Under the new system you have full access to all of your skills/sups without any empowerment. The downside is that your sups commune at your level -1 without any empowerment. If your patron empowers you partially (ie to level 40) then you no longer have the penalty on sups that are level 40 and lower. You would still have the -1 penalty on sups that are higher level than your empowered level.