Post date: Jul 19, 2018 3:20:12 PM
From the Influence Rules:
By spending Influence Actions to Grow, you can increase the value of an Influence. Each Grow Action you spend grants 1 level of that Influence that you can purchase for use in the following Cycle.
For example, if you have Police 3 and you use one of your Police Actions to Grow your Police, you may purchase Police up to a 4 the following Cycle. If you have Police 3, but have already used all three of your Police Actions, thus want to use Underworld to Grow it, you must take 2 Underworld Actions to Grow 1 dot of Police and may purchase another dot of Police Influence the following Cycle.
To start a new Sphere of Influence also requires a Grow action (or a DTA). Since you have no dots in that Sphere yet, it takes 2 Grow Actions from another Sphere to start a new one.
And from the Downtime Action Rules:
Influences use their own system, and are not explicitly tied to the Downtime Action system. However, you may expend one Downtime Action in order to gain two additional Influence Actions in a Cycle. You may only use this Downtime Action once per cycle. Alternately, you may use this DTA to Grow an Influence once per Cycle, including starting a new sphere of Influence.
Additionally, the following Influence Actions also requires the expenditure of (a) Downtime Action(s).
Using Occult 5 to acquire a minor magical item always takes 1 Downtime Action (in addition to your usual Influence Downtime Action).
Using Occult 5 to acquire a specific item requires two Downtime Actions (one to Investigate/Research the item and one to acquire it).