So after rereading Eisenhorn I became quite enamored with the idea of being an Inquisitor with the kind of organization the titular hero had. The web of contacts, the several properties (clandestine and otherwise) the gun cutter, and all the rest. Dark Heresy is a game about being an acolyte, but becoming an inquisitor certainly isn't off the table.

So that got me thinking. Influence is quantified rather abstractly in this game, reducing things like properties, company stakes, contacts, and favors into one neat little metric. Whether or not this is good or bad is a whole other matter. However, the books don't really give options or even examples of acquiring things that aren't specifically gear. How difficult is it to acquire a spire-manse? Keep a staff of Lexi-wrights in your employ?

The best way to represent that is through Profit Factor from Rogue Trader, where things that aren't necessarily weapons, armor, or tools can be acquired as per RAW. I haven't done all that much research into it, but would DH2 Influence match up 1:1 with RT Profit Factor? Is that something a group of players could conceivably do?

Has anyone gotten that far in their games, where establishing a base of operations becomes just as important as hiring, directing, and coordinating cells of acolytes? If so, what did you use and how did you rule it?

Once players actually get to the level of interrogators and inquisitors you've entered Ascension territory. From this point forward you are going to have to start making up a lot of of your own costs and benefits. We don't currently have written rules to properly describe the things you are proposing. Influence is more designed to cover bribes, transport, and small purchases.

Property, Staff, and vehicles and other big ticket purchases are another matter. You could use profit factor. I'd just give them a set of conditions to meet to gain certain big ticket items with their Inquisitor.

You could alternatively bring back physical money like in Dark Heresy first edition. Extrapolate prices from salaries.

I have yet to get this point, but I have run both Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy and can tell you the profit factor system and the influence systems aren't ideal.

I'd just give them a set of conditions to meet to gain certain big ticket items with their Inquisitor.

I'd just handle it narrativly. If they play out the aquisition of said assets well, just give it to them. If they don't describe it well, or don't want to play it out: tough luck. It's not that easy...

I have played a bit of Rogue Trader and can see where PF can be dumb (looking at you, achievement points) but where does Influence go wrong?

I have played a bit of Rogue Trader and can see where PF can be dumb (looking at you, achievement points) but where does Influence go wrong?

Influence is inexplicably a personal resource in a game where the PCs are members of the same team under the command of a sugar daddy with nigh-infinite resources.

Influence goes very wrong all the time. The main problem is how much extra work it creates for the GM.

To start off, Influence does two things.

First, it tells you if you can influence a person. That's charm, command, and deceive crossing over with a new stat with little in the way of guidance as to which of the two stats to use.

Second, it lets you buy things. This was a way of removing money from the game. I get why they did it. It makes perfect sense in Deathwatch. Someone at Fantasy Flight thought it was a great idea to unite the systems and do away with all money. In Dark Heresy small purchases from street vendors are common, small bribes are common, and paying for housing is common; and they figured they would put it all under one stat. Dark Heresy characters though are on the bottom rung of society. Influence doesn't decrease like money. It creates this black box of how GM's should deal with item requests. I've taken to giving the players a number of 'asks' when they complete a mission, but it doesn't really simulate money properly. You can't bank influence. You're a constantly assaulted by player requests to get things, and you have to give them a dice roll. It makes no sense. Ammunition still exists. Why doesn't money ? The item prices are also a huge mess because they only have a few different rarities for the majority of the items. Trading opens a second kettle of fish. Game economic systems are hard to get right. I understand that. Influence should be a party wide stat. Not a individual stat.

I have played a bit of Rogue Trader and can see where PF can be dumb (looking at you, achievement points) but where does Influence go wrong?

Influence is inexplicably a personal resource in a game where the PCs are members of the same team under the command of a sugar daddy with nigh-infinite resources.

Why do people always ignore that there is a group influence value. That's what the inquisitor's influence is. It just warns that overuse should have consequences as you are potentially damaging his carefully crafted network of allies, favors and money. It also goes up and down based on the groups actions and is harmed by failing the tests badly enough just like the individual stats.

