Right now, influencing with paranoia (Rumour, Distrust, Conspiracies) makes it so that the target creature won't accept items. It is essentially used to stop all kinds of "quests". However this can also be accomplished by killing the questgiver, and considering how many friendly questgivers there are, it makes Paranoia a rather worthless type of influencebattle. The other four all have something unique that is actually useful, while Paranoia is very "meh". So, I propose this.

"A creature influenced with Paranoia will not jump to the defense of his or her allies."

This obviously won't work on guards, and it'll give you a reason to influence creatures with paranoia for reasons beyond them having an intimidating nature.

I think its useful when you don't want to kill them and get enemied to the mob org.

I've raised the issue of Paranoia being useless, although my suggestion was to replace it. Still, I like your idea.

Yes it has a use, but it is in no way useful in the same way that Weaken, Empower and Seduction are. Those three skills all do something truly unique to the mob. Paranoia is just a weaker alternative to killing them.

And the reason I proposed this solution is because I think it'll be far easier to just temporarily remove the "defending" flag than to code a whole new type of influencing.

Interesting because it could be used tactically when encountering a group of several denizens who defend each other. But would it make bashing too easy?

I don't think so, especially considering that the mobs that are the hardest to bash (fishers/adorath clusters, astral, Muud, catacombs) are always aggressive and can't be influenced anyways. If anything, I'd be more concerned that it makes weakening fairly useless, since stopping illithoids from teaming would be a lot more useful than reducing their health by a bit (and for that same reason, you might consider giving paranoid mobs an exp reduction similar to weakening if this is ever implemented).

At least it would make it much easier to kill all the big kepheras and illithoids, which we don't want, do we?

Agreed, making queens easier to kill is the way to go.

LOLno.
Edit: Because I'd rather not let Kira try to cut my spine with a machete irl.


Anyway, I think Kira has a good idea, if it could be tweaked a bit. Maybe make it harder to get amnesty from (if a leader mob, obviously), or maybe that mob gives much less experience and gold if slain?

How about instead of not teaming, a paranoid denizen not only refuses quest items, but also becomes so uncertain of its surroundings that it refuses to move at all as well? This has practical applications for breaking up groups of mobile, teaming denizens by pinning them in separate areas without making it significantly easier to tackle a "well guarded" room in particular.

And there'd finally be a way to make all the commune faelings stop constantly swarming in and out of the post office.