As it stands currently, Influence is a characteristic that each character tracks independently, unlike the equivalent systems in Rogue Trader and Only War. This seems odd, honestly.

Firstly, there's little to nothing in the book to suggest individual boosts and gains to Influence, they're pretty much all party wide. This means the character who rolls 30 Influence is always going to be 15 points behind the guy that rolled 45. That kind of sucks, and is no fun for the guy who's permanently 15 points behind..

Secondly, aren't Acolytes supposed to work as a team, rather than a bunch of individuals? Surely they should be pooling resources, contacts etc to help complete their missions, which a single unified group Influence statistic would support much better than what we have currently.

What do you guys think about this?

Hmm, I can see both sides of the argument. Perhaps this rule represents the individual character's ability to make better use of the influence they have available? A habit of falling back on their individually preferred contacts, and improved knowledge on how to tap them, even if they are shared?

Ideally, it should result in the party not having one "Face" character but several, depending on who they are dealing with at the moment - always having the one who is familiar with the environment do the talking.

That being said, I think there should be an option to "assist", with one character in a Test being nominated the primary talker (and thus focus of the Test), but one other being able to reinforce their position with appropriate remarks or even thinly veiled threats. Even if it's just a +X bonus.

I'd say you can pretty easily cover that with skills that still test against the group Influence, though. I mean, Commerce already exists, as well as Peer talents and the like. Maybe include some subsets of Charm and Logic related to making best use of your assets?

You can increase your personal Influence through Peer and accomplishing stuff on your own. And you can also decrease it through "forced" requisition and by simply sitting idle for a whole year. Actually, one player can ruin his own Influence quite quickly... Just check out page 223 of the Beta.

Fair point, I hadn't considered those factors. I still find the whole thing a bit odd, though. The only other FFG system which separates things like this is Black Crusade, and that system is DESIGNED to foster conflict between players. I feel like if players are meant to be working as a cohesive team, resources should definitely be pooled. Influence shouldn't be remotely competitive in an Inquisition game.

If we're having this debate may I offer my Asset Network idea. Stat things like Influence, a business, gang of thugs or spy network their scale, purpose, effective skill level and any other relative traits (a 5 man data analysis team, a chaos cult, a trading space port and a crusade fleet are obviously completely different) and let players use them to do what such a thing should be able to do i.e. a guard regiment (type military, scale moderate, value 50) can threaten (value+intimidate) or attack (value+command) a city to get a relic but if they attack they take damage and their value drops. A noble house (type political/business, scale planety, value 62) can buy (value+comerce) said relic or have it moved.

This would let groups have there own way of doing things and keep the players working together.

I tried to address this in my proposed changes to influence by adding more things that players could do to change their individual influence. I've got to say, though, that it still didn't address the fact that the players are all sitting next to each other at a table or all in the same chat and it's easy enough to just cooperate and have the high influence player get everything. Even if you put limits in place to how many acquisitions you can make, players will just turn it into a game of having te low influence person get the minor stuff and the high influence person get bigger things and turn it into a meta game rather than following the spirit of the rules. The other issue is that it's a nightmare to run split up parties and bogs the game down, thus meaning that the players and GM are incentivized to all stay together, meaning you always have the best influence player on hand for anything.

So yeah, give the group all the same influence. OR it might be cool to do an individual influence system in which players only have access to items from their background, with mechanicus getting tech tools, guard getting guard stuff, scum getting sneaky things, and needing to use the inquisitors influence to acquire serious hardware. This kind of system could be made very detailed and granular, or it could be more abstract and simple. The peer talents could open up access to equipment and services from that organization.

I don't think we'll get a system that works for different values so make it a group stat.

I think it should be individual, but tbh I also think it should be folded in to Fellowship - For me, influence is just a downtime version of what you could do with the right fellowship checks in uptime.

It's a bit more than that. Would you settle for an opposed influence role to get a bonus to fellowship tests like RT had?

It's a bit more than that. Would you settle for an opposed influence role to get a bonus to fellowship tests like RT had?

Is that to my post, or the OP?

It's a bit more than that. Would you settle for an opposed influence role to get a bonus to fellowship tests like RT had?

Is that to my post, or the OP?

It was your post.

I wouldn't be opposed to it, but generally I don't like the idea of doing two dice rolls where one will do.

I guess my wider point is that I'd like it to be folded into Fellowship as that's an easier way of bringing it into the rest of the system - things like rank or pull can be simulated by talents like peer etc. It also means you don't need two sets of modifiers - one for fellowship and one for influence.

But influence has nothing to do with fellowship, in this instance.

It is a direct measure of ones personal influence with various institutions, read power. Influence is gained through doing things, missions, jobs, favours, etc etc, it has little to nothing to do with how charming you are, although it might gain you some additional leeway, in how much influence you gain for doing said acts.

Fellowship is your personal ability to be...personable, to use your charm, or persona to make people like you, or be scared of you, etc etc.

Influence is not how popular you are because of your good looks, Inquisitiors have a lot of influence, and that is because of their official pull, their title and what that entails gives them said pull..influence with other imperial institutions.