Individual Influence is to represent that each character came into the team with their own connections, reputations, favors owed to them and personal wealth. Influence represents much more than cash. It makes perfect sense that a nobleborn adept would have a different personal resource pool than a feral world guardsman. It also is separate to represent that characters can go above and beyond in missions to earn more than others on the team. For example, during a run-in with smelt rats my tech priest took auger scans of a smelt rat king, scavenged several of the corpses afterward, autopsied them and wrote up a report to the biologis. He got 1 influence for it. This was all unrelated to the heresy we were actually investigating and was completely a side project of his own so why should everyone necessarily get a reputation bump from the tech priest taking some extra initiative.

Another example would be if a cleric or officer type guard or arbites chracter lead a charge into battle while a sage character stays behind in the bunker to read documents because he has no place on the battlefield. Obviously this will be a greater boon on the reputation of the character leading the attack.

Influence goes very wrong all the time. The main problem is how much extra work it creates for the GM.

To start off, Influence does two things.

First, it tells you if you can influence a person. That's charm, command, and deceive crossing over with a new stat with little in the way of guidance as to which of the two stats to use.

Second, it lets you buy things. This was a way of removing money from the game. I get why they did it. It makes perfect sense in Deathwatch. Someone at Fantasy Flight thought it was a great idea to unite the systems and do away with all money. In Dark Heresy small purchases from street vendors are common, small bribes are common, and paying for housing is common; and they figured they would put it all under one stat. Dark Heresy characters though are on the bottom rung of society. Influence doesn't decrease like money. It creates this black box of how GM's should deal with item requests. I've taken to giving the players a number of 'asks' when they complete a mission, but it doesn't really simulate money properly. You can't bank influence. You're a constantly assaulted by player requests to get things, and you have to give them a dice roll. It makes no sense. Ammunition still exists. Why doesn't money ? The item prices are also a huge mess because they only have a few different rarities for the majority of the items. Trading opens a second kettle of fish. Game economic systems are hard to get right. I understand that. Influence should be a party wide stat. Not a individual stat.

I disagree with a lot of this.

First, its pretty clear to me that influence tests in social situations are primarily for bribes and name dropping, and boasting(either your own "do you know who I am" type statements or mentioning relevant connections you have). This is pretty separate from any of the social skills. Or if you encounter a situation in which its fuzzy, just combine them. Influence is a characteristic so you could for example take a charm test using influence instead of fellowship.

It makes perfect sense for Dark Heresy as well. It made no sense in first edition having characters with both adeptus and inquisition connections having so little resources as to have to choose between ammo and food. A monthly paycheck also only really worked if the party had regular contact with the inquisition which is far less likely in the Askellon sector. It also led to a lot of undignified looting and getting off task doing odd jobs to make pocket change. Inquisition agents shouldn't have to resort to begging on street corners. Even first edition switched to an influence system at ascension level.

I don't see how it creates more work for the GM, it should be much less. By the old system the GM had to reign in looting, had to remember to regularly pay the characters, which meant keeping more precise track of passage of time, and keep track of how much each character's monthly pay was(differed by class and rank) and had to deal with a lot more micro managing of little purchases like food. Now you can just assume the characters can at least get sh*tty food when they need it without anybody having to even bring it up you just assume the characters are eating occassionally and there is no incentive to loot junk to pawn. GMs also still had to deal with rarity, whether to adjust it up or down by location, then the players often had to make rolls like inquiry to find the items based on that rarity then the GM had to decide if the price would be more or less based on location and how much the merchant or whatever would try to scam them(commerce, charm and scrutiny tests perhaps) before the character actually paid for the item. So just as much rolling if not more and a whole extra variable for the GM to work out. Money was a huge pain for players and GMs and I'm glad to see it gone.

Dark heresy characters are most definitely not the bottom rung of society. Merely being tied to adeptus puts them far and above the average manufactorum worker. Pretty much all arbitrators outrank all local law enforcement for example. Highborn would not be an option if all characters were meant to be bottom of the barrel of society. Some characters such as a feral world outcast may be bottom rung but not all characters. Even outcasts can be relatively successful hired guns or drug dealers or something at the point of character creation.

