I'm playing around with an empath, and I'd love to have more combat options. I'm not asking for them to kill, but it would be amazing if they could go the direction of a chi warrior. I'm thinking about strikes that would convert vitality damage into something else. Something that uses and trains empathy + brawling to determine the effect

For example

> Manipulate chi
You turn your empath senses inward to awaken your true self. Minor pulsing spirit, fatigue, and concentration hits. Greater empath reduces this significantly. Passively trains empathy so long as you're being challenged (early abilities).

> Align balance (concentration hit)
You center your soul and focus on finding balance.

> Punch
You draw your true self out and give it a temporary corporeal form.
Moving like a snake, you punch at a small rat. A small rat fails to parry.
The corporeal image mimicks your movements and hits the small rat on the right leg.
(success) The image shatters into flurry of shards that reform as an invisible <type> connection between you and the small rat.
(failure) The image withers and fades.
[You're mighty, adeptly balanced and overwhelming your opponent.]

The strength of the connection depends on how much of a success you had with the physical attack. This is now the max for your transfer.

There are now regular pulses that drain this thing from your target and give it to you. Empathy determines how much of the max you can use, which is a check against stats of your opponent.

> Focus chi (concentration, fatigue, and spirit hit)
You focus on your active conenctions and seek to draw them out. Empathy check on all active conenctions. An ability may later let you focus on specific lines, but initially you just try to draw in everything. It requires skill to manipulate x creatures to successfully draw on x lines. Critical failure will drain you and give to the target.

With enough skill (Lengthy cooldowns between aligns)
- Align balance to attack spirit and occasionally stun.
- Align light to attack mana.
- Align dark to attack concentration and fatigue.
- Align self to attack will (target has a fear effect).
- Align universe to attack luck.
- Align soul to attack guild specific skill pools (+empathy/ - stat or energy in that pool.)

New spells to help boost this ability.
- Spirit regeneration ability - chi burst or something. Maybe it also allows you to drag your own corpse?
- Debilitation ability to enhance the effects if the target is hit.
- Spell to feed on lines from a distance.
- Spell to make your chi strike a DFA.

Probably will never happen, but fun to think about.

We do have lethargy and that's supposed to exhaust an opponent but it seems to make them easier to hit rather than making them too tired to hit you. I'm not complaining, I use it all the time at level hunting with my warrior but exhausted hunters versus exhausted critters don't really seem to be on par with each other.

Fatigue drain from spells is capped/floored at some global maximum that is actually pretty high but still a pretty nasty debuff.

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"Warrior Mages don't bother covering up their disasters.
They're proud of them." -Raesh, on history

Yes, more stuff to do in combat would be awesome. As it is my standard hunt is regenerate, manipulate, and wait with tactics or NB. Personally, I would love some way to transfer wounds from myself to the creature that gave me those wounds -- an empathic reciprocation spell or ability based off of empathy if you will, but I think anything to keep empaths more involved with combat would be great.

"Are you at the far end of combat because we fight like Barbarians all the way up the construct and undead (with absolution) ladder."

The construct and undead ladder seem fine, but I think people are wanting more things to do with those shock-filled warm bodies.