Hi folks,

We've gone through and made some changes to Persuasion based on player feedback. Apologies it took so long to get here!

Please read the ability files for the full details on anything new or reworked, and file a bug report if you notice anything behaving oddly.

NEW FEATURES

- The Protest persuasion has a new subability: Disperse
* This will reveal the name of the instigator and return the NPC home on success.

- There is a new persuasion type: Advice
* This gives you extra experience on a successful persuasion.

- New ability: Expression
* When toggled on, Persuasion abilities will use balance instead of equilibrium.

- New ability: Addendum
* Essentially Overkill for Persuasion.

- Worship has been updated with 34 more targets of worship. It's up to you to figure them out!
* These worship targets don't give essence or any benefit, so it's purely for RP.
* The persuaded NPC will still travel to a location associated with that worship target.

- [EXPERIMENTAL] New ability: Deliberation
* For those that prefer a slower approach, this turns Persuasion semi-turn-based.
* As noted, this is experimental and may not stay.

- New ability: Peroration
* Doubles the amount of time certain persuasions will last for a gold cost.

- Compendium has two new unlocks for Persuasion: Acumen (increases max acumen) and RegenAcumen (acumen regeneration in the area).

- The display for appeals has been overhauled and has a card-like display.


CHANGES / IMPROVEMENTS

- Rhetoric has been reworked:
* It is now a passive effect. Completing a chain of three same-category appeals grants a stacking mastery in that category for the rest of the persuasion attempt.
* Ethos mastery reduces the acumen cost of your appeals.
* Logos mastery increases your hand size.
* Pathos mastery increases your chance to score compelling points.

- The duration of many lingering persuasion effects (Informant, Snitch, Adoration, Rumour, Promote, Pickpocket, Markup) has been extended to 5 hours, and now runs on its own timer.
* The NPC can be re-persuaded onto something else before their effect ends, which will overwrite it.
* There is still a hard block on re-persuading an NPC for an hour after its last persuasion (this is the 'convinced' flag that shows up on IH).

- Protesters will now arrive in batches every 10 minutes instead of as soon as they're convinced.

- Promoters will now mail back any leftover flyers with a written account of who received one.

- PERSUADE now picks a smarter target when there are multiple matching NPCs in the room, preferring one that is actually persuadable.

- The refusal message on PERSUADE now states remaining seconds: "You are currently dissuaded from persuading others for another X seconds."

- Your appeal options will be re-sent when an NPC forces you to discard one.

- Reasoned Reassurance now also cures one of your persuasion afflictions.

- Max acumen calculations are now slightly more granular. You should always gain a bit of acumen for increasing one of the calculated stats now.

- Cogency's formula has changed and now scales with both your level and your skill rank.

- NPC's maximum resolve formula now takes into account how much acumen damage they'll do.

- Made adjustments to the experience gain formula for Persuasion, increasing it overall. We'll be keeping an eye on it and making further adjustments as needed.

- Provocation will now reset the NPC's attack timer on their retort, meaning they'll wait the full 4 seconds before their next attack.

- Reasoned Provocation will restore 75% of the acumen lost, up from 25%.

- Children sent to protest will now run most of the slogans through a child-ify filter.

- Interrupting a tirade will now restore a small amount of your acumen.


CLASS HOOKS

- Hypnosis Umbrix now has an extra passive effect in Persuasion: Doubles the duration of the informant persuasion on a persuaded NPC. Does not stack with Perorate.

- Predation Mask now has an extra passive effect in Persuasion: It will prevent Snitch and Protest-Disperse from showing your name, and instead show something like 'a masked person'.
* The check is based on whether you were wearing the mask at the time of the original action (e.g. the kill), not whether you're wearing it when Snitch is later used against you.
* i.e. you have to be wearing the mask when you kill the NPC.

- Performance Charisma now has an extra passive effect in Persuasion: All Pathos appeals cost 15% less Acumen.

- Ostension Izu-Ari's fortune ability now works on the charity persuasion.


BUG FIXES

- Fixed Reasoned Authority not lasting the correct 12 seconds.
- You should be able to properly scrutinise unique NPCs now.

Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 20th of Lleian, in the year 18 AC.