Empathy
| General Information | |
|---|---|
| Parent Stat | Spirit |
| Values | |
| Stat Min | -10 |
| Base Value | 0 |
Empathy represents a character's ability to perceive, understand, and respond to the emotions of other people and creatures. It governs feats of non-verbal interaction, allowing a character to sense fear, anger, affection, distrust, curiosity, or other emotional states without necessarily knowing why those feelings exist. An empathetic character may recognize when a person is uncomfortable despite their friendly words, sense that a creature is frightened rather than hostile, or understand when an animal is ready to accept a stranger.
Empathy may influence a character's ability to bond with a companion or familiar, tame a wild creature, calm an animal, or convince a creature to accept them as a rider or companion. It can also help a character recognize emotional states that would otherwise remain hidden behind silence, expression, or deception. When Empathy is combined with Power, however, it becomes more than an ability to understand feelings. The wielder may project emotions, read or project thoughts, broadcast feelings across an area, or otherwise establish a direct connection between minds and emotions.
Empathy Checks
When performing a feat that relies upon perceiving, understanding, or responding to the emotions of another person or creature, the GM may ask for an Empathy Check. A basic Empathy modifier is zero, but characters with exceptional Empathy such as Warlocks, Scraefaelfes, or a Scraefaelf Warlock may have high Empathy modifiers even at low levels of Power.
An Empathy Check is performed by rolling a 20-sided die, to which the Empathy bonus is added, or the Empathy penalty subtracted. A total roll of 11 or higher indicates success. Extremely difficult tasks may require a higher roll, as determined by the GM. Critical successes occur when the required total is reached or exceeded on a natural 20. This may inspire the GM to sweeten the outcome of the check. Conversely, a natural 1 is an automatic failure, even if the addition of a bonus would otherwise exceed the required roll. This Critical Failure may inspire the GM to impose additional consequences upon the failed feat of Empathy.
Feats of Empathy are extremely varied and might include bonding with a companion or familiar, reading the emotions of another person, determining whether someone is frightened or hostile, calming a distressed animal, gaining the trust of a wild creature, recognizing when someone is concealing their true feelings, or determining whether a creature is prepared to accept a rider. Empathy may also allow a character to understand an unfamiliar creature without sharing a language. A character might not know what a creature is saying, but they may know that it is afraid, curious, angry, playful, or preparing to attack.
Empathy is therefore not simply a softer form of Charisma. A charismatic character might convince a creature to do something through persuasion, intimidation, entertainment, or charm. An empathetic character may instead understand what the creature wants or fears and respond appropriately without saying a word. The distinction becomes particularly important when dealing with creatures that cannot speak, do not understand the character's language, or are unlikely to be persuaded by conventional social techniques.
Empathy Saving Throws
When something happens to a character that Empathy alone can mitigate, the GM may call for an Empathy Saving Throw. The player rolls a 20-sided die and adds their Empathy modifier to the roll. The resulting total indicates to the GM whether the character resists the emotional effect or is subjected to the calamity requiring Empathy.
These kinds of attacks are uncommon but do occur, and often involve spells or powers that alter the victim's feelings. An effect might attempt to make a character irrationally angry, terrified, affectionate, trusting, hateful, sorrowful, or otherwise emotionally unlike themselves. An empathetic character may recognize that the feeling does not belong to them or may be sufficiently aware of their own emotional state to resist an outside influence.
Examples of situations that might call for an Empathy Saving Throw include:
- Resisting a magical effect that causes unnatural anger or hatred.
- Resisting supernatural fear or terror.
- Recognizing that an overwhelming feeling of affection or trust has been magically imposed.
- Resisting an effect that causes irrational suspicion or distrust of companions.
- Maintaining emotional control when a power attempts to induce grief, despair, or hopelessness.
- Resisting an attempt to make the character emotionally hostile toward an ally.
- Recognizing that a sudden emotional reaction is being externally generated.
- Resisting a creature or power that attempts to establish emotional control.
- Remaining emotionally independent when exposed to an area saturated with powerful feelings.
An Empathy Saving Throw may therefore protect a character in a way that is quite different from a Charisma Saving Throw. Charisma protects the character's sense of self and ability to assert their personality, while Empathy allows the character to recognize and resist emotional manipulation. A character may understand exactly what another being is feeling without allowing that feeling to become their own.
Loss of Empathy
A character's Empathy may be diminished by disease, curses, special creature attacks, magical effects, psychic assaults, or other conditions that interfere with emotional perception and connection. A reduction in Empathy results in a corresponding reduction of the character's Empathy modifier and may also cause the loss or suppression of powers that require a minimum Empathy modifier. Such an effect can interfere with a character's ability to understand other people and creatures, form bonds, or recognize when emotions have been altered.
The effects may be temporary or permanent. A temporary impairment may disappear when the underlying condition has been overcome, while a permanent loss may leave a character increasingly disconnected from the emotional states of those around them. Permanent losses of Empathy can be recovered over time by Powering Up and converting Power to Empathy in the Player's Workshop.
Related Stats
Empathy is one of the three Spirit stats, along with Will and Prescience. Together, these stats describe aspects of a character that extend beyond the ordinary functions of the body and mind. Empathy represents emotional perception and connection, Will represents the ability to impose or maintain one's own intent, and Prescience represents awareness of things beyond ordinary perception.
The three Spirit stats are also used to calculate increases in a character's Spirit Point totals, making them particularly important to spiritually oriented characters such as Psychics and Divines. Empathy gives the Spirit its connection to the emotions and inner lives of other beings. It is the ability to sense what another creature feels, understand that feeling, and—when combined with sufficient Power—potentially reach across the boundary between one mind and another.
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