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Can we please get some official guidance on how influence encounters are supposed to be run.
Most specifically knowledge of the Influence Skills.
A: You know the skills, but can use discovery to order them.
or
B: You don't know the skills and discovery both reveals and orders them.
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Personally I vastly prefer A but playing have almost solely run into people using B.
It makes a vast difference on how challenging these encounters are and in my experience how fun they are.
I know we had some discussion of this in years past but I don't remember any sort of useful resolution.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Central Europe
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As far as I understand it is option A.
Otherwise certain entries into their statblocks make no sense.
For example a resistance from a recent scenario:
This resistance only makes sense if the players don't know that Intimidation is not on the list of skills.
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The first time I ran Influence I ran it as option B, and then a fellow GM asked me to re-read the rules after the scenario. I now run it using option A.
The text does not actually support option B. It's something people are adding because they are used to 1e, or just making assumptions about Influence as I did.
Also, the challenges are too difficult (especially for PFS) if you don't know the skills or order.
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I know no argument will convince everyone, but here's the points that led me to that.
Under the definition of the Influence Action:
"Choose an NPC and attempt a skill check to impress the NPC. The DC and whether success is possible depend on the NPC's preferences (typically found in the NPC's influence stat block".
This implies to me that its possible to choose a skill that can't be used -- therefore the PCs don't know the list ahead of time. Now I know the counter argument can be that a resistance or penalty is what makes success impossible, not the skill itself.
Under the Discover action:
Success: "... You learn which skill that can influence the NPCs has the lowest DC (skipping any skills that you already know)..."
To me, that sounds like its learning skills, not only ordering. If it said "skipping any skills whose DC/order you already know" rather than "skipping any skills" then I would have viewed that as support for option A. However I freely admit its a level of interpretation that is very weak.
Under the sample stat block:
"...Diplomacy should usually be on this list, but should rarely be the best skill to Influence an NPC in order to encourage and reward using Discovery to learn and cater to an NPC's interests."
If players know the full list upfront, they will almost _never_ even bother with discovery. They'll just pick their best skill on the list (or maybe a lore if its not their best, but still on the list) and not bother rolling discovery. So knowing the list head of time works against the goal of encouraging discovery. People will already assume that the lores of the lowest, the "normal social skills" (diplomacy, intimidate, deception) are near the end of the list, and anything else is middling and be right the majority of the time.
So I feel Option B was intended. However I feel that the GMG is less than clear, and that the GMG tended to fail at giving the rough guidance on how to appropriate set Thresholds and number of rounds. And I definitely feel like PFS adventure authors have been
a) setting the thresholds too high
b) padding the influence skills with too many lores, which makes discovery feel like a trap option
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Thanks!
Under the definition of the Influence Action:
"Choose an NPC and attempt a skill check to impress the NPC. The DC and whether success is possible depend on the NPC's preferences (typically found in the NPC's influence stat block".This implies to me that its possible to choose a skill that can't be used -- therefore the PCs don't know the list ahead of time. Now I know the counter argument can be that a resistance or penalty is what makes success impossible, not the skill itself.
The rules also say you can use any skill, not just the ones listed, with a suggested DC of the highest skill. So even if the PCs know the skills ahead of time this sentence makes sense and is necessary.
Under the Discover action:
Success: "... You learn which skill that can influence the NPCs has the lowest DC (skipping any skills that you already know)..."To me, that sounds like its learning skills, not only ordering. If it said "skipping any skills whose DC/order you already know" rather than "skipping any skills" then I would have viewed that as support for option A. However I freely admit its a level of interpretation that is very weak.
Yeah, I ran it first your way but now take this as DCs only, because "You learn which skill that can Influence the NPC has the lowest DC." If it was intended to be both, this is super awkward wording.
Under the sample stat block:
"...Diplomacy should usually be on this list, but should rarely be the best skill to Influence an NPC in order to encourage and reward using Discovery to learn and cater to an NPC's interests."If players know the full list upfront, they will almost _never_ even bother with discovery. They'll just pick their best skill on the list (or maybe a lore if its not their best, but still on the list) and not bother rolling discovery. So knowing the list head of time works against the goal of encouraging discovery.
