Sleeper Agent - Ascension Influence Talent

By Schwarzie, in Dark Heresy Rules Questions

You will find this Talent on page 118 in the Ascension Rulebook.

Did i overlook something or is this talent utter crap?

It basically gives you the same options as the "Just one thing i ask of you" Influence rule, but you have to pay xp AND loose fixed 5 influence points vs a 1d5 with the basic rule.

What about fixing it, so that it only gives -1 to the single body of the empire you are using it and only for the Agent with the talent?

It does sound rather poor, doesn't it?

I suppose the idea is that this talent allows you to manipulate organisations that are immune to "The one thing I ask of you" and thus you could use it to bring down elements of your sworn enemy's plans or to steal their own resources out from under them. Maybe your cadre is operating covertly and doesn't want to throw about their Inquisitorial authority: This gives you another way to make sure you get what you want.

I'm not saying it's cost-effective, or even a good choice, but it's possible to extrapolate on how it works and find ways of making it useful.

Dr. Schadenfreude said:

It does sound rather poor, doesn't it?
I'm not saying it's cost-effective, or even a good choice, but it's possible to extrapolate on how it works and find ways of making it useful.
Well, i wrote down my way to make it a valid choice, any ideas about that? Good, bad? OP, UP?

Apart from that: Yeah right, i can do one thing you cant do with "One Thing i ask of you" you can get a automatically passed influence trest for a hostile organization. But i think thats a bit far fetched, especially since some Careers will receive this talent more then once. And its a bit illogical that basically hurting the cadres enemys by stealing stuff from under their nose kills influence you have with proper[tm] organizations.

*Shrug*

I've written some things, changed my mind and, in the end, I've just given up completely. I really don't see how the talent is supposed to be used or why you'd ever think to use it.

If you want to make Sleeper Agent a talent that actually gets used, your idea isn't a bad one. So long as you limit how often the players can use it, and keep their options within the bounds of reason, I'd say that'd work for me.

Edit: One thing I've been reminded of, that I actually mentioned in my first post, is that Sleeper Agent lets you get whatever you want without having to use influence openly.