I thought demeanor affected it. I have had to befriend empaths before to get healing.

Mind you, I have three empaths myself, one of which straight refuses to heal people as per her RP.

#bardlife

>>You're dead. That you can perform any kind of actions at all in character is only possible because the spirits of adventurers (and no one else) are somehow substantial enough to make themselves heard. It's not like we can start telling the doctor to stop violating us IRL while laying on the autopsy table....

And yet, we can unlink from a cleric if we want to to keep that cleric from raising us. We can opt to depart instead. So why are we blocked from telling an empath to keep their hands off us when dead?

#bardlife

>>My guess would be that unlinking is a spiritual action not constrained by the physical limitations of corporeal bodies. If you say out loud, "Keep your hands off me you damn dirty ape." and the Empath ignores you and heals you regardless, then that is a different matter.

Agreed, but in this matter, I'm speaking specifically of bot empaths or basically the ones who sit in places like TSC only and do nothing but jump on bodies the minutes they're brought in without so much as a word. What can be done to prevent them from being, well, vultures? Maybe I don't like you because you're half-krol and I want an Elven healer. Nothing is stopping that empath, mechanically, from healing you and the "bots" will not acknowledge your refusal of their aid.

#bardlife

>>If they're afk bot healing, you could report them. If they're not afk but vulture healing, announce them to the room and hope they police themselves? I know it is lame but warn interact could also be used if they're overly persistent and you want zero to do with them I guess. It's definitely a crap situation.

These are the more obvious solutions and have already been put in place, but that is a temporary fix for a longterm problem. I'm noticing more and more that, especially in higher populated areas, that the expectation for some empaths is to be "efficient" and when a character runs in, all injuries are taken so that character can run back out to fight. And I'm not even talking about the AFK scripters, I'm talking about seriously sitting in the room, at the keyboard, script healing but attentive. The insta-heal behavior continues to be encouraged and essentially destroys the option to even RP rejection. And it has happened in the past when called out in the central location, not only does the empath behave dismissively with a lacksidaisical attitude of indifference to their behavior, those who continue to encourage this type of healing further downplay any sort of RP interaction or choices. It's about 50/50 here in response.

Perhaps my expectations for people are too high and I would hope that there is a general sentiment that you would WANT to RP these situations, build a rapport with someone, whatever. Instead, it comes down to people wanting to get the EXP and screw the consequences.

So maybe it's time to cut them off from this ability. Demeanor isn't working unless you're living. Make demeanor work when dead or make it so that, like a cleric, when you're dead they have to lay hands on you or link or something, so you have the ability to say "No, don't touch me. I'd rather eat herbs" or whatever. Yes, I know it's an unpopular opinion, but we already have the mechanics in place for F2P.

#bardlife

Interesting idea about requiring a link in order to heal a body. I always like things to make sense in the game world, and the healing spells of an empath are spiritual but...is the TRANSFER ability spiritual? Is it mental? If it's mental than how do you even take the wounds from a corpse?

Seems odd to me to request an OOC mechanic to control desired Roleplay.

.. You're "dead." You have very little control over what happens. And that's okay!

Trying to control aspects of this game so that nothing happens unless you want it to is dangerously limiting.


Avaia, player of

I think telling an Empath that if they heal your corpse you'll kill them is fine, consent wise. They knowingly make the choice to heal you. You can also depart/Sign of Hopelessness if you wish to avoid being poked and prodded while dead.

---

!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"

>If a character does do it and you tell them that if they do it again you will kill them, then they do it again and you kill them... they have only themselves to blame, don't you think? ~Avaia

Yes. Given the current state of the mechanics, we'll just have to see if that's how it ends up playing out!

>> Setting your demeanor to cold prevents a number of character interactions. Does it also prevent healing?

It does. It may also work when you are dead (I don't recall).

-- Robert

You gesture at a colossal glaes-covered meteor.
The scream of tortured metal echoes around you as the lightning bolt strikes a colossal glaes-covered meteor.

> Interesting idea about requiring a link in order to heal a body. I always like things to make sense in the game world, and the healing spells of an empath are spiritual but...is the TRANSFER ability spiritual? Is it mental? If it's mental than how do you even take the wounds from a corpse?

The lore is... inconsistent at best, but overall "mental magic" refers to a source of magical power (self-discipline and personal charisma), not its effect. A mentalist asserts their own reality upon the world, in a similar way as the gods do but on a much smaller scale.

As far as the whole dispute about whether a flag is necessary, I feel that conflict is in-character and flags are out-of-character, and the presence of hostility is better than the absence of interaction.

Make linking a new requirement for all, but with a short 3 sec wait for regular accounts and 10 sec for F2P. The target PC can unlink at any time if they choose, which gives both the empath AND the target a 30 sec cooldown (no RT, just cooldown from linking again). If the target is dead, these numbers might be greater.