Empathy

Empathy is the ability to read and feel other people's feelings and emotions. The user of this ability can feel exactly what another person is feeling, and for the same reasons, without direct contact with them.

Application
There are many ways to use Empathy:


 * Promote interpersonal understanding.
 * Discover other people's true intents and desires as well as any secrets that they are trying to hide.
 * Access people's thoughts via their emotions.
 * Control and even deflect other people's powers.
 * Duplicate the powers of those near or around you.
 * Resist the effects of another persons power.
 * Enhance as well as evolve your other powers.
 * Heal and guide other people emotionally/mentally.
 * Curse a demon by granting it your power.

Strength and Skill
The strength of Empathy varies depending on the strength and skill of the user. Phoebe Halliwell channels her power through her eyes, often by narrowing and focusing her eyes on her intended target.

She quickly mastered the ability to read and interpret emotions correctly, allowing her to discern the truth and uncover hidden secrets, including a person's true intent as well as their desires. The gradual growth of her power in strength and range eventually allowed her to sense and maintain contact with people within a city wide distance, as well as in between dimensions.

Another skill she quickly mastered is the ability to access the powers of the people around her with a simple look. She could take control of incoming projectiles as well as deflect them, and could even resist their effects when hit, simply by maintaining an emotional connection with her target. She could even duplicate the powers of the people around her.

When Prue Halliwell gained the power of empathy, she developed three skills within it: the ability to read emotion, to heal emotional pain, and to augment powers. However, Prue was only able to use two of these skills, reading people's emotions from miles away, and even enhance her own powers to far superior levels by channeling emotions into them.

Reading Emotions
The first aspect of the power is to read, experience and correctly interpret other people's emotions.

Phoebe can read and feel the emotions of every living creature, including animals (ie) dragons and even ghosts. As such, beings with malevolent intent are usually worried when they are around her because she was able to correctly interpret the intent as well as the desire behind each emotion, and could find out any secrets that they are trying to keep hidden. While she was an Empath, Prue could also hear people's thoughts while reading emotions.

Power Manipulation


After learning to read emotions, the next aspect of Empathy is to manipulate the powers of others, which is composed of three—and arguably the most powerful—variations of the power; Channeling, Replicating and Resisting powers. It's also possible to replicate the effects of spells as it's a basic magical power.

All supernatural powers are tied to emotions; manipulating powers involves establishing and maintaining an emotional connection with other beings and then accessing their powers. Phoebe is particularly skillful in this area, which is also one of her primary defensive and offensive moves.

Empathic Healing


Another aspect of the power is the ability to heal emotional wounds. Empaths are said to be able to use their power to heal people by using their intimate knowledge of what the person is feeling or has gone through, and offering them advice or comfort. Phoebe, as an accomplished advice columnist, uses her gift to help the people who writes to her. Her powers helps her to 'read people really well', so she was able to give them genuinely helpful and insightful advice, eventually leading her to become quite a famous celebrity.

Aside from counseling, immortal Empaths can also heal emotional suffering, akin to Whitelighters healing physical wounds. Father Thomas indicated he focused his empathic powers through his hands to heal the emotional anguish of his parishioners. He used this same method to curse Vinceres.

Augmentation


A rare aspect of Empathy, Augumentation is the ability to dramatically enhance your own powers by channeling a massive amount of emotions into them, making you much stronger than usual. This aspect was used by Prue Halliwell when she had temporarily gained the gift.

Her power of Telekinesis advanced to a point where Vinceres, a demon who was immune to witchcraft, became vulnerable to it, and even allowed her to perform gravity-defying maneuvers so that she could meet Vinceres blow for blow in hand-to-hand combat. Her power of Astral Projection also evolved into Cloning.

Limitations
This power has a few limitation; these are:


 * In the early stages, the power can be very uncontrollable.
 * Users can be overwhelmed by the emotions and feel compelled to act them out. However, once they embrace the power they will be able to turn it on or off at will.
 * On rare occasions you may not be able to read another being, as seen when Phoebe was unable to sense any emotion during her first meeting with Cal Greene.
 * Phoebe has to be within the vicinity of the person whose powers she want to control as well as duplicate.
 * The power can be blocked with an empathy blocking potion. However, the effects of the potion is temporary.

Power developed from Empathy


This power is an advanced form of Empathy. It is the ability to manifest and channel emotions through the hands, to create a psychic blast made purely of emotions. The effects generate energy sparks which resemble Lightning Bolts.

Phoebe is the only known being with this power. With it, she is capable of vanquishing, or severely incapacitating even supremely powerful magical beings thought impossible to be defeated. She used this power on the first witch, Neena: magnifying her emotions until she was knocked unconcious. It is one of Phoebe's strongest powers.

Insanity and Demons


"I'm afraid that your in danger, you weren't meant to receive this gift. You can't handle it."

- Leo expressing concern for Prue.

Empathy can drive a person to insanity if they are not destined to have it, as it is a psychic ability that requires the user to be mentally strong. Demons can never gain this power naturally, due to the fact that they cannot handle human emotions. It would destroy them or drive them insane, as it drove the demon Vinceres almost insane, but shortly after it was taken away, he returned to normal.

Prue accidentally received this power from Vinceres through the use of a spell. Although she was fine with it at first, eventually, as its range expanded, she was unable to control it developing to the point where she was constantly taking in the emotions of the entire city of San Francisco. However, Father Thomas taught her how to control the power.

She qiuckly learned and mastered the ability to channel all the incoming emotions into her other powers, which significantly enhanced them, and then used them to destroy the once thought-invincible demon, Vinceres. However, while Prue eventually learned to control it, the power left her immediately after the battle as she was never meant to have it.

To Release an Empath from his Gift

 * Free the Empath,
 * Release his gift,
 * Let his pain be cast adrift.


 * (It is important that when casting the spell there is no physical contact with the Empath as the power will transfer in the caster of the spell ("Primrose Empath").