Last night Davidofh and I did triage for the Gruge Matches in Theren. I had a lot of fun, and there were a lot of good nasty wounds to heal. Missing heads, chests, necks, abdomens and limbs. We healed for about an hour straight during that time. I made 1% experience in Empathy. (Pre wall rank)

If we ever have a skill added to include Adventure healing as well as perc health to circle, the rate at which wounds teach needs to be seriously looked at. I'd forgotten how little experience we make doing what our Guild is actually here for, healing adventurers. It's really no wonder that later on so few prefer not to heal. It seems like it should be just the opposite, that actual healing should teach better than perc health.

Not a rant - Just an observation.

~~~
..player of Xochi
Sometimes you have to get mad-dog mean... - The Outlaw Josie Wales

>but wanted "volunteer" healers. But that's a whole other thread I suppose. I just wanted to throw that in somewhere I guess...

Just a quick note - we did volunteer. Patients were kind enough to give us extremely nice tips anyway, which we decided to donate.


~~~
..player of Xochi
Sometimes you have to get mad-dog mean... - The Outlaw Josie Wales

Good deal then.

Pity he didn't advertise it that way...oh well.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread.

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Rev. Reene, player of a few

Reene: hey you should play this with me
Zairius: last time I fell for that line
Zairius: I ended up in DR

>The hard part about wound-transference teaching more is getting locked up too quickly on anything but post-wall ranks.

Ooo I can wish! <g> I know there is problem with wounds vs difficulty. There are only so many types of wounds, and we can't wish for the entire realms to be afflicted with some major.. err yes we can!

Your empathy getting locked up too easy is just a temporary issue. It will disappear as your empathy ranks / mentals get higher.

The delay absorbtion like Trader's get is pretty nice, though I'm not sure they really want to divide up difficulty. It's easier to heal the patient and yourself with 10 people with all limbs injuries than one or two people with missing heads. But, if there is a different exp for healing a head or missing eyes etc, I haven't noticed it.