This is a subjective problem with the influence system's design, and I 100% agree with you about it. It sort of makes me grumpy because it feels more like a mechanical skill challenge than an intrigue puzzle.
However, I don't know if the rules actually support it. Also, it's not like it's some big secret that Lore or narrower skills like Society are typically easier DCs than the common cookie-cutter skills like DIplomacy.
People will already assume that the lores of the lowest, the "normal social skills" (diplomacy, intimidate, deception) are near the end of the list, and anything else is middling and be right the majority of the time.
And this is exactly what people do in PFS, they don't bother with discovery and just hammer at influence. I just think it's not as fun of a system as 1e had.
(Also the Resistances tend to be super obvious in scenarios; such as "insulting her husband to her face will make her unhappy" — no s#%%!)
A best-case scenario is good, longer-length roleplay that makes option B enjoyable because players can infer the appropriate checks from the NPC's personality and words.
I actually believe something between "A" and "B" was the intention: that the skills are not just handed to the players on a mechanical handout, but should be fairly obvious through interaction and roleplay with the NPC.
I guess like Rob said we need official clarification. Until then I will continue with option A in the PFS setting, even though I recognize it's flawed in a way that makes things too easy and mechanical. However, option B drastically ramps up difficulty beyond what’s reasonable for pfs, and could be incredibly frustrating for players with a GM who does not give hints or do roleplay.
Option A is going to give a far more consistent play experience in the org play setting.
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Central Europe
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As far as I understand it is option A.
Otherwise certain entries into their statblocks make no sense.
For example a resistance from a recent scenario:
This resistance only makes sense if the players don't know that Intimidation is not on the list of skills.
I meant option B, not A. Sorry for the confusion.
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Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
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I agree with what Eric said with the following modification.
Whether Option A or B, as defined by Pirate Rob, work out to be too difficult in practice seems to vary from scenario to scenario. Personally, I think that in earlier scenarios (e.g. 2-02 and 2-07), Option B works perfectly fine and does not feel at all too difficult. However, in later scenarios (e.g. 4-08), especially those which exhibit the unhelpful "lore padding" that Eric refers to, the opposite is true.
My opinion is therefore (a) some writers/developers intended A and others intended B, and/or (b) some writers/developers were working with a more practical ideas about play than others (which I know is neither news, nor specific to this issue, and can't really be avoided).
Given these problems, it does seem like the player-friendly option is either to:
(1) run with A - which will nuke the encounter into utter triviality sometimes, but at least has the dubious advantage of consistency,
or
(2) run with B, but use roleplay to give players some Discovery for free (e.g. reveal the super-obvious stuff, or even the "padding" Lores, organically in the course of conversation, without having to make the players explicitly roll for them).
Given that there is already huge table variation happening I don't feel bad about doing (2), personally. TBH I am pretty sure I wouldn't feel bad about it regardless.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I believe B is originally intended. I'm not sure this is always on the mind of scenario authors though, when you look at DCs and how many rounds you get.
Lore padding making Discovery work badly is problematic. I think it's better to give lores as a freebie while moving on to the next skill. So if someone's skills were for example:
Academia 12, Society 16, Nobility 17, Diplomacy 18, Intimidation 20, Deception 22
Then then first success would give you Academia and Society, the second would give you Nobility and Diplomacy, the third would give Intimidation, and the last would give Deception.
As a variant problem when multiple discovery skills were allowed, I've also seen GMs uncertain about whether you should know what you could roll for Discovery. And I guess the guidance about "do you tell players what they can roll for Discovery" wasn't that clear really.
