I've been trying to come up with new influence skills as I think the skillset could have more to it, here's what I've come up with so far.

Most quests that give gold have a modifier that gives you more based on your skill rank in influence, to represent your haggling ability. Not a lot more, but I think such a thing being there would be cool.

Give various ego attacks effects on players, and make it possible to "combo" them with shield and shield-breaking attacks. For instance, I can mock someone as I shield or as I break their shield, giving a chance of an affliction. The ideas as I see them-

Teasing- Chance of sensitivity
Mockery- Chance of recklessness
Derision- Chance of pacifism/peace or stun

I think this could change the whole dynamic of "shield whores" as well.

Well...to my knowledge, the point of influence is to have nothing to do with PK...(plus, sensitivity is pretty darn good, look at Omen. *g*)

I think that if there has to be something done with influence it should be something like a false death thing. I don't know, maybe something like this at trans influence. I know pacifists like me would love something like this that can be used for people like the cloaked figure in the stewartsville quest to allow you to go further in the quest, but at the same time stay nonviolent. The idea would be that you could use this ability to make a denizen, or even animal for that matter, believe they had died, which will make them go like ghosts for a while. The effect would be the same as killing them, but there would be no corpse, and they wouldn't drop gold or anything. Again, this would be sweet for quests and stuff.

Ummm... what? How do I influence a denizen to believe they are dead? That doesn't make sense, and is quite unrealistic. *walks into Magnagora, and convinces all the guards that they are indeed dead, and they should ignore the assembled mass of troops*

Worst idea of the morning award goes to...



Eirene!

Darn!! I just want to be able to complete the stewartsville quest without killing someone!! How wrong is that?

Yeah, but NOT in influence. No one's that stupid. MAYBE in some sort of freaky mind-control thing, or a mindcontrol related skillset. (Hm.) But not influencing.

Actually, I think the top levels of influence should be telepathy

This doesn't really have anything to do with influencing, but there is a way to get rid of the cloaked figure without killing him...

I'm not sure if this idea was suggested before or after debating was implemented, but I personally would like to see more Influence skills that affected players. For example, begging would be lovely if it worked on people. (I know this will never happen, but I still would love the idea)

Basically, you wouldn't even need new skills, just have the current ones work on players. There are (I think) 5 types of ego battles, just have each one of them have a different end result. The amount of ego damage done would still be affected by the current debating styles and mindsets, but when you win there is no experience gain/loss, just the effects. You'd have to have the ego drain be substantially larger for these types of battles or have the results be a timed thing, rather than curing with an herb in order for it to be effective.

For example:
If you win a seduction battle you give a lovers effect.
Empower gives recklesness.
Weaken gives weakness, impatience, or longer balance recovery times.
Charity does something. (Makes you randomly give all of your gold and credits to me)
And Paranoia something like Shyness and Dementia.

Actually, no that I think about, being able to give afflictions that last 5-10 minutes would be pretty interesting, and give influencing a little extraneous use after the 50-60 range.