Given that Enhance Athletics, Resilience, Brawl, Coordination, Piloting (Planetary and Space) and also Manipulate, Control upgrade that applies force dice to Mechanics checks are all worded identically to the control upgrade for influence, does that mean the followingAll of those things are perceived only in the mind of the target. It is the target’s mind that you are influencing with the “Influence” power.Basically your using the force to alter your voice, body language, pheromones, speech patterns and micro expressions to make yourself more charismatic, or intimidating or believable etc.
The first question you should ask yourself is where are the effects perceived?
Are the effects perceived only in the mind of the target? Then that is the only thing the power is affecting.
Are the effects perceived in the mind of the person being enhanced? Then that is the thing that the power is affecting.
Now, things get a little different when the power can affect inanimate objects. Inanimate objects can’t perceive that they are being thrown through the air, but they inanimate object is still being affected by the power.
Getting back to the topic, for the Influence power, who is being influenced?
As Bradknowles stated, it goes back to who is precieving the effect? If everyone within earshot were affected by that player's use of the Social upgrade, not just those covered by the Magnitude upgrade, then you could say that the user is enhancing his own natural charisma. However, this is not the case. The only targets subject to the "boosted:" social skills are those limited to the user's Magnitude upgrades (or lack thereof). If there are five guards in the room, and you try to order them to leave their posts with the door unlocked, using Influence in conjunction with a Social check, but you only have one Magnitude upgrade, only two of those Guards will be affected. The boost only applies to those two guards. Against the other two, you are stuck with the base die roll. Thus, it is the target's mind being affected, not the user's natural ability.The titles they have used for powers and talents have been rather generic to the point they have been misleading. Precision Strike has a portion of its ability able to work with ranged hits and gunnery. Suppressing Fire works with all combat checks, not just ranged fire. There are plenty more examples. You have to look to the wording of the long descriptions of talents, force upgrades etc, to see exaxctly how they work. The last time I had a similar discussion everyone else said I was completely wrong about how I understood Precision Strike to work , and that whole discussion was about 1/ a section of wording not even in the description and 2/ was totally regarding how the talent worked with ranged combat even though it was called Strike. Turned out that RAW and RAI I actually wasn't even going far enough with how it was supposed to work.
Why is this relevant, well go look at the long description of the upgrade and it tells you how it works. 1/ it makes YOU more charismatic and makes YOUR arguments more cohesive. It does not target anyone but yourself and is triggered by YOU making a social check, allowing you to make an INFLUENCE POWER check with the roll adding advantage or success to the result. It says nothing about the influence check targetting anyone here. The wording tells you exactly how it works and it works identically to how enhance :(Skill) works in the enhance tree and it works identically to the identically worded control upgrade in Manipulate, the title of the power gives some cohesion to the tree ,you are still trying to influence a target, just not directly with the force, as that is covered by the other control upgrade and not this control upgrade OR EVEN THE BASIC POWER.(which doesn't even influence the target, it ONLY causes strain damage)
Tramp, as some who GMs this game AND plays it, I have to say you still have alot to learn about the system. There is no range required for using influence with social checks. The strength, range, and magnitude upgrades apply only to the basic power. This is consistent with all other force powers in the game.
Once again, influence can be used on even special social actions and are not required to use strength, range, or magnitude upgrades. It is simply force point equals succes/advantage. Your overcomplicating the rules by applying every upgrade together.
Once again, the influence check combined with social checks can be used over the comms of a star ship, via holomessager across the galaxy, and even to two people at medium range.
Have you even played the game yet?