Earning Influence
General
In order to spend Influence on various tasks, it must first be earned. A character who only just barely meets the minimum threshold that would allow him to be present at court likely spent all of his or her starting influence just to procure an invitation to the court. Even those with more established influence needs to re-earn the respect needed to ask for favors from the Lord and their Advisors. PCs can earn Influence in a variety of ways: In Battle, In glorious Deeds, In Contests and Competitions, seeing that gossip and boasts about their deeds is spread through the court, or by reaching out to their allies (or blackmail victims) to support them with their own influence.
A group of PCs can pool their influence to acquire a hard-to-occur favor, or a PC can choose to hoard their influence to use for their own personal ends. How influence is pooled and shared is up to your party and how they roleplay it out.
Sample Influence Values
Note: These costs are just suggestions. Actual values should be determined by the court and how fast the GM wants the players to accumulate influence. If a deed is completed by a whole group, each person in the group who participated receives that amount of influence. It does not need to be shared. For solo competitions and feats, however, the influence won is individual.
General
In order to spend Influence on various tasks, it must first be earned. A character who only just barely meets the minimum threshold that would allow him to be present at court likely spent all of his or her starting influence just to procure an invitation to the court. Even those with more established influence needs to re-earn the respect needed to ask for favors from the Lord and their Advisors. PCs can earn Influence in a variety of ways: In Battle, In glorious Deeds, In Contests and Competitions, seeing that gossip and boasts about their deeds is spread through the court, or by reaching out to their allies (or blackmail victims) to support them with their own influence.
A group of PCs can pool their influence to acquire a hard-to-occur favor, or a PC can choose to hoard their influence to use for their own personal ends. How influence is pooled and shared is up to your party and how they roleplay it out.
Sample Influence Values
Note: These costs are just suggestions. Actual values should be determined by the court and how fast the GM wants the players to accumulate influence. If a deed is completed by a whole group, each person in the group who participated receives that amount of influence. It does not need to be shared. For solo competitions and feats, however, the influence won is individual.
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Influence from Battle:
Note: Only battles completed that the Court approves of count to award influence. Your victory on behalf of the Lion won't win you much credit with the Crane Court
Influence from Competition Some competitions require an Influence Cost to enter, like important Championships such as the Topaz Championship or a Regional or Annual Championship between Dojos that is a standing important event. Many Contests have a minimum value that must be met in order to be considered minimally competent in the subject. It is better for an unskilled samurai who definitely cannot meet this minimum level to not enter, lest they be laughed out of the competition. Those who do not meet the minimum TN fail the competition. Those who meet it, are competitive in the competition. And the winner does the best of all the competitors. Competitions can be many rounds. Some competitions might grant an additional influence for each round the PC succeeds at, even if they ultimately lose the contest.
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Influence from Great Deeds:
Note: Deeds that were not completed with the full knowledge of the court cannot win influence in that court.
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Spreading Gossip
A courtier can use an event scene to spread beneficial gossip about themselves or harmful gossip about an enemy that can increase or decrease their influence in the court.
Per 5th Edition Rules, to spread Gossip, a PC should initiate a social conflict (or Intrigue) with an adversary PC during an Event Scene. This can be done during a Contest-type of event, but if it is, any PC participating in the Contest cannot participate in the Intrigue. If they do so, they may wager up to 3 Influence.
If the PCs are successful in the social conflict, they may spread a rumor to either add up to +3 Influence on their own behalf, touting their own glorious deeds, or they may spread a rumor that may remove up to -3 Influence from their Adversary, hinting at their lack of virtue. The influence gained or lost is dependent on the amount initially wagered. If they fail in the social conflict, they lose the amount of influence initially wagered.
Allies and Blackmail
If an Ally or Victim of a PC's Blackmail is in Court, the PC may arrange a rendezvous with that person (see Spending Influence). If they are successful, they may persuade or intimidate that Ally or Victim of Blackmail to give them influence that can be spent in court to gain favors up to the amount of their Devotion, assuming they have the influence themselves to spend.
Optionally, a GM may require the PCs to successfully persuade the ally or blackmail victim to forfeit the Influence using the 5th Edition Persuasion/Intrigue rules.
Tasks
Other NPCs may be persuaded to add their influence to the PCs pool for a specific Favor, though it is likely that they will require the PCs to perform some sort of task for them in return for their assistance. This could be asking them to persuade a different NPC to help the NPC requesting the task, help with a minor matter in the PC's area of skill, or other action. Doing tasks for influential NPCs is a good way to earn favors quickly.