Influence doesn't decrease like money because it doesn't just represent money. It represents wealth (much different from just money), reputation and connections. While it doesn't decrease like money it does go down if you badly fail the tests or if you choose to burn it or if you fail in your missions. When dealing with requisitions remind you're players that narratively they still have to go out and find the thing they want, and perhaps haggle or negotiate price or make contact with somebody who owes them a favor and wait for that person to deliver etc. Depending on rarity it could take time that they don't have. Requisition tests are not instantaneous things. Trying to get multiple tough to find items at the same time could take days or even weeks to find everything depending on the type of world they are on. Some items may also simply be unavailable or much harder to get like plasma flasks on a feral world.

You don't have to give them a roll. You are GM, you have the right to say no to unreasonable requests. Just have a better reason than "because I say so" and try to be even handed with it between players, such as "it will take awhile are you sure you have that kind of time" (If they don't take the hint let them roll to get it and then have the cult they were hunting succeed at something horrible because they wasted between hours and days trying to find a grav gun or whatever, then dock their influence for their failure and maybe have the inquisitor scold them about priorities) or "an item like that is not available (or at an additional -30) on a planet this primitive". Apply the subtlety loss from getting things with negative modifiers and at least sticking to a loose what makes sense, "how are you carrying all that" carry capacity even if not keeping track of exact weights could also help.

There is a party wide influence stat, the inquisitor's influence.

There is a party wide influence stat, the inquisitor's influence.

That's not a party wide stat, that's a stat for an NPC that may or may not have any screen time (and eff writing crunch for anything the players don't encounter). It's also completely unrelated to the players' characters (a party of all piss-poor feral worlders has the same 'party' Influence as a group of silver-spoon nobles if they both work for the same boss). I'd also like to point out that the rules for using the Inquisitor's Influence are in a chapter for the GM, so it's really easy for players to just not know this action is available to them (great editing, FFG).

To get back to the OP's question, there aren't any rules for the uses of Influence you see in the Eisenhorn books. I suspect this kind of thing will be expanded upon in a future supplement, but in the meantime you'll have to either hand wave it or come up with a system on your own. In my games (in which none of the players are Inquisitors) this kind of thing is handled off screen by their patron. So they'll get a mission and their boss will have secured a safehouse, identity papers, transportation, etc. The logistics of setting all that up is something nobody in my group has expressed any interest in, so it gets hand waved.

To the OP: You kind of have to wing it with those sorts of resources or have the setup be more of a roleplaying thing than influence tests. Players should always keep an eye out for PCs who could be useful down the line, these could be named characters intended to be story important that the PCs can just keep in mind to bring up if they need a hand later or they can be unnamed random NPC's that get a string a good luck and do something cool who the players can then recruit making them important. At one point we had armsmen with us during a daemon attack. One of them managed to actually pass the fear test and then multiple times rolled max damage with his shotgun actually injuring the thing. Even though it was technically dumb luck in character he impressed us so we offered him a job rather than killing him for witnessing a daemon. That is at least part of how you can build a contact network. Another is if the players keep going to the same place for supplies give the merchant a name and play out some of the interactions so he can grow to be thought of as an ally.

Also rather than having characters roll for those sorts of things you could have it built in to missions as a representation of influence gained for success. For example, if the final encounter for a mission involves storming a mansion and killing the noble, some of the rewarded influence could narratively be described as the characters now owning the mansion. Perhaps they are on a ship in which the command crew are found to be heretics. After leading a mutiny and killing the command crew their influence increase could be from claiming the ship and any of the crew who helped them as inquisition property.

For rolling for some of this stuff you can get some idea from the services section on page 129 as it has rarities for accommodations at least.
A spire suite is listed as rare so a spire manse could perhaps be very rare perhaps even more after the team and GM discuss what sort of labs, holding cells, defenses and such they want in their base. Then perhaps the team could make some skill tests or other lesser influence tests to set up some of those specific facilities. For stocking an armory or equivalent the easiest thing might be to use Rogue traders modifiers for number of items being procured. Lexi-wrights you could roughly use the medical care table substituting the medical related references for whatever service you are looking for of the appropriate quality. So for example it says poor med care is average while excellent is very rare. So perhaps poor soldiers are average and excellent soldiers are very rare. Same with poor vs. excellent lexi-wrights.