As for the OP, it totally depends on what kind of game you want to run no? if you want it simple..run it group wide, as the group will be completing the missions together for which ever institution has tasked them.

Or you can allow them individual Influence on the world they are on, as they do stuff to build up contacts and reputation within the society of that planet.

But influence has nothing to do with fellowship, in this instance.

It is a direct measure of ones personal influence with various institutions, read power. Influence is gained through doing things, missions, jobs, favours, etc etc, it has little to nothing to do with how charming you are, although it might gain you some additional leeway, in how much influence you gain for doing said acts.

Fellowship is your personal ability to be...personable, to use your charm, or persona to make people like you, or be scared of you, etc etc.

Influence is not how popular you are because of your good looks, Inquisitiors have a lot of influence, and that is because of their official pull, their title and what that entails gives them said pull..influence with other imperial institutions.

As for the OP, it totally depends on what kind of game you want to run no? if you want it simple..run it group wide, as the group will be completing the missions together for which ever institution has tasked them.

Or you can allow them individual Influence on the world they are on, as they do stuff to build up contacts and reputation within the society of that planet.

This saved me typing the same thing so thanks.

Pathstrider would you like it better if the rules gave a simple bonus to fellowship? maybe the differance between yours and theirs.

And welcome to the forums.

I think you can flip it either way - you can argue that fellowship (or other social stats, tbh) are the way that you get people to acknowledge they owe you favours, and how you call them in. And for me, that makes it a better set up for a RPG as it's placing the the roll more 'in the narrative' compared to influence rolls.

I think what I'm proposing is that I would prefer to do influence through fellowship, and do favours and such through talents. So for example, you do enough good deeds for the Mechanicus you get the peer talent (or something similar) that gives you a bonus calling in favours in the future. Or just alters their disposition to you, as in the social rules.

Potentially, if we're looking at a generic system POV, that means that an inquisitorial team could start off with a bonus talent if they flash the badge (Though I'm generally of the opinion that in any situation where it's worth rolling for, the fact you are part of the inquisition won't mean much).

You seem to be missing the point,

Influence is not fellowship, it is a measure of power, respect, fear, it is not so much the person but who or what they represent, the office gives the influence here, not the individual.

All inquisitors have a high starting influence...this is not because they all have amazing fellowship skills, it is the title and office, that allows them easier access to hard to get, or alien, forbidden technology and information.

Influence is supposed to be a direct measure of how easy you find it to procure objects, information and favours, from other instituions that you cannot just roll up to and try do some shopping with them.

Fellowship is person to person skills, influencing how they interact with you socially, it has nothing to do with Influence as is being discussed here.

Also, considering influence is the mechanism by which you acquire all your gear, folding it into Fellowship could make Fellowship way, way too potent.

I'm not missing your point, I'm just disagreeing. Basically, I just don't think it requires another stat or it's mini system.

An example of how influence is supposed to work, it's either in Eisenhorn or Ravenor, one of the agents has been arrested by the local planetary Magistratum, two agents go to the cop shop, ask for the release of the agent in custody, and then produce an inquisitorial badge, this is the point an influence roll would be made, to see if the officer gives them what they want solely based on the influence such office wields. it has nothing to do with how personable they are individually.

As for procuring gear, they could be on a planet for an investigation and do not want to tip off anyone it is the inquisition doing the investigating, so they go to a local planetary courthouse and try requisitioning some Adeptus Arbities uniforms and equipment, this is influence of the inquisition to try and achieve this goal, not fellowship.

An example of how influence is supposed to work, it's either in Eisenhorn or Ravenor, one of the agents has been arrested by the local planetary Magistratum, two agents go to the cop shop, ask for the release of the agent in custody, and then produce an inquisitorial badge, this is the point an influence roll would be made, to see if the officer gives them what they want solely based on the influence such office wields. it has nothing to do with how personable they are individually.

As for procuring gear, they could be on a planet for an investigation and do not want to tip off anyone it is the inquisition doing the investigating, so they go to a local planetary courthouse and try requisitioning some Adeptus Arbities uniforms and equipment, this is influence of the inquisition to try and achieve this goal, not fellowship.

I don't want to go in circles, but I think it's equally possible to see both of those situations as fellowship checks with the fact they are part of the inquisition being factored into the difficulty.

The fellowship check is the to either a) Command the officers based on the authority of the inquisiton b)charm them in to co-operating or c) intimidating them through fear of the inquisition.

We aren't going in circles, it is clear you have no understanding of the difference between Influence and Fellowship.

It's pretty clear he does, he just holds a different view of the issue to you. Don't be a ****.

I am not being an ****, I am just not wasting my time with someone who wishes to blindly ignore the fact they are two separate things, because he personally doesn't want to have different dice rolls.

He is using his lack of desire to use the influence system as justification for making everything fellowship based, fair play to him if that is how he wants to run his game, but that is not what influence is or how it is supposed to be used.

He's arguing you can replicate a lot of the uses of Influence with talents and skill rolls. Which is... pretty true, honestly. I don't think it's the better way to handle it, but it's definitely a way to handle it. I don't know why this is upsetting you so much.