Skills and Stats

[Ekard]

Wondering if anyone knows what the Empathy skill will do?

Also wondering what stats will be required for the non magic healing abilities?

Also wondering if infarvision or nightvision is better? better meaning can see more clearly in a darker setting.

A dwarf will be able to be good at the non magic healing if practices right?  as a dwarf cannot do the magic very well... Ok thank you! - Ekard

[Nonk]

I believe Empathy helps with training animals and such.
The difference between infravision and nightvision is that infravision will help you see heat (useful for detecting creatures) whilst nightvision just all around helps with seeing in the dark.
Other than that, I don\'t know.

[Tharizdun]

Herbal, Body Development and perhaps Alchemy I could all see being useful in performing non-magical healing feats, though I\'m not sure what all these skills are destined to be useful for in the end. Though we do know Body Development training will raise your total number of HP and possibly Fatigue/Stamina as well.

I came across descriptions of both Nightvision and Infravision when poking around the planeshift directory recently, here they are:

Night Vision: Must be present some light, the char gets a grayscale vision of the world.

Infravision: In total darkness, cold things are seen as blue, hot ones (like living beings) in red color.

Infravision sounds like the more desirable skill as it can function in completely lightless environments.. like the tunnels into the bowels of the earth that dwarves seem to have a thing for

[Kunisch]

Well, both visions have their uses. Infra, is only good, when you need to spot something more or less hotter than the world. So navigating through a cave (assuming there is some kind of light, possibly some fluoresces), without a torch, would probably be quite hard. But with night vision, you could easy navigate through the dungeon, but tracking an hunting an animal at night would be hell when you can?t search for the animals body heat.

[Tharizdun]

Infravision is the ability to perceive infra-red radiation in a visual sense, so for those with infravision they have sensitivity to the EM frequency spectrum below the band in which \'visible light\' wavelengths exist. There will be graduations of IR frequency, just as graduations of visible light frequency gives us the red ( lowest frequency, borders infra-red ) to violet ( highest frequency, borders ultraviolet ) pattern seen in a rainbow, prism or diffraction grating.. as well as graduations in frequency ( colour analogue to visual light ) there will be graduations in amplitude/intensity ( brightness/darkness analogue to visual light ).

So with infravision it should be very easy to discern differences say between a a natural cavern wall, bricks or tiles, hewn stone, earth, rubble, metal panels and so on. Living and warm blooded creatures will stand out like beacons in such an environment, but the fine detail in \'cold\' structures will still be visible.

Night vision on the other hand is a different beast altogther. It operates purely in the visual spectrum, and gives a higher sensitivity in low-light areas. Owls and other nocturnal hunters with excellent night vision would be hopelessly blind in a dungeon or cave with no light sources, but infravision would function just fine.

I still believe that infravision is superior to night vision. The only disadvantage perhaps would be being \'dazzled\' by intense flares of heat from fireballs or exploding furnaces and the like.. it would be like having a bright torch shone in your face when your eyes have adjusted to the dark.

[Ekard]

Ok thank you everyone, also the non magic healing will be able to be used for others right?  Anymore info on how this might work... as im thinking i will want my main char to be a dwarf, although not as full as pride and suspicious of others as the average stonebreaker may be, but my main deal is i want to be a healer and blacksmith/craftsman,  now a human could do both but there are less dwarves around so thats a plus as it adds to the diversity and such, but it would seem a nonmagic healer cannot ressurect... but how effective will he be, and will it be merely making potions, and will that be as useful or wahts the thought line?  

At first when i realized dwarves can only get to 8th rank in magic i didnt like it, as ive heard of many a fine dwarven paladin and cleric in my day, but if i can still help others in healing and such then i think it would be fun to not have magic and do it in a way that perhaps not everyone will do...

[Jazeera]

Empathy is something about a little familiar, Cat or something like that... check the skill ingame, there should be a description for it

[Ekard]

ah yes, i didnt even think to look there, thank you heh heh