I haven't really compared profit factor to influence very much but I'll try to comment. Step one I guess would be to see if item rarities line up although it gets somewhat thrown off by the modifier table for buying multiples. Also keep in mind that a Rogue Trader's starting profit factor+ship points (90 when added together) is probably more comparable to an Inquisitor's influence (75 minimum) not to a starting acolyte. Even though the profit factor on its own ends up being roughly around the same range as an acolyte, influence would encompass the wealth represented by access to a ship so I believe its better to compare it to the profit factor+ship point value.

There is a party wide influence stat, the inquisitor's influence.

That's not a party wide stat, that's a stat for an NPC that may or may not have any screen time (and eff writing crunch for anything the players don't encounter). It's also completely unrelated to the players' characters (a party of all piss-poor feral worlders has the same 'party' Influence as a group of silver-spoon nobles if they both work for the same boss). I'd also like to point out that the rules for using the Inquisitor's Influence are in a chapter for the GM, so it's really easy for players to just not know this action is available to them (great editing, FFG).

To get back to the OP's question, there aren't any rules for the uses of Influence you see in the Eisenhorn books. I suspect this kind of thing will be expanded upon in a future supplement, but in the meantime you'll have to either hand wave it or come up with a system on your own. In my games (in which none of the players are Inquisitors) this kind of thing is handled off screen by their patron. So they'll get a mission and their boss will have secured a safehouse, identity papers, transportation, etc. The logistics of setting all that up is something nobody in my group has expressed any interest in, so it gets hand waved.

Its an NPC stat that all the player characters are free to use and "it may be altered based on the warband's recent successes and failures as well as subtlety" (pg 270) and can be reduced by badly failed tests just like their individual influences. So for all mechanical purposes it is a group influence value.
Also you are wrong on its location in the book. The GM only section starts on page 349, the part about using the inquisitor's influence is on page 240 in the Influence and subtlety section of the Narrative Tools Chapter. This is the chapter with all the rules for narrative encounters so is clearly still meant for the players to look at.

So you argue its not a group stat because a group of feral worlders and highborn characters would have the same value, but in your previous post you say "Influence is inexplicably a personal resource in a game where the PCs are members of the same team under the command of a sugar daddy with nigh-infinite resources". Do you not see how these two arguments contradict one another? If your argument is that it should be a group stat because they all work for the same "sugar daddy with nigh-infinite resources" then it should make perfect sense to you that two vastly different teams would have the same group influence based on who their boss is regardless of the individual members between groups. The difference in their personal influence represents the feral world vs. highborn difference as that is each characters' starting connections and wealth. All of the nobles sharing just one influence makes about as much sense as getting a joint bank account with all your coworkers then telling all your friends that any favors owed to you are owed to those same coworkers. In this analogy the inquisitor's influence would be akin to your company's budget and assets while individual influence is your own private wealth.

The current influence system is more like if 1st ed gave the team as a whole a mission budget that they could get in trouble for using frivolously and then each party member got the monthly pay, as written, to spend however they wanted.

I was very happy to see hard currency eliminated from DH2 (since keeping track of individual coins is something that should be limited to games where money is the main motivation of the PCs), but its pretty obvious that Influence is a badly underdeveloped system that is barely adequate for its purpose...

For the OP: Mechanically, PF is primarily different from Influence in that it allows for scale of purchase (As In more of the Item or bigger stuff). Mathematically, this would mean you would have to subtract 30 from the Acolytes influence in order to use the RT system. (A single Item purchase in RT gives a +30 modifier). Since all Influence acquisitions are considered to be single purchases this is how it would play out in RT. Conversely, to express a RT's influence in DH, add 30 to their base PF. This puts a beginning RT (At about PF 40) on the same par with an Inquisitor which is about right!

Say what you will about Ascension, but that book can at times be a goldmine for interesting ideas that can easily be adapted.

In this case, Ascension introduced Influence as a stat for DH1, and the book offered a couple of uses for it. Including setting up contacts and bases.

Setting up Acolyte cells permanently subtracted 5 Influence from the Inquisitor. In exchange, he or she gained the option to either send this NPC cell on independent missions with the GM rolling for success or failure in secret. Alternatively, the Inquisitor could requisition the services of individual cell members.

