Influence
Nobody is successful on their own. You have allies, business partners, colleagues, family, fans, followers, friends, investors, mentors, supporters, etc. who help you rise to positions of power, prestige, and/or success. The Influence system helps players to build, record, track, and utilize influence over NPCs and organizations. Much of your wealth and power comes from influence rather than literal cash in your pocket. Your power in the game can vary a lot based on the friends (and enemies) you make.
WHAT DO INFLUENCES DO?
Influences are important because they not only provide you excellent roleplaying opportunities, they can also provide discounts on:
- armor, weapons, and adventuring gear
- food, drink, lodgings
- helpful information needed for quests
- new side quests
- repairs and upgrades
- training and retraining special abilities
- transportation and access to certain places and people that you otherwise couldn't get to
- ability to make new influences that normally wouldn't even consider allying with you unless you allied with someone else first
- stable banking and storage location for your wealth, equipment, lodgings, etc.
- base of operations
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 friendly 1 unless noted otherwise by the GM.
Hireling Costs
NPC class levels: (level)2 silver/day
PC or monster: (level)2 gold/day
Spellcasting: (spell tier x 2)2 gold + material component costs per spell
Spellcasting: (level)2 platinum + material component costs per day
HOW DO INFLUENCES HELP?
When you attempt to buy a product or service from a friendly NPC or organization with a level equal to or lower than their friendly rating, you get a 10% discount. Likewise, if you attempt to sell products or services they desire of equal or lower level, they'll pay 10% more than normal. This increases to 25% for helpful ratings. Over time and with expensive purchases, this becomes a game changer economically. An item's level is equal to quadruple it's armor/shield/weapon bonus or caster level, whichever is greater and a service's level is equal to the level of the character providing the service.
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.
Step 2: Influence check:
Once you've helped an NPC, you can speak with them for at least a minute and make an appropriate Charisma-based skill check to improve your influence over them.
- You could use Diplomacy to establish trade relations, negotiations, or build a friendship.
- Intimidation through crimes and acts of terror can frighten people into submission.
- Perform allows you to use recreation and showmanship to impress and entertain others.
- Bluff helps to convince people to follow along with other things you do. For example, deceiving someone into believing the gold-plated kettle you're selling them is actually solid gold and therefore worth a lot more may trick them into believing you're giving them a significant gift when it's actually a trivial one. Each time deception is used to improve influence, the NPC gains a deceived token marked on your influence over them. Each time they discover a deception, they lose half these tokens and drop your influence over them by the same amount + 1d12 (minimum 1), possibly moving them to unfriendly. Once an NPC has discovered you deceived them, they gain a +20 bonus to resist future influence via deception by you. This bonus drops by 1 for each time you successfully influence them until eventually hitting 0 again.
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.
- Critical Success: Your influence with the target increases by 1d4 levels.
- Success: Your influence with the target increases by 1 level.
- Failure: Your influence with the target decreases by 1 level.
- Critical Failure: Your influence with the target decreases by 1d4 levels. If this drops it to 0 or less, you lose the influence and they become unfriendly as their default attitude.
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 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.
If you have influence over 3 organizations of significant clout within a city, town, or village, you can merge them into one influence and change the name to the city, town, or village.
If you have influence over 3 cities, towns, or villages of significant clout within a region or nation, you can merge them into one influence and change the name to the region or nation.
If you have influence over 3 nations or regions of significant clout within a continent, you can merge them into one influence and change the name to the continent.
If you have influence over 3 continents on the same plane*, planet or realm, you can merge them into one influence and change the name to the plane*, planet, or realm.
*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.
INFLUENCE TIERS
NPCs are tier 1 influences. You can merge 3 Tier 1 influences into one Tier 2 influence if they are all part of the same organization or town, allowing you to hold sway over an entire organization or town instead of just 3 people. To do this, you must have all three helpful towards you. Merging them into one influence changes your condition and level of influence to the lowest of the three. Improving the attitude of the entire organization or town merely requires you to improve your influence with any NPC that has a position of power or influence within the organization.
You can also merge 3 tier 2 influences within the same country, nation, kingdom, or providence into one influence to hold sway over an entire region (tier 3 influence).
You can merge 3 tier 3 influences within the same continent into one influence to hold sway over an entire continent (tier 4 influence).
You can merge 3 tier 4 influences on the same planet into one to hold sway over an entire planet (tier 5 influence).
There is no influence above tier 5, but you can collect multiple tier 5 influences by continually merging other types of influences.