> I notice that empaths essentially have a ton of free spell slots at the high end

This is doubly true if you specialize your empath. Not all empaths are interested in combat. Some (masochistic) empaths may care solely about combat. Some empaths may want to go full shock, and they don't want a dozen spells they can't use.

At a guess, I'd say that the idea might be that Empaths should be getting the majority of their skill boosts from the Link ability rather than spells. Unfortunately that ability is incredibly cumbersome to actually use in practice, and goes out of its way to prevent being used in combat. This has the practical result of leaving the skill boosting ability to be largely absent instead of being merely unconventional, which is a shame and I hope it can be corrected somehow.

I sort of doubt that the Link ability itself is in line to get much attention any time soon, so maybe one or more spells could be added to interact with it instead. I've mentioned a suggestion before about a spell to sort of "lock in" your Link so that you can take it with you away from the other person (and into combat if you want). Something like that seems like it would help the situation, or maybe someone can think of other Link-dependent spell effects that could make things a bit more user-friendly.

...Or maybe it's just as simple as "Empaths didn't have many skill boosts before, and nobody's gotten around to adding some" rather than some sort of design philosophy. They did mention stat boosts intentionally being a strength of the guild during the Magic 3.0 discussions though.

Thanks,
-Life Weaver Karthor

As far as ideas go, I would start with things that are at least thematic to the guild:

+ Alchemy
+ Outdoorsmanship
+ First Aid (Although now that I look, I don't think anyone as an FA buff...)
+ Scholarship

Would like to see +Attunement and maybe +Arcana for the magic skillset.

Survival is a bit harder, maybe add in +Athletics somehow, dunno. I wouldn't mind seeing other things like +Stealth, +Locks, etc. but I have a hard time tying those into the guild theme and those would be same mana type Ranger spell scrolls if those are actually on scrolls...

I may get some evil stares from people, but changing +Brawling to +Tactics makes sense for Aggressive Stance. I certainly plan to be more of a combat Empath, but getting a weapon buff of any kind other than Parry is rather odd (though that may be a holdover before Tactics was a thing, no idea).

I ask about the design philosophy a little bit in the sense that Empaths are now able to work with the combat system FAR more than in the past, but remain the only guild with exclusive access to self-healing (Necros count sort of, but they require a corpse and even then, they need to be able to perform the rituals). I always figured an underlying aspect of DR was Empaths get self-healing at the cost of combat. That could just be my gross misunderstanding of things though.

> Now, you'd have to make a case for a particular skill (e.g., shield usage, forging). Not all skills make a ton of sense for Empaths to boost.

Alchemy: Empaths have no crafting buffs for a lore prime, and all three of our bonus techs are in the alchemy branch. I think there's an argument for buffing this.

Buffs: Empaths have full body control. They should be enhancing the body through purifying the specific parts. I'd like to see this go beyond normal +skill buffs, but mechanics are mechanics. None of these would be signature.
- Purify the eyes: +Perception. Enhanced watch effect.
- Purify the nerves: +Attunement regeneration.
- Purify the blood: (later, if necessary) remove toxins caused by alchemy, chance for additional remedies pulse.
- Purify the hands: +outdoorsmanship, +skinning, Could really be +anything that requires fine-tuned motions
- Purify the lips: +scholarship, chance at bonus teaching pulses the recipient receives, increased chance to avoid fines, +charisma?
- Purify the feet: +athletics, reduced flee time.
- Purify the brain: +random chance at an extra experience pulse. Random skillset, but fine tuning meta to target specific skillsets.
- Purify the arms: +defending, +parry
- Purify the skin: +stealth, can perform actions that would normally be prevented by wounds.

I'd like to see these self-cast and castable on others, maybe an alignment for a general purification spell. You can align to a specific skillset, and the more skill you have lets you align to more of these features. Metaspells could also work, or individual spells along the vein mental focus and refresh. I like the former as this makes it a matter of choice. You get powerful, unique utility that's sought out by others. Limiting purification to one per target makes it a choice of gifting others at the cost of gifting yourself. Another option is that you could purify yourself, and let others touch you or your tree (the spell) to share the benefit.

Empaths can in fact do that, via link.

I do wish empaths had some more fun stuff to do in combat. Iz is neat, but only an option for shocked empaths. I'd love to see more combat stuff, or interactions with the gs.

Frankly, in most cases a lot of the asked for buffs above are pretty useless. Buffs with no combat utility aren't particularly useful, and as raesh points out, something like an fa buff is going to be pointless. Id rather see more tools and options for empaths to fight, as otherwise you pretty much 'finish' an empath at about 30th circle.

>>+ First Aid (Although now that I look, I don't think anyone as an FA buff...)

If only FA had a viable use beyond the 450-500 ranks it takes to tend the worst bleeders in combat with zero RT. I honestly think Empaths deserve a little love on First Aid learning, as well. The change to teaching stopping FA from being taught in combat made the hard FA req incredibly more difficult for combat oriented Empaths. What are the chances we could get a type of field autopsy skill akin to necromancer rituals? Maybe teach a little first aid and a little less skinning, and render the corpse un-skinnable (if you could skin it to begin with). Thematically, I think it fits better than an empath actually skinning something, and the sacrifice of money gained as well as reduced skinning exp could justify the First Aid gains.

I think a scholarship buff would be immensely useless. And again, sorcery is a thing. Lets not hope for more of the same with empaths.

I would like to see some more combat buffs. My Empath (my highest circle character) does enjoy combat a lot. But instead of a skill booster, how about an accuracy booster akin to Rage? Empath being able to sense the reactions of their opponent and know when to strike next with better precision. I also would like, and would use, harvesting and crafting buffs. They would have a great niche with the large number of Empaths who are not combat orientated.

For AGS, I could go either way with replacing Brawling with Tactics. Brawling was the buff because that was the old Tactics skill pre 3.0. I would miss the Brawling, but would use the Tactics for sure. And I feel an accuracy buff would go a long way to replace it.

How do the GMs and others feel about Empaths being group/area buffers? If not area, I sure would like to see them be able to do group buffs. We already can do multiple diagnostic links to heal many at once. It's not a stretch at all to allow our Empathy to bridge our magic into group buffs.