>>what's the justification for empaths being unable to kill undead in the same way they do constructs?

"For both Empaths and Necromancers, the undead are essentially "alive" (they have a life force), but the specifics of the condition confound the issue a lot."

From:
http://elanthipedia.org/w/index.php/Post:Empathy_-_9/21/2010_-_18:33:24

"What this means to Empathic Shock is outside my purview, but, yes, the undead have enough actual life in them to distinctly separate them from corpses and credenzas."

From:
http://elanthipedia.org/w/index.php/Post:Hunting_Undead%3F_-_1/28/2009_-_2:16:06

>a perma-shocked empath is now a thing

Yes, it's now a thing.

>Which spells do they also lose access to? And the ones they keep, are they running at reduced capacity?

A number of spells. A few of them are posted on E-pedia whether they are usable in the insensitive state. Most do not say yet. Guardian Spirit and Innocence at the least.

I take pride in never being shocked, so I can't really say from my own experience.

Kaeta Airtag

>>Actually an opinion cannot be changed or corrected. Nice try back of line.-VERATHOR
>>But it can be wrong.-Starlear

>>Volcanus: Thanks for this. So if i"m reading right, a perma-shocked empath is now a thing. They can hunt, but they can't use or learn empathy/empathy related abilities (perc health, touch, manipulate, link, some spells). Which spells do they also lose access to? And the ones they keep, are they running at reduced capacity?

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Re: Shock Rewrite on 07/21/2012 10:22 PM EDT
http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Empaths/General%20Discussions%20-%20Empaths/view/1381

The New Shock System:

An empath who harms a life essence will therefore no longer suffer complete loss of his abilities. His abilities will simply be adversely affected. If he continues to do things that cause him to suffer more shock, his abilities will suffer more and more, until he can no longer use any of his abilities that rely on empathy.

When an empath achieves that total loss of abilities, he will be in a state much the same as an empath who is shocked under the current model. His empathy-based abilities will not work, he won't be able to cast spells that require empathy to work, etc. Unlike the current model, though, he will never be able to regain his empathy simply through waiting. At the perma-shock level, the empath will have to go on a quest to get his empathy to start 'regenerating' again.

This reflects the empathy lore. According to the lore, all beings in Elanthia are born with empathy. This empathy is fairly scanty and is gradually crushed out of existence as the being matures, until he or she achieves the permashock state. So "empath" is the beginning state for all Elanthian beings, and permashock is the default state for almost all of them. Thus, a permashocked empath is just an empath who has violently crushed his empathy out of existence and turned himself into a normal person.

Therefore, a permashocked empath is no longer (in the updated system) subject to the detriments of empathy, so he or she can attack things or people without being stunned, falling down, etc., just as anyone else can. Empaths who are not permashocked who attack and harm something will be stunned and shocked, though the stun is very much shorter than it was in the past.

What is affected by shock?

Anything that contests the empathy skill is adversely affected. So an empath with some shock can still use his empathy-based skills and abilities, but if he only has 80% of his empathy remaining, his abilities will reflect that lack. This means that a 150th empath who is 99% shocked will heal pretty much as badly as a first/second circle empath.

Examples: Manipulate, shift, link, healing others, perceive health, Fountain of Creation, Regenerate, Gift of Life, Heart Link, Innocence, Compel and Guardian Spirit when it is completed.

Exceptions:

Some spells, while signature spells, are only adversely affected by a lack of empathy, but will still work in a penalized state. These are the bread-and-butter healing spells, Heal Wounds, Heal Scars, Heal, Vitality Healing, Flush Poisons and Cure Disease.

The rest of the empath spellbook does not require empathy to use in any form.

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Re: Shock Rewrite on 07/22/2012 02:44 AM EDT
http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Empaths/General%20Discussions%20-%20Empaths/view/1389

Yep, you still get stunned if you're not permashocked. The stun is a lot shorter, though. Directly hunting stuff with a life essence is never going to be a great idea for a non-permashocked empath. We have constructs, manipulate, and the GS as other options to access the combat system. If that is still not satisfactory, you can always go the shock-lock route for a while and be able to hunt without worrying about stuns.

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Re: Shock Rewrite on 07/22/2012 07:37 AM EDT
http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Empaths/General%20Discussions%20-%20Empaths/view/1392

HL, IIRC, already requires intact empathy to use. Innocence does not, but to my mind this (and compel) is a manifestation of empathic manipulation, bolstered by magic, so to me it does make sense to require at least some amount of Empathy to use those.

As to FoC and Regen ... the idea is that as a totally shocked Empath, you will still have access to some self-healing (HW, HS, HEAL, FP and CD) but you won't be a stupendous healing badass anymore. This is for game balance reasons, mainly.

Requiring Empathy to use the healing spells is definitely a shift, but again, I want the shock-lock state to have some teeth. Obviously an Empath who hasn't hit the circle cap yet will have some incentives to keep their empathy intact, but I don't want to encourage Empaths who have hit the circle cap to view shock-lock as the default state. Thus, some of the more awesome healing spells do require at least some empathy to use.

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You feel your Heart Link with a mug of zombie's revenge fade away.

Vote for DragonRealms on Top MUD Sites: http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-DragonRealms.html

There's a bug somewhere that I haven't been able to track down that causes cyclic spells to fail. Basically part of the cyclic stuff that is critical for the spell to continue to work correctly disappears, then the next time a player perceives, a check happens that notices that the needed section is missing and it goes ahead and removes the rest of the spell effects.

If this is what is happening to you, and you can find a way to replicate the issue, I'll be happy to get it fixed, since I'm particularly annoyed with that bug.

AGM Ricinus
Dev Systems
Cleric Advocate

>>If this is what is happening to you, and you can find a way to replicate the issue, I'll be happy to get it fixed, since I'm particularly annoyed with that bug.

It's the same bug ad the necro pet bug, I believe. The GS just unloads from game memory.

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Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

ok happened again at 4:15 am eastern on Kammae... was in the cupcake shop in theren, he was there, went to Courtly styles and instead of stepping in, he evaporated, hope that helps