Perhaps perc health came to being because they understood this would be a problem later one. <g>


~~~
..player of Xochi
Sometimes you have to get mad-dog mean... - The Outlaw Josie Wales

I think the empathy absorbtion rate needs to be taken into context with the job we perform. It does seem at all levels, but especially at high ones, that we can get locked easily by healing someone who has light bleeders all over, but that the skill is down to learning and we've only gained .4% by the time we get healed up again to take another mess.
I feel this is why percieve health, not healing, has become the accepted standard for learning empathy. we can get ourselves up to mindlocked in a power-walk type script and keep it there for long periods of time and do other things at the same time. It's just far more efficient than healing. I'd love to see Obseden look at this in general and give his opinions on a revamp


Souv

You sense (N, S) from your current position:
A relatively healthy presence nearby.
Roundtime: 6 seconds

If I remember right, it was like a bonus for the younger levels that for some reason made it harder for the higher level empaths to learn. To fix it I believe they just took away the bonus all together.

Whatever it was, I do remember hearing about it getting fixed. Right around the time Obseden joined the team, I think it was one of his first projects with us (that we knew about).

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Hawaiian Word of the Week: Winter

Ho'oilo (Hoe oh eelow)

I am all for this. Would have come in handy during the wars. It seems like the next logical step for empaths.

>the reason this wasn't done was so that we'd get the maximum transferance per wound, no matter what circle.

I don't think the exp gained should be reduced at all. It should increase since reducing wound severity during transference would a much more advanced, taxing and complicated process. It might even attract some higher empath's back to healing.

>And even regen doesn't work real well on heads or nerves, even with high skill.

Completely untrue.

~Purehand

<<Actually, what I'd love to see is that as you get more empathy skill, the wounds you take drop in severity. So, when you get way up there, a blown up moon mage might get you to scratches, if that. This way you can heal more and more people without having to recast. It would also be an advantage for higher skilled empaths.

Holy Hodierna, Batman! I think you're onto something. What is the single biggest problem for Empaths (in reference to their innate abilities)? Healing up!

Man. That's great. I'm not even an Empath, but I'm going to be preaching the gospel of Higher Empathy=less wounds now.

---

You say, "I don't think moon mages would like being dipped in boiling tar just to learn astrology much."
Sadeia says, "More reason to dip em."

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>Actually, creating a spell to reduce the severity of wounds transferred would entail modifications to the transference system anyway. - Obseden

Yes, I can certainly see this. Becuase you have to check if the spell is on, how strong it is, etc. A reduction in severty by skill is always on. The only tricky bit is in scaling it with skill.

>So even if the exp gain calculation, for some reason, couldn't be modified when you do 'transfer <wound> reduce' just like it has been modified for 'transfer quick', the major rewrite is the reducing of wound severity itself.

Because it wouldn't be a case of transfer <wound> reduce it would be automatic, just like the reduction in severety of scars when they're transfered. If scars can be reduced, then why not wounds?

>but I would think the experience calculation would be, by far, the easier of the two things to code and a logical extention of system.

Ok, when coding. Changing one thing is always easier than changing two things. If you reduce the severety of wounds on transferance that is fewer changes than reducing the severity and changing the experience for wounds recieved.

>This suggestion is old enough that I'm sure it has received a lot of consideration by the empath team

Actually it's not that old and every time it's come up it's been rejected on the basis of reduced experience for the wounds recieved, not the difficulty of the change.

>Why would you state a criticism as fact if you really don't know?

From extrapolation. At 250 PM/Harness there is no signifigant increase in ability to deal with head and nerve wounds from 200 or even 150 PM/Harness. From, that, I'm guessing the start of being able to signifigantly affect those areas before they totally fry out your ability to harness mana is somewhere at least in the 400+ range. That and the majority of empaths have magic in the 400-500 range, so it makes sense for the spell to start being seriously useful up in the 750-800 range, since it's supposed to be a moderately difficult spell to use.

Huh. I guess they stopped. I remember taking a death scar on an empty spot and having it be smaller on me than on my patient. Must have changed fairly recently.

<<That and the majority of empaths have magic in the 400-500 range, so it makes sense for the spell to start being seriously useful up in the 750-800 range, since it's supposed to be a moderately difficult spell to use.>>

Just so no one is confused, the above is an opinion of the poster and does not necessarily reflect facts of overall empathic stats.

Carry on.

~Chris

- I would not want it to be automatic. There are situations where this would be a disservice to the empath. There are times where I want bleeders.

- Spell or ability, it requires an overhaul of transference and appropriate experience should be given for the skill in my opinion. In the string Obseden responded to, a spell was suggested as a work-around for difficulties of implementing a natural ability. Both have been stated to require a reworking of transference. Once again, I don't have the code, so I have no idea how difficult it would be to scale experience along with the core wound reduction system, but I imagine over the years and new systems the Dev GMs have become pretty good at scaling experience to core systems. Why would you go to the trouble of overhauling a major system and not reflect any of the changes in experience? Bad things come when you do something half way. I'm not a fan of that. I guess we differ personally in that regard.

>Actually it's not that old and every time it's come up it's been rejected on the basis of reduced experience for the wounds recieved, not the difficulty of the change.

- When it was first coming up there wasn't even discussion of extra exp gain because that wasn't as big of problem at the time. It was stated then as it is stated now (and quoted even moments ago) that the difficulty lies in implementing the actual wound reduction. Without going to the archives and pulling posts from the 90's here's a snippet from mid 2002:

>Will wounds ever reduce on transfer? Either with high stamina or high transference.
>If the problem is transference learning, is there a way to alter the learning so that this problem is bypassed?
>Ythik

In this string the idea was already a very bruised and beaten horse and the reality of wounds reducing with skill/stamina a long standing myth.

- Regen will not heal your nerves if you have less than 300 PM and will not heal certain body parts unless you are harnessing enough mana. I would harness 40-50 mana and try to keep it around that level if you want to make sure it gets everything. You could go from 150 to 350 without seeing internal head wounds healed if you are only harnessing 30 mana.

>the majority of empaths have magic in the 400-500 range

- I'm not so sure there are even 50 empaths with 400 PM/harness.

~Purehand

>Wound reduction via transference would be nice, though I am not sure what the reasoning would be. Where does the lost energy go? Dissipates into the air as heat?

Not sure what lost energy you're referring to, if anything it'd require MORE energy/concentration onthe empaths part to reduce the patients wounds during transfer. The reasoning would be simply to give higher levels empaths something to show/use for their higher skill level. Currently a circle 30 empath can heal just as fast and just as well as a circle 75 empath. That circle 75 should be able to do something that the level 25 can't with transfering wounds, whether it be transfer a back wound to the right leg, or make the wound lessen by a couple degree's, there needs to be something .

>it would be annoying if it were an "always on" thing.

Why? It makes sense for a higher level empath to always reduce the wounds they transfer. Having the choice would be nice, sure...but what would be the point? The only time I can see it being "annoying" is when you're trying to get a bleeder by healing the same body part on everyone in the room.

>Death wounds to tiny scratches seems a little excessive though.

I agree here, thats a bit drastic. There should probably be a cap on it of some sort, just to keep it somewhat realistic. Perhaps at the highest level skill being able to reduce a death wound by 3 degree's.

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Hawaiian Word of the Week: Winter

Ho'oilo (Hoe oh eelow)

It's magic.

~Purehand

>I agree with Purehand, it would be annoying if it were an "always on" thing.

Hmmm, two things. One, much harder to code. But also, to not have it be 100% a benefit. I'm thinking of whatshername who was part of the opening of Shift, who wasn't really entirely sane because of her empathy. Not all of empathy is a benefit. Possibly with so much more use, a side effect is that the empath's body just rejects the additional wounds and so we need to take more to get a bleeder, if we want one.

>Death wounds to tiny scratches seems a little excessive though.

I was thinking at the Biomancer level. Someone with I think it's something like 1050 empathy should be able to knock a wound down that far. Not your garden variety empath with empathy in the 400-500 range. There, yeah, a few levels would be far more appropriate.

Was just thinking of the cool factor, like a big cleric being able to walk in and rejuve a whole room full of people in one or two casts. Would be awesome at say the Biomancer level to link 5-6 corpses and heal them to clean in no more than a minute or two. Now that would be worth all the time and effort to get to that point.