I'm writing this because of frustration with influencing but I've noticed these things apply to the charm spells as well. The skill and the spells lend themselves to the possibility of a lot of abuse by their very nature.. but at the moment they are pretty much useless. As far as influencing a mob goes.. it is incredibly hard to get the skill to even work. I realize I'm not the best at the skill yet, but even where I am it seems like it should work more than it does. And when it does finally work, you do not have enough time for get even a single command in. The affect has worn off before I can even move to a new room to have the mob follow me. I doubt anyone is going to sit there and spam this skill to the point that they actually get it to a level where it would be useful. And that is what it would take. You would just have to sit in front of a mob and spam 'influence' fifty times before it worked, wait one second for it to wear off, then start spamming again. And seeing as how this skill logs... I'm sure people don't like us spamming it. I can see where this skill would have a lot of use for RP, or even recruiting someone to go help you fight, but as it stands, there is just no way you can do that. I would like to see the duration of the skill, and the spells last a little longer. Even if you are inept you should have time to get even one command in, otherwise what is the point? I'm a fairly fast with the keyboard, and using the influence skill, I don't have time to get anything in there before it wears off.
I cut out a great deal of the spam attempts on this:
A fisherman's wife resists the effect of your spell.
A fisherman's wife resists the effect of your spell.
You failed.
You failed.
A fisherman's wife now follows you.
A fisherman's wife stops following you.
Do it yourself!
And I'd like to add that neither of my influencing characters are inept at this skill. And both have very high charismas.
I know we're worried about abuse of the spells and abilities and so forth, but that doesn't mean it should be completely useless. And there is also already a warning in the helpfiles about abusing it. I think a little extra added time to the duration would make a world of difference here.
If I want anything done, it's got to be a dominate spell or nothing at all. 