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Bellevue
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I've seen a number of variations in how it's run. I've seem some run the influence as a secret check or the discovery as an open check. When I run these as a GM I'm running as B. But I give the mechanical introduction up front. Including that Perception is almost always a discovery skill AND Diplomacy is almost always an Influence skill. Discovery is used to find out other options, but if you pay attention to how the NPC is presented, you may see hints in the roleplay. I've seen players guess influence skills from that.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I've seen a number of variations in how it's run. I've seem some run the influence as a secret check or the discovery as an open check. When I run these as a GM I'm running as B. But I give the mechanical introduction up front. Including that Perception is almost always a discovery skill AND Diplomacy is almost always an Influence skill. Discovery is used to find out other options, but if you pay attention to how the NPC is presented, you may see hints in the roleplay. I've seen players guess influence skills from that.
How are people supposed to find out about other Discovery options then? The Discovery action only reveals Influence skills. There's no mechanism for finding out Discovery skills.
That's why I think you're supposed to just tell those as GM.
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I've seen a number of variations in how it's run. I've seem some run the influence as a secret check or the discovery as an open check. When I run these as a GM I'm running as B. But I give the mechanical introduction up front. Including that Perception is almost always a discovery skill AND Diplomacy is almost always an Influence skill. Discovery is used to find out other options, but if you pay attention to how the NPC is presented, you may see hints in the roleplay. I've seen players guess influence skills from that.How are people supposed to find out about other Discovery options then? The Discovery action only reveals Influence skills. There's no mechanism for finding out Discovery skills.
That's why I think you're supposed to just tell those as GM.
The players have the option to get Influence skills or likes or dislikes with the Discovery check. The player has to say what they want before they roll. Telling the player in advance just makes a role playing encounter into a dice rolling encounter. Plus the rules say that the Influence are determined by the Discovery check. Yes it is faster and easier to tell them but it is not how the rules are written.
I am one of those players that John was talking about and from the description of the NPC, took a shot and tried a skill to Influence. Players can take a stab in the dark.
As you play these types of encounters more, it does become easier. But GMs need to run them correctly as laid out in the Game Mastery Guide. GMs are suppose to go beyond the scenario to understand the underlying rules that are being used.
Agreed that there is not enough time allowed in most scenarios to run these encounters correctly.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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The players have the option to get Influence skills or likes or dislikes with the Discovery check. The player has to say what they want before they roll. Telling the player in advance just makes a role playing encounter into a dice rolling encounter. Plus the rules say that the Influence are determined by the Discovery check. Yes it is faster and easier to tell them but it is not how the rules are written.I've seen a number of variations in how it's run. I've seem some run the influence as a secret check or the discovery as an open check. When I run these as a GM I'm running as B. But I give the mechanical introduction up front. Including that Perception is almost always a discovery skill AND Diplomacy is almost always an Influence skill. Discovery is used to find out other options, but if you pay attention to how the NPC is presented, you may see hints in the roleplay. I've seen players guess influence skills from that.How are people supposed to find out about other Discovery options then? The Discovery action only reveals Influence skills. There's no mechanism for finding out Discovery skills.
That's why I think you're supposed to just tell those as GM.
I was responding to JohannVonUlm saying "When I run these as a GM I'm running as B. But I give the mechanical introduction up front. Including that Perception is almost always a discovery skill".
There is no mechanism for discovering discovery skills. Only influence skills. So what I'm saying is, is that the GM should be open about what the discovery skills are.
Regardless of whether you believe the GM should also tell what the influence skills are (and that what Discovery does is sort them easy to hard), or that Discovery is how you learn about which skills are on the table for Influence in the first place.
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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As others have said, the Discovery skills need to be known.
I agree that there is room for interpretation on if Influence skills are known. You could read it as Discovery gives the order of which are easiest skills and what resistances or weaknesses the NPCs have. The order can be hugely important for the first two skills. If you took this interpretation, you would always give skills in alphabetical order so the players know the skills but not which is best.
Currently I don’t think there is any good guidance on how many rounds make for a good social encounter. I believe here that the Starfinder method might be the best, where it is 24/number of character rounds so that there are approximately the same number of attempts. The thing is the math is much tighter in PF2, so any time you play up it becomes very difficult to hit the DCs.
