Instead of having a single inept skill that equates to rolling dice to see if you lose the ability to influence, what if we just made it so you could influence other people like you can influence denizens?

The mechanics for debating could be reused (I hope), so that the process would work as follows:

You can start an influence battle with another character by influencing them with any type of influence skill. Each attack deals ego damage, with rotating attacks the most effective. If the victim reaches zero ego, they lose. The victim can engage in their own influence battle with the attacker if they wish, using any style.

If you are battling with attacks of one type, you can switch to attacks of another type using INFLUENCE MUSE, which after a delay while you reflect on the conversation so far will allow you to start a new battle. The victim's resistance to your attacks will increase slightly.

If you are battling against attacks of a certain type, you can switch mindsets (friendly, intimidating, greedy, etc), but this involves a lengthy delay, and will lower your resistance.

If you are engaged in influence with person A, person B cannot begin an influence attack against you until one of you leave the room. If you leave the room while engaged in a battle against someone else, you will take an ego hit of 1/2 your maximum ego. If the victim leaves after being engaged by an aggressor, their resistance will reduce significantly.

Depending on the attacker's battle style, a loss will have different effects, however none is the complete loss of the influence skillset.

Charity: Not sure??
Seduction: The victim will be too adoring of the aggressor to attack him for the next 15 minutes, and be too shy to engage in any sort of influence while he is in the room.
Weakness: The victim will have the strength of their influence halved for the next 15 minutes.
Empower: The victim will have an additional 5% ego for the next 15 minutes, but will also take double damage from any ego-attacks.
Paranoia: The victim will strike out and drain ego from random players in their room for the next 15 minutes, and have the speed of their influence halved.

If you have lost an influence battle, you will see something like

You are:
seduced by Elryn for 12 minutes.
weakened by Shorlen for 2 minutes.

and it is also visible to others (without times) by ANALYZING you. If you are afflicted with one influence loss, you will be doubly resistant to another battle. Any one of the five afflictions mean that you will be unable to divert until they have faded.

In this way, I feel that there is a little more element of skill involved, as well as more than simple luck. If you stand and do nothing, you will lose. Even if you lose, however, you can still influence for your organization, just with some penalty. There is strategy in preparing your mindsets, and changing tack if necessary, but it is not equal between those of different skill levels, experience levels, and charisma.

Edit: One thing I forgot. You would not be able to engage in an influence battle against anyone who currently holds an effect on you.

oo I know, influence duels. In a peaced village you can request a duel, which removes the peace spell but the loser gets his ego shattered.

Would be a nice way to have a bit more combat, but its also on a 'i want to fight' basis

So wait, won't this just give an absolute advantage to the person with the highest charisma/ego? At least debates gives a CHANCE to the underdog.

No, it depends on ego, charisma, skill in influence, strategy and opulence.

At the moment, debating relies almost exclusively on luck. Charisma/ego means hardly anything at all, unless the difference in levels is 15+

Charisma makes a -huge- difference in debating. A huuuge difference.

I disagree, and I think debating is deeply flawed.

Well...I don't know how you can disagree, it's a statistical fact that charisma has a sizeable influence on debating.

Flawed, though, eh. The problem is more divert than debate, though I won't say the latter's perfect either.

Well, when I can find out Vesar's charisma as a level 79 Human, I'll compare it to Level 79 charisma of 20.

Level 79 MERIAN at 18 charisma.

Yurika doesn't understand debating. She doesn't ever switch her mindset. Still, I can't debate her out. Why? Because I can't catch her. She just runs, and there's nothing I can do. It's not chanting, it's not defence being better than offense - it's that there's no way to stop someone from running with influence alone.

Debating needs to be changed.

Yes... It's unrealistic. If you start running in the middle of an argument, people will assume you lost.

Suppose you're late for an appointment?

Debating someone should stun them from moving for a short time. If they move afterwards without the debate ending, they are shattered.

Wouldn't that be a problem in non-peaced villages? Debate, and they either stand and die or shatter.

Then people would just make a trigger to debate people that enter, on account they may just be moving trough to get to another denizen, getting them shattered. Might want to rethink that.

What's wrong with that?

How about, if they move within four seconds of being debated, they're shattered. There is a config option that's on by default that prevents you from moving during these four seconds.

I like.

I like that, too.

So, let me make sure I'm understanding this correctly. You want to force debates, in that someone has to stand for a debate or get shattered anyway if they leave? I can see that being great fun when the chanters come in to back up another debater.


I'm going to state that leaving or not responding to a debate should be viable, which it doesn't seem many agree with. If someone doesn't respond or leaves when someone tries to debate with them, it's not automatically conceding defeat. If someone tries to "debate" with you that eggs are evil because they're not symmetrical from all angles, why would you bother to respond? You're not going to "win" by leaving or not responding, but they could easily discombobulate themselves by trying to insist upon their idea if they try to persist. If you just stand by and do nothing while someone tells you about the evils of uneven eggs, yes, you can become disgusted with the entire idea and shut up entirely and not respond to anything ("losing" the debate).

So... no one liked this idea?