What's the trick with camera parenting?

When I use the parent actuator the camera ends up at like -80z. Most of the time I want the camera to just follow the character, but when he enters certain areas the camera gets tangled up in the terrain. I would like to be able to parent the camera to an empty and have it track the character from there.
Thanks in advance for your help.

Please do a search both here and in the Tutorials for camera parenting. Try using google with this domain.

Never figured out how to parent the camera to something in-game, but I did finally find the change active camera actuator. Much easier.