Right now I do not envy any writers who have to create an encounter using the system. Although you know exactly what levels and number of players there are at the extreme challenge point values, having something like 12 challenge points can be a table of four or six players. Which it is makes a big difference in what DCs they can achieve.
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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The system makes no sense if you know all the influence skills immediately, and only the DC Order is obfuscated:
"Oh, this NPC has diplomacy, crafting, arcana, lore: Library and Lore: scribing. Oh Gee I wonder what the order is."
(Hint: it's lores first, then non-diplomacy skills in some order, probably same DC or within 2 DC of each other, then diplomacy).
And even if there was a situation where the crafting is 2 easier than the arcana, you're still better off rolling with your highest skill instead of trying to determine which one is easier, especially since 1. rolling to determine which is easier will waste first 2 results as it just tells you that the lore skills are easiest, so you need to succeed in discovery at least 3 times to figure out which is easier, arcana or crafting and 2. instead of rolling once to determine order and then once to influence, you'd have better chance of success if you just rolled twice.
Discovery skills are known, influence skills must be figured out using discovery - regardless of what a murky wording on the rules say, this is the interpretation that makes sense. Otherwise you can just ditch discovery altogether and move straight to influencing.
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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The system makes no sense if you know all the influence skills immediately, and only the DC Order is obfuscated:
"Oh, this NPC has diplomacy, crafting, arcana, lore: Library and Lore: scribing. Oh Gee I wonder what the order is."
(Hint: it's lores first, then non-diplomacy skills in some order, probably same DC or within 2 DC of each other, then diplomacy).
Let’s test that.
Scenario A
Influence: Crafting, Deception, Diplomacy, Lore Academia, Lore Art, Society
Influence Skills DC 17 Academia Lore, DC 17 Art Lore, DC 20 Crafting (showing an appreciation for Dhrami's ability to create replicas), DC 20 Diplomacy, DC 20 Society, DC 24 Deception, DC 26 Intimidation
Lores first, yes.
Other skills are not within 2 of each other. Intimidation is much higher than Crafting, Diplomacy, or Society. Diplomacy is not the worst skill to use.
Difference between worst and best skill is 9.
Scenario B
Influence: Deception, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Lore Cooking, Lore Mercantile, Society
Influence Skills DC 14 Cooking Lore, DC 17 Society, DC 19 Diplomacy, DC 19 Intimidation, DC 19 Mercantile Lore, DC 21 Deception
Here the lore skills are not equal. Diplomacy is just as easy as Lore Mercantile. Deception is the worst skill to use.
Difference between worst and best skill is 7.
Scenario C
Influence: Deception, Diplomacy, Lore Pathfinder Society, Medicine, or any other skill you can reasonably relate.
Influence Skills DC 16 Diplomacy (boosting Aojimitsu's confidence about his abilities); DC 16 Pathfinder Society Lore (sharing the history of the Pathfinder Society and how the Society could help him); DC 20 Medicine (explaining that Aojimitsu's injuries are minor and that the PCs can treat them); DC 22 various (demonstrating a talent and explaining how that would make the PC a worthy ally; various skills can apply); DC 24 Deception (lying about any of the other listed actions)
Diplomacy is one of the easiest skills. It is just as easy as the lore skills listed.
Deception is the worst skill.
This one actually gives a DC for other skill, which I think is good.
Difference between worst and best skill is 8.
I’m having trouble finding another scenario using the social encounters system. There probably is at least one more, but I am not finding it in an extremely quick scan of scenarios.
In any case, your hints were not correct for actual examples. Lores are not always the easiest and Diplomacy is not the hardest in any of the examples I found from actual scenarios.
The difference in DC between worst and best skills was from 7 to 9. Picking your highest skill is not going to always be the best answer here assuming you have multiple options at trained or better. I think that social encounters are technically in Exploration Mode, so Follow the Expert may be an option in some cases which can be very enticing if that skill is one of the easier skills.
All that said, I do think that it is a problem that your first few attempts with Discovery generally give Lore skills.
It is really going to heavily depend on how easy discovery is, how many total checks can be made, and how large a spread it is between the middle skills for how useful doing Discovery is.
