a mentat. A potential mentat must be extremely intelligent, to start with. Then there’s the training itself. I haven’t read Dune or any of its sequels for a couple of decades, I believe, but I was under the impression that training up a mentat needed to be started when the child was very young, and it took up a great deal of the child’s time, and that it was extremely expensive. So the downside is investing a lot of time and money into training a child in something s/he might not be suitable for, and that time and money might be better spent on some other training, something with a better chance of success.
Remember, Paul was an exceptional person. He was the only child (until after his father died) of a very wealthy, powerful, influential family. He was a prince, in essence, and he wasn’t powerful just because of his family, but because he was extremely intelligent and given the opportunity to learn all the complexities of a Byzantine society. Hell, he wasn’t just given an opportunity to learn, he was pretty much forced to learn. He was also a male who had powers that a secret female society preferred to keep for itself. His mother was instructed to have a daughter, but let her love for her “owner” (he thinks that he bought her, he’s wrong) sway her to have a son for him.
Did that would blow.your.mind? I knew it would.
So what? They can still become middle managers.
He IS the Kumquat Hagendasz!
Mentat training is extremely costly and time consuming. If one wants to be a middle manager, there are cheaper and easier paths to that goal.
ROFL!
Andy Rooney? “Intelligence and charisma?” Did the real Andy Rooney die so some younger Andy J. Rooney could drop the middle initial?
I was talking about pills called Mentats in the Fallout game universe, silly. There’s several different varieties of drugs in the Fallout games, which can increase your stats when you take them. Usually, though, after you come down from the pills, your stats drop. And many of the drugs are addictive as hell. I always save the game before taking Buffout, for instance, because it seems to be addictive about 75% of the time. I can’t remember for sure, but I think that Jet is 100% addictive.
Oh, and Myron is hilarious as an NPC, especially if you have a charismatic female character.