>>Stellarmagus: Combined with more expansion, both in lore and in mechanics, of how displacing or downright harrowing it can be to form a physical/emotional link with another being (and to always have other creatures feelings on the periphery of your senses)
I don't think we've downplayed this at all. In fact, most of the newer healing techniques emphasize it, in both directions, and the majority of Empath GMPCs do as well. Players, however, can choose to ignore it, and they typically do. We can make your character collapse in agony due to the pain of his injuries, but we can't make anyone roleplay a realistic reaction to it. Remember, this is the same class of players who stick their faces into a nest of snakes in order to possibly receive crossbow ammo, kill themselves for cupcakes, and systematically slay homeless people for 'the experience'.
>>I had no idea that this was considered a policy abuse. Though it's obviously not being policed very hard at the moment it makes me happy to know that it is.
This is definitely, as Raesh said, still considered mechanics abuse. However, it's a tough thing to police because the behaviors themselves are not against policy, it's doing the behaviors specifically to generate wounds for an Empath that is. All people have to do is not explicitly state that they're doing it to generate wounds. So we could enforce the policy for a week or so until people learned to at least pretend to be doing it for some other reason, and then we'd be right back where we are now.
>>that treasured place Empaths have (or used to have) in society.
In my experience, this treasured place was quite superficial, and honestly I found that in many cases beneath that veneer of paternalistic benevolence, you'd find contempt. Granted, that's extremely rich ground for RP, but I do have to wonder if people who lament the Empaths' Guild former place in society ever seriously played one as their main character. We no longer support the combat/non-combat guild dichotomy for very good reasons.
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