Perceive health
Perceive Health is the Empath-only ability to PERCEIVE the life essences of the people and animals (and some highly-evolved intelligent plantlife) around them. This action trains the empathy and power perceive skills. With increased skill, the sensations gain clarity and allow the Empath to detect additional qualities of perceived individuals, such as whether they are hiding, have a disease or low vitality, are poisoned, etc.
Sensitivity Range
While the exact formula is not known, it is believed that sensitivity range increases by one room for every 200 combined ranks of Empathy plus Power Perceive. Unlike the similar HUNT, there is no known upper cap on the effective range, and supremely skilled Empaths can sense and identify life forces more than 10 rooms away. There is also no perception skill check so hidden beings will be sensed without fail (but not identified) as long as they are within the Empath's sensitivity range.
Under rare circumstances, perceive health can trigger passively to sense single individuals without the Empath activating the check.
It should be noted that, when searching a large number of rooms at once, this command is very resource intensive.[1]
Estimated Threshholds
| PP/Emp Average | Ability |
|---|---|
| 30 | Empath, same room |
| 50 | non-Empath |
| 75 | critter |
| 100 | details |
| 125 | Empath, adjacent room |
| 150 | non-Empath |
| 175 | critter |
| 200 | details |
| 275 | non-Empath two rooms away |
Perceive Health Messaging
| Messaging | Meaning |
|---|---|
| The presence of Name, a fellow Empath. | Empath |
| The presence of an unseen fellow Empath. | hidden Empath |
| The presence of Name. | non-Empath |
| An unidentifiable presence. | hidden non-Empath |
| The presence of Name, whose life essence is wavering. | >50% vitality loss |
| The presence of Name, whose life essence is almost extinguished. | >80% vitality loss |
| The presence of Name, whose life essence has a faint greenish tinge. | poisoned |
| The presence of Name. You also sense disturbing black streaks about his/her life essence. | diseased |
| A relatively healthy presence nearby. | healthy critter |
| A malicious presence screeching in the far dark corner of your mind causes you to quickly open your eyes! | undead, evil, or cursed critter |
| A wavering life essence nearby. | critter with >50% vitality loss |
| The presence of a secondary shadow about yourself. | blood critter |
Notes
- The types of things you can sense (see above list and table) appear every 50 combined ranks between Empathy and Power Perception. It is possible you may get lucky and see them very rarely before this point, but it appears to always be close to the 50-rank mark (within 20 ranks).
- The range you can sense seems to grow every 200 combined ranks in Empathy and Power Perception. It is similarly possible this will happen earlier than expected.
- The total number of individual essences you can sense is also limited by your skill. If you exceed this amount, your senses will become overwhelmed and you will be stunned for a moderately long time. Though it will not always happen, you can receive internal injury to your head and nerves.
- There is a 4.5 minute timer per room.