What's changed?
Basic Healing System
The healing system has been completely overhauled. Everything is brand new. The "normal" healing system has all of the same features that it had previously, with some new ones added in.
Thus, if you're most comfortable using it how you always have used it, you can still use it in exactly the same way. So trusty ol' TAKE MELETE LEFT ARM INT is still there and will work the same way.
New stuff...
New take options:
It will now be possible to take large blocks of wounds in one go without having to individually specify each wound. (e.g. TAKE MELETE ALL, TAKE MELETE ALL WOUNDS, TAKE MELETE ALL INTERNALS, etc.) Thus, we hope people will not have to rely as much on scripts, and things are generally more user-friendly all around. As I said, these options are in addition to the old reliable ones you know and love, so if you don't want to, you don't have to use the new features.
Transferred wound reduction:
With increased skill, Empaths will also automatically reduce the severity of incoming wounds. You'll start seeing skill-based severity reductions at around 450 ranks in Empathy for external fresh wounds. Reducing the severity of other types of wounds takes more skill. Severity reductions are capped at 1/2, though that is subject to tweaking based on your feedback, and it takes a whole bunch of skill to reach that mark.
You cannot reduce the severity of wounds transferred from other Empaths unless the other Empath is permashocked.
If you'd prefer not to reduce the severity of a wound for some reason, you can specify this by appending the NORMAL flag. (e.g. TAKE MELETE LEFT ARM INT NORMAL).
Messaging:
The messaging for healing has been consolidated in a way similar to the regen spell, so healing will hopefully be a bit less spammy for you all.
Experience:
Because the system has been totally rewritten, the experience may have changed slightly. I'd like it to be similar to how it was before, but it may not be exactly the same. Your help in testing the EXP is appreciated so I can get us as close to the mark as possible.
You can also now get experience for healing Empaths – if the other Empath is permashocked. Permashocked Empaths are treated as a non-Empaths for experience purposes, since there's no chance of people trading wounds back and forth for infinite experience in that circumstance.
New Ability - Persistent Links
The persistent link allows an Empath to establish a diagnostic link with a patient that does not expire so long as the Empath and the patient remain in the same room. This ability requires 300 ranks of effective Empathy skill to use, and is learned by receiving a persistent link from an Empath who knows the ability. For testing purposes, any Empath who has sufficient skill in the test instance will be able to use this ability automatically.
The persistent link allows an Empath to perceive the health of a patient through it without touching the patient. (Syntax: PERCEIVE HEALTH <Person>). A persistent link is also required for some other abilities to work, such as the Hand of Hodierna ability.
Syntax:
| LINK <target's name> PERSISTENT - Establishes a persistent diagnostic link |
| LINK <target's name> PERSISTENT CANCEL - Cancels a persistent link only |
New Ability - Wound Redirection
The REDIRECT ability is used by Empaths to modify their Empathic healing abilities to change where a transferred wound will appear. This ability is taught by guildleaders and requires both 60th circle and 320 effective empathy ranks to learn or use (ranks modified by shock).
Syntax:
| REDIRECT ALL to {body part} - Redirects all transferred wounds and scars to selected body part. |
| REDIRECT {body part} to {body part} - Chooses a specific body part to redirect. |
| REDIRECT CHECK - Shows your current redirection status. |
| REDIRECT CANCEL - Cancels any current redirection active. |
A redirect will last for five minutes before automatically cancelling.
New Ability - Unity Link
Unity is a healing ability. It Allows an Empath to instantly assume every wound on a patient, but with no reduction in severity. This brand of healing thus leaves the Empath with every single wound the patient had, but as a new application of Empathy, it leaves the patient with no scarring and it teaches better than "vanilla" healing does.
There is a skill-based cooldown to use this ability, starting at three minutes and possible to work down to one minute.
Unity is taught by guildleaders and requires 70th circle and around 380 effective empathy ranks to learn and use.
Syntax:
| LINK <target's name> UNITY - Invokes a manifestation of the Unity link |
New Ability - Hand of Hodierna
Hand of Hodierna is a healing ability. This is a higher level ability (80 circle's worth or around 440 empathy) that is taught by Guildleaders. It is a passive transfer type that transfers wounds from patient to empath without any action from the empath, once they have established the persistent diagnostic link and then invoked the Hand of Hodierna link.
This is a fairly slow transfer; it starts out a little random, hence a bit more dangerous to the empath than normal healing. For amount healing X on the patient, the empath gets anything between 1X and 3X in wound, so they have to be pretty careful and on top of things to make sure that their multiple patients and wounds don't pile up too quickly. Thus you have no way to know what was going to come across or exactly how bad it will be. The randomness decreases with skill until the empath consistently gets a 1:1 transfer at around 600 ranks. However, since this is a slow healing ability, the most you will ever get at once is nine points of "wound," which is about halfway to a bleeder, for reference.
The empath starts with the ability to form two such links at 80th circle/440 ranks, three at around 500 ranks, and four at around 560 ranks. In addition to reducing randomness, additional skill allows an empath to transfer more wound per person, though the total amount still caps out fairly low.
The Hand of Hodierna is meant to teach quite well, though not in such large bursts as vanilla healing or unity, and it mainly aimed at group hunting situations.
Syntax:
| LINK <target's name> HODIERNA - Establishes a manifestation of the Hand of Hodierna link |
| LINK <target's name> HODIERNA CANCEL - Ends a specific manifestation of the Hand of Hodierna link |
| LINK ALL HODIERNA CANCEL - Ends all manifestations of the Hand of Hodierna |
FAQ:
Q: When will the test instance be opened for testing this stuff?
A: I don't know, other than "soon." I really, really don't. Sorry! But as I said above -- weeks, not months.
Q: I thought you were developing high level Empathy stuff. 70th-80th circle isn't really all that high level, considering even the previous circle cap of 150.
A: This is just the first round as far as I am concerned. I have some ideas for abilities in the 90th to 100th circle range which will hopefully help fill the higher end a bit, but they haven't been proposed yet so I'm unable to talk about them with any specificity.
Melete
Lore Developer
S'Kra Mur Champion
Empath Advocate
Advocates Lead
Events Lead