I also think it would probably help more for Discovery if you could determine what the worst skill was.
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The system does not say you do not know the influences either.
These checks typically take place over 15 minutes to an hour in-game time.
A more accurate representation of a real social encounter is knowing how to influence. After all if I met many of you at a party I could probably glean that I could influence you with multiple things like Pathfinder Lore and whatever else you’re into after an hour of friendly conversation. Forcing pc’s to spend an hour to make a check to maybe learn the obvious doesn’t seem realistic.
In a limited time frame with less room for roleplay in a PFS game, I tell the players these skills on a handout in PFS. They can make discoveries to order them. This is how I run it, and how I will continue to run it. I've tried the other way and players found it frustrating and not fun at all because of the time constraints, and some payers just don't like intrigue or RP in PFS.
Specific encounter design and general subsystem design are different topics; writers don't have to put Lores at the lowest DC all the time, and they could make resistance more interesting and less obvious to make the minigame more engaging.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Interesting.
On the one hand I agree with Tomppa that if you know the skills, it's generally predictable what their order will be. Yeah, Bretl gave some counterexamples, but I think what Tomppa wrote holds up for a bunch of other scenarios that Bretl didn't list. And in general you can work with rules of thumb like:
* Lores are usually the lowest DC. If there are multiple lores then not all of them might be the lowest DC.
* Diplomacy is usually not as good as a more apropos skill. Society is usually not much better or worse than Diplomacy, when it's an option.
* Deception and Intimidation are generally bad DCs as they represent a bad faith approach which isn't encouraged, but it's there if you got nothing else and you're good at those.
But a different conclusion you might draw from that is that it's a good idea to do only 1-2 Discovery checks to establish the exact ordering (after 1-2 checks you can deduce the rest). This then frees up a bit more time to Discover for example a Weakness, because if the whole party can leverage that lower DC, that could really make an impact. Or you just use the extra time to Influence more.
It might change the overall math for the better if you don't have to do gruelingly many Discovery checks to find skills to use. It'll still be worth doing a bit of it to fine-tune the ordering of DCs.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Yeah, Bretl's examples had me re-evaluate my opinion. Still, is it really worth 2-3 successful checks to determine the order if you already know the skills?
Going with Bretl's examples:
In the first example, after 3 checks you know the lores are first, and then you know... One of the three skills with the exact same DCs, but you don't actually know they have the same DC. I think this may actually be detrimental: If you get skill C as the third skill, you might go for it because 'it was the easiest', forgoing skill D where you had +2 or +3 more because of proficiency/stat/item bonus.
In example B, doing 2+ checks may actually be helpful, since after the second, you realise that one of the lores is harder than the other (instead of both being the easiest). That's valuable info... If you had both of those lores. But again, third check leads into a situation where you get one of the three skills tied for the third easiest, which may be detrimental depending on what the GM told you.
Same with example C. If you give the lore first and the other skill second, someone with just a bit better skill may roll the trained lore instead since they "got it first so it must be easier". On the other hand, why would anyone roll the likely just trained lore, if the skill was given first and is easier? And if you had one of those but not the other, you'll probably be rolling that lore/skill anyway regardless of order.
If the skills aren't known, every success gives valuable information regarding which skills you can use. If the skills are known but the order is not, lots of results are either easily guessed (lores are generally easiest) or the results are misleading (when you learn just 1 skill's place but there are 2 others that share the same difficulty). If you went for "skills known, order is not", I'd probably give the DCs too to make the information actually relevant. On the other hand, that makes this version of influence challenges even easier.
Out of curiosity, for GMs who have run influences with "skills are known, order is not", how many skill's orders do PCs usually Discover? Or do they just use Discovery to figure out weaknesses and resistances? I have a hard time seeing myself roll discovery for skill order if I already know the skills.
I also want to point out that once you know the skills, you can figure out the order... By trial and error. Did you fail despite rolling pretty high? Maybe try another skill next time. Did you roll low and still succeed? Cool, you probably found the easiest skill. How is that different from rolling a die, succeeding, and learning that a skill is easy? Oh, right, you got a success too.
