Influence System

What You Can Do: Overview

It is important when arbitrating conflicts of Influence for the Director to make a fair and timely decision and then implement the results. It is difficult to feel a sense of ownership over your character’s personal agency or impact on the setting, if every action is subjected to weeks or months of arguments. It is similarly vital to have a game where players feel as if they are inhabiting their characters, and not the other way around. Your success in an endeavor should not be dependent on your RL paranoia or capacity to list every possible exigency. Rather, your character’s +sheet should correlate with what can be reasonably expected of them.

There are two categories of Abilities which interact with the +Influence system: There are Active Abilities, like Leadership, Streetwise, Etiquette, Bureaucracy, Finance, Investigation, Law or Politics which are actively rolled to determine the magnitude of a success or failure. And there are Passive Abilities like Diplomacy, Intrigue, Intuition, Style, Elusion, Networking, Area Knowledge, Covert Culture, Media and Vice which are compared to the Passive Abilities of conflicting PCs or NPCs behind the scenes (depending on the nature of the confrontation) to determine relative difficulties. Some are used quite often, while others are situationally niche and are included chiefly to not penalize those who lean into more specific areas of interest.

The Secondary Ability ‘Power-Brokering’ isn’t normally rolled as an Active or Passive Ability. However, please note it has a significant impact on how well you can temporarily assert your Influence into other regions or into other sectors of Influence that you don’t currently possess. This will be expanded upon later.

In many situations, allied/employed PCs and subordinate NPCs, such as Retainer agents can substitute their Active Abilities for your own on a per action basis (with the right justification). More rarely, PCs belonging to the same organization can conditionally substitute their Passive Abilities for that of the organization’s leader. This is always dependent on the nature of the organization. For example, a Seneschal is the only character in the Praxis who can substitute their Passive Abilities for that of the Prince wholesale. Other Camarilla Officers might only be able to substitute a single rating, or none at all. Supernatural organizations such as the Camarilla, Technocracy Construct or Garou Caern will receive their own writeups.

INFLUENCE SECTOR**	Active (Offensive)	Active (Defensive)	Passive (Offensive)	Passive (Defensive)
Academia	Academics	Etiquette OR Bureaucracy+	Instruction OR Networking	Media OR Intuition
Business	Finance++	Law	Networking	Intrigue OR Media
Community	Leadership OR Expression	Etiquette OR Streetwise	Networking OR Style	Media OR Area Knowledge*
Crime	Subterfuge OR Larceny	Streetwise	Vice	Intrigue OR Intuition
Government	Politics	Bureaucracy	Diplomacy	Intrigue OR Area Knowledge*
Security	Investigation	Law OR Security	Military Science	Covert Ops OR Elusion