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Anaraxes · 02-12-2019, 05:16 AM

The Basic Set Empathy is not itself an exotic or supernatural ability, like in the usual SF implication of the word. It doesn't have a range with a sudden and marked cutoff, because that's the limit of your mutant power or telepathy. It's just a talent for sensing and understanding other people's emotions. Thus, no specific range. It works as long as you can reasonably interact with people -- phrased as "meeting" them, which in normal English means fairly close proximity, along with decent vision and sound. You could call that one yard, or three, but it's not generally important. The ability doesn't have range.

If you must shoehorn it into a category for other advantages, clearly it's not "Melee Attack" -- you don't have to touch people. Ten yards occasionally appears (and Psi Powers goes to some trouble to take that out wherever it does, so it can use some consistent ranges. "Remote" allows the ability to work via indirect means that can still be considered as bringing you into contact and interaction, like a telephone or CCTV.

So if you wanted to have the ability work beyond normal personal interaction distances, without requiring that sort of telecommunications assistance, I would indeed just add Ranged. But a better match would be to leave the Empathy without any mods, and instead add the ability that's letting you remotely observe and interact with the subject, whether that's Telepathy or Clairsentience or Telecommunications. If the remote sensing/communication ability only works for purposes of Empathy, and the character doesn't have that ability for other purposes, then you might fuss with modifiers to limit it -- but that's when I'd instead take the simple way out and stick with Ranged.

02-12-2019, 05:16 AM	#8
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Ranged Empathy The Basic Set Empathy is not itself an exotic or supernatural ability, like in the usual SF implication of the word. It doesn't have a range with a sudden and marked cutoff, because that's the limit of your mutant power or telepathy. It's just a talent for sensing and understanding other people's emotions. Thus, no specific range. It works as long as you can reasonably interact with people -- phrased as "meeting" them, which in normal English means fairly close proximity, along with decent vision and sound. You could call that one yard, or three, but it's not generally important. The ability doesn't have range. If you must shoehorn it into a category for other advantages, clearly it's not "Melee Attack" -- you don't have to touch people. Ten yards occasionally appears (and Psi Powers goes to some trouble to take that out wherever it does, so it can use some consistent ranges. "Remote" allows the ability to work via indirect means that can still be considered as bringing you into contact and interaction, like a telephone or CCTV. So if you wanted to have the ability work beyond normal personal interaction distances, without requiring that sort of telecommunications assistance, I would indeed just add Ranged. But a better match would be to leave the Empathy without any mods, and instead add the ability that's letting you remotely observe and interact with the subject, whether that's Telepathy or Clairsentience or Telecommunications. If the remote sensing/communication ability only works for purposes of Empathy, and the character doesn't have that ability for other purposes, then you might fuss with modifiers to limit it -- but that's when I'd instead take the simple way out and stick with Ranged.