(Also, my take away from these examples is that if you have a strong diplomacy, roll it.)
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These checks typically take place over 15 minutes to an hour in-game time.
A more accurate representation of a real social encounter is knowing how to influence. After all if I met many of you at a party I could probably glean that I could influence you with multiple things like Pathfinder Lore and whatever else you’re into after an hour of friendly conversation. Forcing pc’s to spend an hour to make a check to maybe learn the obvious doesn’t seem realistic.
That's the thing. You need to chat with someone for a while before you figure out what buttons to push. "After all if I met many of you at a party, I could probably glean that I could influence you with multiple things like PF lore and whatever else you’re into after an hour of friendly conversation." Yup. That hour was probably 1-4 discovery checks.
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Venture-Agent, Finland—Tampere
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Yeah, Bretl's examples had me re-evaluate my opinion. Still, is it really worth 2-3 successful checks to determine the order if you already know the skills?
I mean, way influence mechanics work in PFS, players can't succeed at influence scene if they take 2-3 discovery rolls per character because math seems to expect 3/4 successes per influence round. And at same time if skills are hidden, the reveal of lore can be wasted roll because nobody in party has correct one.
So even if skills are visible, players might focus on revealing weaknesses and resistances instead. Or maybe they'll just roll skills blindly. *shrugs*
(I can't answer other question in post because I honestly don't remember how I've run influence scenes in PFS 2e and what it resulted in)
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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but I think what Tomppa wrote holds up for a bunch of other scenarios that Bretl didn't list.
Please list them so we can look at those as well. I never claimed my list was complete, what I said is those were the ones I found in a quick check. Some of the scenarios that I thought had used the Influence system actually didn’t.
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I will admit that as player and GM, I don’t like the influence system. I have not found a way to make it flow well with the roleplay or the conversation. Often players feel pressured to do exactly the type of meta analysis that is happening in this thread. I find the mechanics of it get in the way of a more natural conversation with the NPCs.
Anything that makes the influence system flow better is a good thing in my mind.
I think that either the GMG or maybe some writer’s guides could make it better by giving suggestions on how many rounds it should take and how to quickly figure out if the challenge is reasonable. Should the GM have a list of the PC skills so when there are multiple options at the same DC, they give the option that the group can best use? That is pretty easy in PbP, but can be time consuming for in person play. There is nothing that says what sort of DCs should be used nor do I see anything indicating if you should tell the PCs what the DCs are.
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I think the Blakros Deception one was one of the best in terms of giving useful prompts for each round that made it flow/feel more conversational. And all the parties I GM'd it for did a mix of discovery and influence and came out in a good place. But I don't really like single NPC at a time Influence subsystem, I think that multiple NPCs which allow for a broader set of skills and tacts to try encourage role play and less meta-gaming, or less falling back on "I do the same thing again".
I think Echoes of Desperation was a better one in terms multiple NPCs, and while it had inter-round prompts they didn't work as well for my tables. And it was definitely one of the hardest tuned ones we've had, you really couldn't do any discovery on that one if you wanted to succeed.
Mountains of Sea and Sky, which I think was the first PFS2 scenario to use it, was single target w/o interround prompts, but was tuned for Discover-?Influence. It felt the most mechanical of them to me, but the balance felt right.
The current one was multi-target which I prefer. I think I liked the phased introduction to them. However I feel like it probably needed two more rounds to work as intended -- one more round on the cart, and three rounds at the main camp, would have felt better and would have balanced the discover/influence checks, IMO. You would need to provide some inter-round prompts to help mix up the interactions. GMs also need to make sure they don't miss the free influence you get after some of the encounters.
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That's the thing. You need to chat with someone for a while before you figure out what buttons to push. "After all if I met many of you at a party, I could probably glean that I could influence you with multiple things like PF lore and whatever else you’re into after an hour of friendly conversation." Yup. That hour was probably 1-4 discovery checks.These checks typically take place over 15 minutes to an hour in-game time.
