I had the empathy perk as a Noble. The stalk the girlfriend quest in Oakshire. She catches the player after we leave the blacksmith and asks us what we're doing. Option number 3, "Empathy - Lost wallet" or something. Then I got new gear with the gold reward, cleared the castle, and unlocked "Empathy" on the perk tree cause my one brain cell decided to not work today. With the game's autosave bug overwriting all my saves... now I have to restart the whole game again
Edit: Character creation only mentions the Blessed perk, but judging from the dialogue options... think they messed up removing the perk?
Also for anyone wanting to save scum. The promote Cassandra's shop quest, if you reject the discount to see the dialogue, then reload to accept the discount... you ain't getting the discount. It's locked to 5 hp potions. Unless there's no discount in the first place because they didn't code it right?? I don't know if other quest rewards also have this issue, I guess just act like the chosen rewards are locked in. So if you really wanted the other option... you gotta restart the game
Edit 2: Does anyone know if Mage has a hidden perk? Wiki doesn't say. I'm no longer playing Noble, don't like half the skills needing me to cough up gold. I can't even afford good gear, much less throwing gold around