empathy!

During my last gaming session I was reminded of a mechanic in the Forbidden Lands RPG, players’ characters have an attribute called Empathy, and this measures a character’s personal charm and ability to manipulate others, the skills associated with Empathy are called Manipulation, Performance, Healing, and Animal Handling … sort of broad, but each is meant to reflect the ability to read others’ emotions and adapt behavior accordingly, hence: empathy! Combat in Forbidden Lands usually lasts until someone falls unconsciousness and death is almost never an immediate consequence of combat (there’s only a 2% chance), most commonly someone falls to the ground in a Broken state, or they are Exhausted from fighting, or in rare circumstances they become Paralyzed or Breakdown from fear or despair …. Death seems rare! The thing that I really like about Forbidden Lands, and about Empathy, is that when a player’s character wants to kill a defenseless foe, someone who is considered sentient or intelligent, then the character needs to fail an Empathy roll – and even if the roll fails the player must still have their character spend a point of Willpower and suffer a point of Empathy damage in order to kill the opponent. “Killing in cold blood is not as easy as you might think.” the rules say. This is somewhat incongruous with the type of game that Forbidden Lands is, but I feel like this could be built upon and expanded. Death takes a toll, even from those who deal it out.