While planning my next campaign, I was brushing up on some of the core rules regarding influence tests and endevors and an idea for an auction came to mind
Say the group need a particular star chart or piece of machinery for a new colony, there's a ship coming to port selling what they need but another party is also looking to aquire it and there's only one. So, they meet at auction in a battle of the wallets.
The first bid is a skill test against their PF. No degrees needed, just a straight success. The other party offers their bid doing the same.
Next, the first party makes a second PF roll with a -10
Rince and repeat with an accumulative -10 per round of bids.
If one side fails, they can deside to succeed by permminantly reducing their total PF by the degrees of failure.
Their PF is only reduced if they win the item at the end and they can burn PF as many times as they like to succeed.
They can also bribe various parties before hand, to say increase their total PF just for the auction or ignored a single fail (regardless of degrees of failure)
This is just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are flaws and ways to improve it but I liked it and thought I'd share, see what the masses think =)