A more accurate representation of a real social encounter is knowing how to influence. After all if I met many of you at a party I could probably glean that I could influence you with multiple things like Pathfinder Lore and whatever else you’re into after an hour of friendly conversation. Forcing pc’s to spend an hour to make a check to maybe learn the obvious doesn’t seem realistic.
My contention in this analogy is that you do not need to make a check to quickly figure out someone's interests. "Where do you work?" "What are your hobbies?" I don't need a to roll check for this. It's basically part of influencing. Adding another level of checks makes the system very onerous and breaks my immersion of actually having a natural conversation.
I would however need to make a check to try and influence you or gauge which things interest you most.
I'm with Bret; the system doesn't flow well and feels a little too repetitive and metagamey for a really engaging intrigue encounter.
Hopefully we can get a FaQ.
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To be honest, I have pretty good success running with B.
However, the real problem I see is the scaling.
When you get to 15-18, for example, the DCs have gone up by 2… so now difficult checks are even more difficult.
In my opinion,scaling should only be with the number of influence points needed.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I've kinda gravitated towards the following compromise interpretation:
* The GM tells the players upfront what checks can be made for Discovery.
* Skills for Influence are initially unknown.
* When the players succeed at Discovery and choose to learn Influence skills, Lores are freebies.
* You learn whether more skills remain to be discovered.
So if someone could be influenced by:
* Sailing or Ocean Lore DC 12
* Survival DC 15
* Mercantile Lore DC 16
* Society DC 17
* Diplomacy DC 18
If you discover once, you learn about Sailing, Ocean Lore and Survival.
If you discover again, you learn about Mercanile Lore and Society
And finally you discover Diplomacy and that that was the last skill.
The reasoning for this is as fold:
- I do think discovery is meant to reveal skills.
- Lores are great when you have them, but that's a really random thing. Also, sometimes there are so many lores that if you had to pay successes to learn them one by one, you'd never get to the normal skills on time. This makes influence games far too variable between different parties and encounters. By making lores freebies on the way to the next skill, the mechanism becomes much more stable.
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I've kinda gravitated towards the following compromise interpretation:
* The GM tells the players upfront what checks can be made for Discovery.
* Skills for Influence are initially unknown.
* When the players succeed at Discovery and choose to learn Influence skills, Lores are freebies.
* You learn whether more skills remain to be discovered.
That would be a great home rule for a home game (I might even steal it next time I run influence in a home game) But I don't think it could be seen as an interpretation of the existing rules. (So pretty questionable at a PFS table)
I think the farthest I could see stretching it would be grouping related lores. "The demonologist librarian is influenced by demon lore, academic lore or ascribing lore." The system already does this in some cases ("so and so is influenced by any lore relevant to X situation ")
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In a perfect world I'd write influence to come with a round of free discovery checks but that's not the world we live in.
In a recent scenario with an influence challenge, there are 5 rounds of influence and the PCs need 11 points to get all rewards.
So with a base assumption of 4 min level players that means you need 11 points over 20 checks. If you don't know skills you're going to have to spend a lot of time discovering them and not have much time left for checks, especially if you have any fails at Discovery.
But back to scaling:
12–13 Challenge Points: Increase the number of Influence Points needed to reach each Influence threshold by 1 (or by 2 if the threshold required 6 Influence Points to reach). <There's 1 influence 6 needed for full rewards and another 6 that's not really a good idea to go for>
14–15 Challenge Points: Increase each Discovery and Influence DC by 1. Increase the number of Influence Points needed to reach each Influence threshold by 1 (or by 2 if the threshold required 6 Influence Points to reach).
16–18 Challenge Points (5+ players): Increase each Discovery and Influence DC by 2.
