Influence

A Patron’s Influence eclipses that of any of the characters, a feature of their prominent position and history. Patrons operate at a much higher level than their agents, and weave complex ever-shifting webs of contacts, allies, and rivals. As a result, a Patron’s Influence is mostly secret and tracked by the GM in private.

During a mission, you may present proof of your patronage to invoke your Patron’s Influence, gaining the benefits — or risking the consequences — described above. Proof usually takes the form of a badge of office or a token given to you by your Patron, such as an Inquisitor’s rosette, an Enforcer’s badge, or a noble’s signet ring. If a faction recognises you as your Patron’s official proxy, you use your Patron’s Influence instead of your own when interacting with that faction.

Tell your GM when you are attempting to use your Patron's Influence, and they will secretly add or subtract SL to your Test.

Some Patrons may disclose their Influence with the characters, but just as many conceal the truth or outright lie about it, especially in relation to their enemies and rivals. After all, powerful individuals don’t stay in power for long if they’re willing to share their weaknesses with their subordinates. This means that invoking your Patron’s Influence is always a risk, and not something to be done lightly. You never know where they have made enemies, and even formerly reliable partners may prove
hostile when encountered again.

As characters make their mark upon the Askellon Sector, they will inevitably begin to make contacts, allies, and enemies of their own. As well as Patron Influence, you also have Personal Influence with factions and their representatives. Your character is far less influential than your Patron, and begins with only +1 Influence with a single faction.

During the course of your game, you will slowly build influence (or lose it!) with other factions. This works a little differently for characters than for a Patron. While a Patron will lose and gain influence at the faction level, representing their reputation within the Macharian Sector, characters first gain or lose Influence with individual representatives of that faction. These are referred to as Contacts.

A Contact might be an individual Tech-priest whom the characters helped, a gang leader they turned in, or an Administratum Adept whose records were set alight by a careless character with a flamer. At the end of each adventure the GM should consider which Contacts the characters may have gained or lost Influence with. This should be recorded on the player’s character sheet.

In future, interactions with that Contact use this Influence bonus or penalty combined with the Influence bonus for their Faction.

Consolidating Influence

If you have gathered at least +1 Influence with three different Contacts of the same Faction, you may use the Consolidate Influence Endeavour to increase your Influence with that Faction by +1, and reduce your Influence with each of the chosen Contacts by -1.

However, should you accumulate at least -1 Influence with three different Contacts of the same Faction, your Influence with that Faction automatically drops by -1 at the end of the current mission. This represents those Contacts spreading word your failures, and generally undermining their your reputation. Once this has occurred, remove one negative Influence from each of these Contracts.

If more than one character has Influence with a faction, use the Influence of the character who leads the interaction. You can’t pool Personal Influence to increase the bonus SL gained.

Outside of character creation, both Personal and Patron Influence are gained and lost based on your actions during a mission. To reduce book-keeping, Influence changes should be discussed and applied at the end of a mission, or another suitable break in the action of the campaign. The GM should assess how the party’s actions might have affected their Influence with the various factions the party met during their mission. They should then adjust their Influence accordingly, with the following considerations:

• If the party remained anonymous, deflected their actions onto others, or left no trace of their involvement in the mission, their Influence does not change for better or worse with the factions they encountered.
• If the party did not invoke their Patron’s Influence at any point during the mission, only their individual Personal Influences are affected, based on their interactions with the factions they encountered.
• If the party used their Patron’s Influence during the mission, either by choice or through discovery, both their Personal and Patron Influence may be affected based on their interactions towards with the faction they encountered.
• The Patron's Boons and Liabilities.

Influence should be hard won, and easily lost. During a mission, Influence can normally only increase by a maximum of one level, but it could drop by much more. The GM should consider adjusting Influence under the following conditions:

• +1: The party were integral in protecting influential members of the faction, or furthering their overall interests.
• −1: The party circumvented proper procedure without just cause, or were caught lying or their cover blown.
• −2: The party attacked members of the faction or caused substantial damage to their resources or territories.
• −3: The party betrayed or killed an ally from the faction, or severely hindered the faction’s ability to pursue their interests.

The conclusion of a campaign might lead to an improvement of 2 or more Influence with a Faction, for example finding a coveted Standard Template Construct for the Adeptus Mechanicus, rescuing an Arch-Confessor of the Ecclesiarchy from the clutches of foul heretics, or working with The Inquisition to banish a Daemon.

Temporary Influence

Occasionally, the party may wish to boost their Influence when dealing with members of a specific Faction. For example, they may wish to sway the opinion of a Planetary Governor in their favour, or convince an Astra Militarum quartermaster to look the other way while they procure a few extra laspacks. They may do so with an appropriate social Test, but if they wish to stack the odds in their favour, they may do so by finding a source of Temporary Influence.

Sometimes this is a simple bribe — a handful of Askels is usually enough to convince an underpaid trooper to look the other way, for example, while a powerful Administratum adept may have a weakness for vintage Amasec. The GM should decide how much Influence the bribe is worth, and apply a suitable bonus to the Test — usually +1 or +2 SL is appropriate.

Equally, learning useful or sensitive information about a Contact — perhaps they have a penchant for rare books, or a hidden criminal past, for example — can be worth +2 SL or more when you make relevant social Tests.

In either case, Temporary Influence lasts only until you fail a social Test with that Contact, after which the effect of the bonus is lost —after all, every bribe is eventually spent, and every bottle of Amasec has a bottom.