INFLUENCE AID
Aid another adventurer in thier attempts to influence. This ability will apply all ego drains from that adventurer to you as well, but will make their influence attacks stronger. The experience from an influence victory will be split evenly between the influencer and all aiding. This ability may not be used to aid in city/commune related influence battles.

I think it'd be interesting if groups could split the experience from influencing. Having someone to back you up in an argument always makes thing easier right? The last line of the ability is to prevent a group of like 30 people going around a village and influencing each NPC in one hit.

I like the idea, but as you point out, this implementation would mean you could go around influencing things in one go, with no risk. What if the aid ability just means that you officially 'team' with someone else (and is broken if either of you move away from the other), so both of you can influence someone, and both of you get a chance of being hit with questions?

I don't see a problem with a large group being able to influence things in one shot, because the xp would be split enough ways to make it negligible, and you can do the same thing with bashing. The only issue would be influencing villages, and the ability could just not work for that type of influencing battle. I do like the idea of splitting the questioning though.

Maybe I'm just not understanding. Do you mean that when people Aid, the leader has doubly powerful attacks? Because that's what I was worried about. There's no way in bashing to empower a single person like that. All the attacks do different amounts, and some races can do them faster than others.

Yes, that's a good point, perhaps the strength added to the influencer should be the strength of the one aiding, or perhaps each influencer should attack seperately and have the questions split between them as you suggested.

Maybe it should work like this:

Person B does INFLUENCE AID Person A.
Person A is prompted to AGREE, or can choose not to.
If A agrees, Person B is 'grouped' to Person A, which in effect will work like hunters grouping and bashing, with the experience split and damage being done to the last person who hit.

This can perhaps prevent abuse of influencing, in which B influence-steals the 'kill' from A?

Aye, that's what I was suggesting... that would be great!

*nod* the ability to group would be very useful, and be another welcome ability for pacifists. I would love to be able to go group influencing with my proteges but right now, if I did that, I would end up getting all the exp and they would get none and be bored. If you think about it in practical terms, two people arguing against you always sucks because you never have any time to think about a response before the next guy hits you with another argument. To be able to implement this kind of group influencing would really improve the skillset, I think.