Meanwhile, establishing holdings also carried a permanent Influence cost, though the exact value depended on the type of safehouse. A "secret sanctuary" (small building or living quarters) was available at only -3 Influence, an "isolated retreat" (medium-sized building such as a lodge or tower in an isolated location) was -5 Influence, a "fortified manse" (large building with several wings, guards, library, dungeon and other facilities) carried a cost of -10, and a "grand estate" (vast area of land or volume of hive, enclosed and guarded with several buildings within) would cost you a whopping -15 Influence.

GM the game without currency, then come here and tell me how much fun you are having. Why not remove ammunition ? Some rules lite systems have players roll a dice every turn to see if they have expended all their ammunition. This is an infuriating mechanic, but it speeds up the game at the expense of realism.

Currency is the same to me. If you are going to track bullets why not track currency ?

In second edition you will keep running into 'can I get this or not ?' 'We've moved locations can I get this or not' ? 'I want this. Can I get it or not ?' For a certain population of the player base these requests are constant and infuriating. This is also why no PC RPG that I know of use a similar system. This is what you get playing with real people as opposed to just reading the rulebook. Money closes that gap. It's a finite resource like ammunition. It's a little annoying, but it keeps the requests at bay.

With Deathwatch people are on mission normally. Stores wouldn't cater to space marines, so the mechanic makes perfect sense. I do abstract things like food and lodging because I feel those slow down the game, but weapons, armor, and items are far different.

The big purchases and acquiring cells aren't something I ever see players doing as mere Acolytes - it was more a question of something that could happen down the line. I see the arguments on both sides for the Influence system. I agree that money bogs down the game with a reliance on looting and counting change, but the Influence system leaves a lot of gaps the way it is written. I am curious to see how it plays out in our game, knowing how my fellow players deal with the Requisition system from Only War.

Setting up Acolyte cells permanently subtracted 5 Influence from the Inquisitor. In exchange, he or she gained the option to either send this NPC cell on independent missions with the GM rolling for success or failure in secret. Alternatively, the Inquisitor could requisition the services of individual cell members.

Pretty similar (in theory) to reinforcement characters - not the Superfriends Brigade, but spending 1-2 points of influence to 'hire' a starting-ish level alternate PC to do stuff for you either 'off-camera' or to replace your own character for jobs he's ill-suited for.

Spending influence on estates, etc, is a good one that I did actually use in Rogue Trader - taking it back the other way - when the explorers wanted to buy a suitable Manse on Port Wander.

Essentially, my standing rule of thumb for profit/influence:

Is this a one-off payment/favour/purchase?

• Yes - then an Influence check on your influence determines if you can afford it out of your available funds/contacts/etc. If prepared to say "we're from the Inquisition", and/or put in a call to the Man from =][=, then check on the Inquisitor's influence, which is going to be 75+ under most circumstances. If failed, then burn influence (if you're prepared to) from your score or your Inquisitor's score to automatically pass the check, representing calling in favours or pulling funds from secure guild banking accounts, etc.
• No - if it's something which represents an ongoing expense - facilities, personnel, or any indefinite service (such as a stock of weapons plus regular and unlimited resupplies of ammo), then it should have a permenant influence cost.

As to players spending forever trying to buy X, Y and Z - Rogue Trader had a suggested limit of a cumulative -10 modifier to your profit each time you try to use it in a session, to stop endless shopping trips. Alternatively you could allow acquisition tests equal to the Influence Bonus.

GM the game without currency, then come here and tell me how much fun you are having.

I GM the game without currency and I have a lot of fun with it. As do my players.

Though to be fair, I have the good fortune of having a bunch of really awesome players without a single munchkin among them; so my perspective might not be representative.

I have to disagree with Vorzak. If you have a decent, mature group, it can work, but if you have one person who even thinks along the lines of how fog mentioned (Can I have this? Why can't I have this? ARE WE THERE YET, DADDY?), influence/profit factor etc. is an annoyance enabler that is very hard to get under control beyond a resolute "GET OUT!".

I'm not trying to belittle anyone, but I'm a big fan of clear rules about money. How much I have and how much things cost. Economies do create GM problems. Fantasy Flight also doesn't always balance its prices very well between splat books.

