Home | Appearance | Descriptors | Occupation | Role | Abilities | Banes and Boons | Limitations | Eminence
Terminology | Ability Burn | Action Scene | Aspiration | Bane | Boon | Breaking Point | Character Sheet | Credo | Dice Rolls | Downtime | Exploration Scene | Initiative | Influence | Impediment | Multi-action Penalty | Obsession | Positioning | Pivotal Event | Range | Round | Surge | Turn | Treasure | Zone

Eminence


Nobody is successful on their own. You have allies, colleagues, disciples, family, fans, followers, friends, investors, mentors, partners, protégés, sidekicks, staff, students, subscribers, supporters, teachers, etc. who help you rise to positions of power, prestige, and/or success. A character's eminence is the culmination of all the different people and organizations they have influence over. Every character has a list of influences they've gathered. An influence is an NPC or organization that the character has befriended. The GM can grant characters free influences to begin with, but normally gameplay begins with no influences.


WHAT DO INFLUENCES DO?
Influences are important because they not only provide you excellent roleplaying opportunities, they can also provide discounts on:
You can create NPCs of your own and even write backstories for how they know your character or meet NPCs during gameplay. NPCs always start at indifferent unless noted otherwise by the GM.


HIRELING COSTS
Buying services and renting is a bit trickier than merely buying a solid product and maintenance costs and taxes and hidden fees and licensure can make things even more difficult.

Unskilled labor: (rank)2 credits/day
Skilled labor: (rank)2 x10 credits/day
Highly skilled labor: (rank)2 x100 credits/day + material component costs
Hazard Pay: x2 (danger), x4 (suicide mission or war)
Rarity:* x1 (common), x2 (uncommon), x3 (rare), x4 (unique)
Rent Item/Location: 1/1,000th cost of purchase per day of use for locations or vehicles, 1/100th cost of purchase per day of use for trained beasts and other items
*It is difficult to acquire uncommon goods and services without an influence that specializes in them and impossible to get rare and unique goods and services without an influence that specializes in them.

Lifestyle Upkeep per person: Poor 1 cred/day, Lower Class 10 creds/day, Middle class 100 creds/day, Upper Class 1,000 creds/day, Rich 10,000 creds/day. This assumes the upkeep of your wardrobe, sustenance, hygiene products, accessories, personal vehicle, shelter, and residence. You can assume any common item costing less than 1/10th your upkeep cost exists somewhere on your residence as long as you are Middle Class or higher.


Unskilled labor randos off the street
Skilled labor requires months of training
Highly skilled labor requires years of training
Hazard Pay: Any time a task is dangerous and threatens life and limb, it requires hazard pay. Moderate danger like day-to-day services as a bodyguard, guard, protective escort, sentry, bouncer, or similar gigs typically require only x2 hazard pay. However, particularly dangerous jobs like going off to war or taking on a suicide mission require x4 in hazard pay.
Rarity: A character is assumed to have the common feats, spells, and equipment affiliated with their race, class, etc. However, if they have uncommon, rare, or unity, abilities that are in demand, this typically demands higher pay.

It's assumed most NPCs know approximately what their services are worth. A successful attempt to Request a Favor can convince them to give a discount.


HOW DO INFLUENCES HELP?
When you attempt to buy a product or service from a friendly NPC or organization with a friendly rating equal to or lower than the rank of the produce or service, you get a 10% discount. Likewise, if you attempt to sell products or services of this rank or lower, they'll pay 10% more than normal.

This increases to 25% for helpful NPCs. Over time and with expensive purchases, this becomes a game changer economically.


EXAMPLE INFLUENCES
Below are some example influences.

Utar Evson (Example Influence 1) - Level 6 Medium Organic Humanoid (Human, Undead, Vampire) ♦ Friendly 5 ♦ Helpful 0
A weaselly and ugly vampire, Utar is an alchemist by trade. He buys and sells blood packs and alchemical creations. He can also be hired to analyze, research, or otherwise offer expertise in Alchemy.

Re'klaw Niks (Example Influence 2) - Level 6 Medium Organic Humanoid (Canid, Human, Shapeshifter) ♦ Friendly 6 ♦ Helpful 1
A tall brazen and hairy werewolf, Niks remains in human form most of the time but is happy to transform at the slightest hint of trouble. He's attuned to nature and enjoys the outdoors, like most of his kind. He's an excellent tracker and guide as well as a talented fighter. Niks is a ranger that can be hired as a guide through wilderness as well as a bodyguard.


GAINING INFLUENCE
Every time you significantly help an NPC, you can attempt to gain influence over them. This has a series of steps involved.

Step 1: Help:
This can include performing a favor or giving a gift to an NPC that they feel is significantly helpful. Even just doing or saying something that significantly impresses them could count at least once or twice. Many quests are favors for NPCs. The aid you give must be something the NPC wants and must be something they consider significant. Unsolicited aid or trivial gifts have no guarantee of influencing NPCs. Typically, every NPC wants something, and figuring out what they want as well as how to get it is part of a side quest to build influence with the NPC.


Step 2: Influence check:
Once you've helped an NPC, you can speak with them for at least a minute. Each time you do something they perceive as significantly helpful for them and their goals, you get to make a skill roll to improve their attitude towards you. You can only do this once per week normally. Attempting this more than once per week imposes a cumulative -2 penalty to the roll per attempt beyond the first. *Each NPC is weak to 1 or 2 of these skills and strong against 1 or 2. If you use one they're weak against, you need only 1 good check to improve their attitude permanently. If you use a weak one, the benefit is not only temporary, but if you ever fail, they'll turn on you and likely become unfriendly or even hostile depending on the severity of their distaste for your methods.

All NPCs start with an influence level of 0 unless noted otherwise. The DC to influence an NPC is 10 + Will save bonus, unless noted otherwise by circumstances. You may get circumstance bonuses or penalties to this check based on your deeds and reputation.

An NPC that is influenced by you is friendly. Negative influence levels imply that they've become unfriendly or even hostile. Each time you successfully influence them, you can increase this level of influence to a maximum equal to their level (max). The NPC will offer to buy and sell you goods and services, offering you a 10% discount on things you purchase and paying you 10% more on things they buy from you (paying you 60% instead of 50% when they buy items from you or 35% instead of 10% for broken items), but they only trade in certain products and services based on the NPC's profession.


Step 3: Greater Influence: Once you've maxed out an NPC's influence, any additional influence begins building on the helpful track instead of friendly. For example, if you gained 3 influence levels with a level 6 NPC that was already friendly 5, you'd cap out at friendly 6 and they'd become helpful 2 as well.


Allocating Influence: You can forfeit an influence at any time to make room for a new one.

If you have influence over 3 NPCs of significant rank within an organization, you can merge them into one Influence and change the influence name to the organization. This drops your influence back down the lowest of the 3 and allows you to build it up again but for the whole organization rather than just individual NPCs. When building influence with an organization, you increase that organization's level (and thus the level of their leadership) rather than the level of any one NPC.
*You cannot do this for the Material Realm and must do so planet, by planet in this plane.

Merging influences into large groups is how you become famous in those areas, with everyone within those areas offering you discounts and assistance.


USING INFLUENCE
NPCs typically have a niche field of goods and services they provide but you can expand these fields by merging influences (see Merging Influences).

Each NPC has a list of items and services they specialize in and they'll offer you a 10% discount on purchases of this type from them if they're friendly or 25% if they're helpful but only on items and services within the level of influence you have. Anything higher than that is full price. Hiring them as a hireling often works but only for the jobs they want to do.

You can request a favor but risk reducing influence if its too much.






==========Back to Top==========