Destroying Backgrounds

Can Backgrounds be destroyed / lost? Retainers explicitly can be, although not the point invested, but the grown NPC. What about other backgrounds? If a Military force conquers a domain, can the forces controllers buy that domain? What happens to the domain background on the sheets that originally held it? What about the commerce background? If a caravan is ambushed and destroyed does anything happen to the background points? Imagin I kept asking this same basic question, but with examples for all of the backgrounds, eg influence, resources ect.

Domain represents your ability to tame and control a region. Including a fair portion of the denizens of a region. You may be able to occupy a region, possible even destroying other peoples backgrounds in the process, but that does not necessarily mean you would gain that background for yourself. War is a messy business, often you can destroy the very thing you are seeking to gain through war itself. Of course, once you have conquered an area you should be able to invest XP into pacifying it, so eventually you could use that as a justification buy the domain background....

Having said that, I would like to know the answer for background destruction. Will other backgrounds be treated like retainers, or is it possible to actually loose points permanently? It seems reasonable that waging a war should tax your resources and potentially even involve capturing or destroying resources. While attacking a caravan shouldn't give you free points of commerce, it may give you a short term boost in weapons or supplies that could somehow effect the course of the war...of course all that requires ST oversight, which gets complex.

What are the STs thoughts? What kind of level of detail are you aiming for here?

All backgrounds can be attacked by other characters, either through temporary or permanently is yet to be determined.

If you are going to do attacking backgrounds, PLEASE do temporary instead of permanent damage. Here's why:

1) Influences and Backgrounds then can go away. Disciplines and Abilities don't. Thus, smart money is going to ALWAYS prefer investing in Disciplines and Abilities over Influence.
2) The most effective way to keep your now risky Influence is for one Kindred or a coterie to hold the cap, and ruthlessly crush anyone else who attempts to hold backgrounds. Things get brutal FAST.
3) If someone attacks your Influence, that's xp off your sheet. That's a PERMANENT setback. You might plot and scheme against a TEMPORARY setback, but a PERMANENT setback leads inevitably to PvP. You want this to be subtle, not a bloodbath over who gets to actually have money and nice things.

Without the ability to destroy influence you also guarantee PvP because the only way to remove someone from the kingpin position is to kill them. Influence is a dirty game.
Perhaps there should be a choice, maybe you could choose to hurt or to destroy, and cainite society is probably more accepting of one than the other.

+1 to what Bacon said.

Are there even influence caps? I mean a limit to how many people can have the max in an influence? Depending on what rules you decide to use for influence / background fighting limiting the number of players that can have a given background at a given level will have significant effects on the background game.

I believe the king pin rules are being used. I don't know the max people for each level but I can't imagine many people can have a 5.

Kingpin rules are in effect, background destruction is temp only in most cases.

So once you're a king pin your a kingpin for life?

When you're a King,
You're a King all the way
From your first drink of blood
To your final dyin' day

Note "most cases."

Can we have some clarification on what that means? Are you referring to a one in a million plot effect, or is there a way to pursue destruction?

If a player approaches a ST with a surefire way of killing off a background, with a very detailed and elaborate plan complete with names and methods of killing things. For example things like influences, then purchases their influence to 5 after killing another players influence by a level then its possible to kill that dot on the other characters sheet.

Note this should be extremely complicated and requires that another player be foolish enough to announce or allow his influences to be exposed.

If a background permanently comes off a sheet, is that xp refunded to the targeted player?

It would be refunded to the player

If the XP is refunded then i submit that influence destruction should be easier. If it doesn't loose you anything but time, that seems like a great solution. You might actually have influence wars as there is a tangible gain to be made by fighting but also nothing too permanent to loose if you aren't successful.

How does this discussion effect backgrounds such as Miltary force? If you lose a battle, do you lose all your Military Force backgrounds? Or part of it? Do they auto return in time as you conscript more help as long as you aren't abusing them? etc.

My guess would be that following the STs current trend, you would lose access to your military force, or a portion of it, until you spent time convincing all those who serve you that you aren't a totally incompetent general and it is worth the money to serve under you. Of course it all depends on circumstances and degrees of failure.

My guess would be that following the STs current trend, you would lose access to your military force, or a portion of it, until you spent time convincing all those who serve you that you aren't a totally incompetent general and it is worth the money to serve under you. Of course it all depends on circumstances and degrees of failure.

Currently, if you lose a battle or even win you will lose access to some or all of your military force. Dots reappear monthly for free, or you can spend xp to increase recruitment if you really need them back that fast. Though in that instance it may be more beneficial to find other backgrounds to give you troops ie. Conscripts, Commerce, Naval Force...