Gauge Action

Tony had a nice comment that has helped me work out the Gauge action a bit. This is one of those actions that wasn't in the Dark Epics book, but felt useful from some of the larp adaptations. My one problem with it is it's basically a one point action, there's little need to spend more points in it. But here's my idea for a revised version of three very similar Gauge options.

GAUGE THE CITY, AN OPPONENT, OR THE LEADER
The Gauge action tells you how much influence is available in the city. You learn the number of total levels a region can support and how many free levels are still available, and perhaps other facts relating to the state of the influence. Note that circumstances may change, and a given influence in a region may grow or shrink.

Alternately, you can use the Gauge action to target a particular individual whom you have successfully traced. If you do, you learn how much influence that person commands (though not their ability to augment).

If you gauge an influence for the leader, you learn enough information to trace the largest influence network in a given category .

Gauge is opposed by both the Conceal and Defense actions. 

This is obviously just two more options slapped onto the previous Gauge action, but I like them. For gauging the leader, I'm not sure if I want to restrict it to only revealing level 4 or 5 influences, of if you should be able to detect who has the most influence if the most is only a 2 or 3 (hey, it could happen). Gauging the leader is a sure way that everyone can attempt to get a trace on someone, and makes it harder for the leader to remain the king of the hill.

Gauging an opponent just gives you a clearer picture of their resources, which is obviously useful but might not be obviously worth an action all the time.

The opposition actions... I'm not quite sure of. Conceal seems reasonable, but should any level of conceal in the whole pool be grounds to oppose a Gauge the City option? Probably not. If you attempt to gauge an opponent or the leader and realize your action failed, that's some pretty solid evidence that they're using a conceal. I guess you can always try again the next turn with more points, but should an attempt at gauging count as a "point of contact" like an attack for purposes of tracing? That at least evens it out and gives the king of the hill some info that someone is snooping around. A bonus die for small influences for a conceal seems still reasonable in this situation, it might be harder to gauge a small influence, just like it is harder to detect.