Make beauty blessing give level 1 EQ regain when using influence attacks, if you don't already have it. This way, all the races will have access to the good influencing. Merians will still have an advantage, because they don't have to get the blessing, but such is life. (This would set your EQ speed to level 1 faster, even if you were tae'dae).

What they need to do is make eq speed not matter in influencing (separate balance, or cap the eq recovery effect on influence skills, etc). It isn't THAT hard to influence when you are getting hit, there's no reason people should be able to have no-risk, automatic win influence battles.

/edit, misread initial post.

I still think it shouldn't work like that at all.

YES, it's meant to work like that, but if it's not a bug, it's a design flaw.

This is a good second best, I suppose.

EDIT: Olan, you're missing the point. He said an L1 eq regain WHEN USING INFLUENCE ATTACKS. So it only changes influence.

And...yes, no one should be able to do that thing you just describe. Problem being, Merian and Mugwump CAN.

Which sucks.

And if they're not going to change it, they can at least give the races with high CHA who are supposed to be good at this sort of thing an actual chance to be just as good as the ones who randomly can.

Let my tae'dae use his fuzzy charm skillz!!!!!1111

Yes, I absolutely agree. However, since the admin seem to believe the current way it works is an acceptable way, I'm looking for some other way to balance things.

I think the reason that speed affects influence attacks is because you're trying to convince someone of something. You give a pause in your stream of speech and they'll wonder why you've paused, and bring you up on it, etc.

It's actually nice and realistic in that regard.

But mechanically it's a flaw, because a +1eq penalty is vastly superior to extra charisma. If you liked influencing, why would you pick a charisma race when you could pick a better race such as mugwump and be tonnes better at influencing?

Well, I admit you need to reconcentrate when casting a spell, or use some mental abilities, thus the equilibrium. But if I have a charisma of 17 I should be able to keep my talking, no need to think a lot
Maybe make the mob "influence" timer depend on your carisma. Higher charisma, he answers you more slowly. That would compensate a bit merians nd faelings.

Pick a high charisma race, and pick a guild with stag just for lightning/trueheart. When I was elfen with Lightning, I could keep up influence as well as any merian. Now I suck, in fact Krokani just suck, but ah well.

I find it odd that the advice for how to influence well is "learn stag" rather than "learn influence"

I was taking, transing influence as a given. WIthout superego, no matter how fast your eq, you will never influence the difficult mobs....unless you are a level 99 Faeling with more ego than you can stake a forest at.

Faelings are amazing at debating, maybe you are not as good against mobs, but you sure as hell would win against any other player.

That's a point.

+1eq influence actions AGAINST DENIZENS for the beauty thing then.

But what you fail to realize is this isn't a fix.. it's just a minor bonus for the blessing. We need something that's determined by the Charisma stat.

It sounds good, but I'd like to see a neutral way of influencing that doesn't require EQ.. or just make the timer for influence not affected by equilibrium bonuses to level the field and make it so charisma really means something, even if it's just slightly.

I don't know?

Make InfluenceEQ (completely different than regular EQ dependent entirely on charisma, make it so that 25 charisma will be able to outpace the questioning timer, and 1 charisma will be hit twice. That way, charisma and skill in influence are the only determining factors, which is how I think it should be.

Why? Equilibrium recovery represents how long it takes you to get your mind back on track from doing something, and do something else. How fast you think. Even if you're not the most charismatic, thinking faster than your opponent has to have some benefit.

Game balance >>>> Realism

Merian equilibrium recovery speed should be a factor. But it shouldn't be such an all-or-nothing factor where it immediately trumps all the other factors and makes you into an influencing demigod.

Except the admins seem to think it should, so it should. Oh well.

Incidentally, the Merian equilibrium bonus would still be effective if influencing timers didn't reset each time. 'cause you take less damage on a successful one, and the faster you finish the less amount of times they have to retaliate. It just wouldn't trump charisma by AS MUCH. We're not asking that the eq bonus be removed, or anything, y'know.

It's like if when bashing your enemies would only attack a certain amount of time AFTER you attacked. It'd be realistic, right? After all, if an Aslaran/Furrikin/Faeling pounds someone in the head with a flail they're going to be slightly fazed, or at least recoil, especially if it's a flurry, like a Faeling. What they're not going to do is stomp all over someone right away. Maybe we should change it to that? But no, gameplay > realism. *shrug*