If we look at scaling based on pure challenge points with 8 as a base (So every point is 12.5%)
(8-9) 0-12.5% : No Adjustment
(10-11) 25:37.5% : +1 DC
(12-13) 50:62.5% : +45% Successes
(14-15) 75:87.5% : +1 DC and +5 Successes
(16-18) 100:125% : +2 DC
With DCs by level scaling at 4/3 (Every 3 levels they go up by 4) Every +1 DC is worth 3/4s of a level. Challenge points work the same way, +3 levels is worth +4 Challenge points, so upping the DC by 1 should be about the same value as reducing everybody's challenge points by 1.
Since we could have 4, 5 or 6 players, lets average it and say upping the DC by 1, should be the same as ~the party having 5 less CP. If we change our chart to that it looks like:
(8-9) 0:12.5% : No Adjustment
(3-4) -62.5%:-50% : No Adjustment (+1 DC converted)
(12-13) 50:62.5% : +45% Successes
(9-10) 12.5%:25% : +45% Successes (+1 DC converted)
(6-8) -25%:0% : No Adjustment (+2 DC converted)
This is not a fair scaling chart (Although the +2 DC is much close to fair than I thought)
What if Instead we did something like:
(8-9) 0-12.5% : No Adjustment
(10-11) 25:37.5% : +27% Successes (3/4 NPCs require an additional success)
(12-13) 50:62.5% : +45% Successes (5 More Success Points)
(9-10) 12.5:25% : No Adjustment (+1 DC converted)
(11-13) 37.5:62.5% : +45% Successes (5 More Success Points) (+1 DC Converted)
(We could also reasonably average the final conversion to -5.5 points since it can't have 4 players, bringing up to 10.5 to 12.5 which still leaves it in a very reasonably place)
There are still some awkward bits of scaling, like for a party of 1,1,1,4 (12CP) that needs 5 more successes than a 1,1,1,1 on 5 rounds or rolls but that's a harder problem to solve.
I suspect whomever wrote the scaling vastly underestimated the value of raising the DCs. (I guess my math could vastly overvalue it)
This concludes today's episode of Mathfinder, thank you for listening.
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But back to scaling:
Any scaling on a skill challenge that increases DC and Successes needed seems to be extremely hit or miss.
That said, one thing I have noticed on influence checks lately is you usually don't need full success to succeed at the mission. I don't know if "can you reliably get full rewards" is really the most useful metric.
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But back to scaling:
Any scaling on a skill challenge that increases DC and Successes needed seems to be extremely hit or miss.
That said, one thing I have noticed on influence checks lately is you usually don't need full success to succeed at the mission. I don't know if "can you reliably get full rewards" is really the most useful metric.
If players do not feel they can do anything in the scenario, then the scenario will not be requested. Bad die rolls can turn 'not getting reliable full rewards' into 'not getting any rewards' rather quickly.
That reduces play opportunity when word gets out. GMs will not want to run it. Players will not want to play it.
People I know did not like Bid for Alabastrine and To Seal a Shadow for their fail states in PF1 to give some examples.
When we gate the 'story' of the scenario behind Influence mini-games, the scenario tends to lose impact if the mini-game is not run expertly.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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This now has an official clarification:
The following FAQ answer will be added to the PFS FAQ whenever it is next updated:What information should GMs give players during an Influence encounter?
While GMs are empowered to run influence encounters as best fits their table, we recommend using the following guidelines:
- Players (and by extension, PCs) should be aware of the Discovery skills (but not their DCs) at the start of the encounter.
- Players should not be told which skills are Influence skills until they are successfully Discovered.
- Players should never be told the DCs of any Discovery or Influence skills.
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Some additional guidance on what you learn from a Discovery check would also help. If you are asking for a skill, the default seems to be to provide a single skill with the lowest DC first, which is often an obscure lore that no one is going to have. That means the first Discovery check is essentially a wasted round, even when you succeed. It gets even worse when there are two or more obscure lore skills for an individual, potentially wasting multiple rounds trying to figure out a skill someone has that they can use.
But in general, it's good to know our local group has been essentially running this correctly.
EDIT: Hmm... I guess the lowest-DC thing is written into the success condition of the Discover check, so it doesn't really need clarification or guidance. It's just unfortunate when it leads to multiple wasted rounds just trying to figure out what skill to use.