It's not only the munchkin players that can be problematic with regard to Influence buying. The more mature players have said very clearly that 'I don't understand how the purchasing system works', 'Fog1234 starves us', and 'I don't like requisition because it takes forever', so even though they are not acting like animals during the game it's still a problem.

Calculation of the number of 'asks' you let players have per unit time and location has just replaced the annoyance that the existing money system used to create. Every time you set the arbitrary number of 'asks', you've set yourself up for GM fiat.

A GM can control this with fiat, but fiat is a double edged sword that negates the illusion of player control. You've only got so many times that you can fiat before your games might as well just be railroad tracks. If your players are completely comfortable with railroad tracks, then you're very lucky.

I haven't played 1st edition but would it be worth you adopting the currency system from 1st edition to replace the influence system and keeping everything else (assuming you are happy with most of the other stuff) 2nd edition?

It might cause some problems with pricing but I'm sure you could use prices given for similar items from 1st edition for indicative prices.

As for the OP questions I think others have answered it very well.

words

Nothing I've said contradicts itself, and I haven't even really made an argument. The problem the OP (and many others) is having is that the game clearly wants there to be a group resource but doesn't actually have one (and let's be honest, the boss NPC's stat thing is kind of a cop out).

Contrast the Influence system to Edge of the Empire's Obligation. Obligation is a personal resource that can be taken on (having more is a bad thing) to get something and the group's total Obligation affects how sessions play out. Having a high group Obligation makes all of the players want to reduce it and the game gives them the tools to manage it. Influence feels more like the idea of a system than a complete one.

I haven't played 1st edition but would it be worth you adopting the currency system from 1st edition to replace the influence system and keeping everything else (assuming you are happy with most of the other stuff) 2nd edition?

It might cause some problems with pricing but I'm sure you could use prices given for similar items from 1st edition for indicative prices.

As for the OP questions I think others have answered it very well.

Influence isn't perfect but the beancounting in DH1 is a nightmare. On top of reinforcing the urge to get money and loot everything, the way salaries work is laughably unequal - nobles get several hundred thrones per week while scum are lucky to get a few dozen.

Then again, DH1 is much more a game about poor dirt-farmers trying to survive in a world where there's a very real decision to be made when a fight breaks out and your ammo costs more than you make in a year. So if you're going for that it's not bad.

The inequality is part of the setting. This also reflected in the second edition rules for some of the classes having easier times obtaining items.

I do agree that there are problems with beancounting and looting in Dark Heresy First edition. That is a problem in virtually every roleplaying game. I've never seen this problem you speak of where ammunition costs so much that it's unfeasible to fire outside of bolters, which the party really shouldn't be using on vanilla humans. I refill ammo and grenades whenever they check in with the Inquisition. There is plenty of evidence in the books of Inquisitors having massive armories, and I think salary provides enough money to buy autogun rounds if things get tight.

I haven't played 1st edition but would it be worth you adopting the currency system from 1st edition to replace the influence system and keeping everything else (assuming you are happy with most of the other stuff) 2nd edition?

It might cause some problems with pricing but I'm sure you could use prices given for similar items from 1st edition for indicative prices.

As for the OP questions I think others have answered it very well.

I use the first edition rules my games after a nightmarish few sessions dealing with influence checks. Some prices I have to house rule where those items don't exist yet.

I do agree that there are problems with beancounting and looting in Dark Heresy First edition. That is a problem in virtually every roleplaying game.

This is really only true of D&D and derivatives (which DH most certainly is). There are plenty of RPGs that don't have this problem and to say that virtually all do only reinforces the misconception that this is a problem inherent to RPGs and not a failure of game design in this one in particular (and again, DH2 does improve in this department over DH1).

I know what you mean about the cost of ammo. A scummer in our player group in DH1 managed to acquire* a fully loaded Angelus Bolter.

Watching him trying to acquire reloads for it was painful.

At least it encouraged him to get good with it quickly. And frankly he got far more mileage waving it around as an intimidation tool than he would ever have done in a firefight.

* Don't ask.

DH2 still has the same problems DH1 had in regards to gear, you've just exchanged one number for another. Murderhobo will be murderhobo, regardless of ruleset.

There are plenty of RPGs that don't have this problem

Names, concretely.