Empath healing
Perhaps the most fundamental and useful ability an Empath has is to take on the wounds, scars, and injuries of other adventurers. With skill, one can even snatch a fallen adventurer away from the jaws of death itself.
Diagnostic Link
TOUCH, by default, tells you everything you need to know about the health of your patient. If the Familiar window in your front end is open, the diagnostic messaging will be displayed there for easy reference instead of in the Story window (this is highly recommended!).
Sometimes the situation dictates that you ignore certain wounds. By specifying the severity level and/or the keywords WOUND or BLEEDING, the diagnostic messaging will only display information about wounds you are concerned with. This refinement of the Touch ability is based on skill, and if you fail the attempt, you will be notified.
By touching, you have established a diagnostic link with that person. This is necessary for the Link ability and Shifting as well as healing. The diagnostic link will wear off after a short while, the length being dependent primarily on your Empathy skill.
Syntax
You may TOUCH a player to get information about their injuries and to establish a connection to them that will allow you to transfer their wounds to you.
Experienced empaths may optionally ignore less significant injuries. The following modifiers are eventually available:
TOUCH <player> MINOR
HARMFUL
DAMAGING
WOUND or WOUND <injury severity>
SEVERE
DEVASTATING
USELESS
BLEEDING or BLEEDING <injury severity>
Healing your patient
You've decided to take some of the patient's hurts. How to do so depends on what you wish to heal them of.
The primary command for healing a patient is TRANSFER, or you can use its synonym, TAKE.
note: see the list of body parts below for acceptable values of <body part>
Wounds and Scars
When taking an internal wound, you must specify this by typing INT after the name of the body part. When taking a scar, you must add the word SCAR.
|
<patient> | <body part> |
|
|
Vitality
A vitality transfer will occur when you don't specify a body part (or disease, shock, or poison). Be careful when taking vitality from characters who have higher stamina than you do, as this runs the risk of vit death. For the same reason, most Empaths avoid taking vitality from deaders under any circumstance.
|
<patient> |
|
|
Disease
|
<patient> |
|
DISEASE |
These keywords can be used instead of DISEASE to specify a specific ailment:
- GANGRENE
- INFECTION
- FLESHROT
- CONSUMPTION (plague)
Poison
When transferring poison, you can optionally specify a body part to take the poison from a specific area of the body. This is helpful in targeting the more severe items when multiple poisons are present.
|
<patient> | [optional: <body part>] |
|
POISON |
Shock
|
<Empath> | SHOCK |
Partial Transfers
By default, TAKE/TRANSFER tries to grab the entire wound. If you are concerned with overhealing, it might be better to only take a portion of the wound instead, and this is done via the keywords PART, HALF, or MOST. The ability to perform a limited transfer is, naturally, based on your skill. There are four possible outcomes:
- you fail to take anything
- you lose focus and take the whole wound
- you successfully take the specified portion
- you get a wild transfer (entire wound transfers either immediately or at a faster than normal pace, running the risk of overhealing)
Speed
Additionally, you can control the speed of the transfer. By default, the wound transfer occurs at NORMAL speed. By specifying the QUICK or CAREFUL keywords (FAST and SLOW are synonyms), you can make the transfer go faster or slower than normal.
A QUICK transfer will teach a bit more Empathy skill than a NORMAL one, and is more difficult to perform. Quick transfers are an incentive for experienced Empaths to continue healing patients when they reach the point that Normal transfers cease teaching well. Likewise, a CAREFUL transfer teaches a bit less Empathy than normal, but it is easier. This can be helpful for novice Empaths to more easily maintain their links.
Break
The most important thing to know, once you learn how to start a transfer, is how to stop it. This is done with the BREAK command.
BREAK <player>
or
BREAK ALL
Breaking is used to immediately stop a transfer from completing. There are several reasons why you would want to do this:
- You realize after the fact that you are taking a wound that will kill you if you finish the transfer.
- You are taking vitality from a deader, or your vitality is running low and you are taking vit from someone with higher stamina than you.
- You attempted a partial transfer which failed, instead starting a full or wild transfer.
- You start taking a wound your patient doesn't want you to take, such as a bleeder, or you realize after starting to heal that your patient is an Empath.
BREAK <player> will stop the transfer of one injury each time you enter it, so for safety it is best to spam the command until you get the message that you no longer have any active links. Note also that at high levels of skill, you will take wounds very quickly so the window for breaking a link can be very short.
Healing links will only continue if you are in the same room as your patient, so another way to break all links is simply to leave the room. Additionally, you cannot transfer wounds etc. from a prone position, making the FAINT, FALL, and LIE commands similarly useful for breaking all links at once. These other methods may incur a slight delay before the healing links actually stop, so in a real health emergency BREAK is more reliable.
Examples
- TAKE TIMOTHY LEFT ARM will take fresh external wounds from the left arm.
- TAKE ANNAEL ABDOMEN SCAR PART will attempt a partial transfer of external scar wounds from the abdomen.
- TAKE VORCLAF HEAD INT SCAR MOST QUICK will attempt a quick transfer of most but not all the internal scar wounds from the head.
- TRANS EDENLAEN SLOW will start a careful transfer of vitality from Edenlaen.
- TAKE NEESA LEFT ARM POISON QUICK will start a rapid transfer of poison from Neesa's left arm.
- TAKE EMMILINE SHOCK will share Empathic shock from Emmiline.
- BREAK JOUROK will halt the transfer of a single wound or other injury.
Acquiring a patient
Triage
(need more info here)
Guild healing
(need more info here)
Field healing
(need more info here)
List of body parts
There are a total of fifteen major body areas, including the tail, where wounds may occur. If you don't have a tail, then you will of course be unable to take a tail wound. Each area has an internal and external component, and wounds may be fresh or scar, making a total of sixty different wounds that a patient may have. And that isn't counting vitality, disease, or poison!
- Head
- Neck
- Chest
- Abdomen
- Back
- Right Eye
- Left Eye
- Right Arm
- Left Arm
- Right Hand
- Left Hand
- Right Leg
- Left Leg
- Tail
- Skin (Nerves = internal skin)
Notes
This is a collection of bits of experience and advice fellow empaths have picked up over the course of their careers about the healing ability.
Overhealing
The most common way for an Empath to die is by overhealing. Overhealing occurs when you take more wounds onto a critical body part than that area can bear. Watch your health carefully when you are healing! With practice, you will learn your limits and hopefully, avoid overhealing.
Critical Areas
"Useless"-level wounds on these body parts, whether external or internal, fresh or scar, will lead to immediate death. Transferring too much vitality from a patient can also kill you.
- Head
- Neck
- Chest
- Abdomen
- Back
- Tail (S'kra only)
Non-critical Areas
You can hold "Useless"-level wounds on the following parts of your body without dying. You will not, however, be able to transfer more onto that part once the area is completely destroyed.
- Arms
- Legs
- Hands
- Eyes
- Tail (Prydaen and Rakash only)
- Skin/Nerves
Tips for staying alive
Keep refresh going, if your fatigue drops too low it's hard to cast spells. If you don't have refresh you can ask someone to cast it on you.
(need more info here)