Adding Contacts

In discussing Lysander's role as an operative of House Phiarlan, he suggested I take a look at the contacts rules from Unearthed Arcana. I've looked, and I think I might go ahead and add them to the campaign. Here they are in a nutshell:

This system codifies a phenomenon commonplace in most long-term campaigns: the friendly bartender, gruff weaponsmith or absent-minded sage who points the PCs in the right direction, passes along important clues or offers unusual knowledge. With this variant, the PCs have one or more unnamed contacts marked on their character sheets for later use. A player can define a contact for his character at any point during the game, giving the PC access to a friendly NPC.

A contact won't risk life or livelihood on the PC's say-so, but a contact makes some sacrifices for a friend. For example, a contact will burn the midnight oil translating an ancient text or sneak the key to the pantry out of the castle (as long as it's back by morning). There's an inverse relationship between the contact's importance in the ongoing campaign and the amount of help he can provide. In other words, if you choose the mayor as your contact, he's going to be too busy to serve you at a moment's notice, but he's very helpful when you get an audience. Beppo the cobbler, on the other hand, practically lives in his shop, making him available day and night, but the ways in which he can help you are more limited.

There are three types of contacts. Information Contacts are useful for what they know. They're the ones who hear all the rumors - and they can discern which ones are true. Influence Contacts are useful because of who they know or who they're associated with. While a player can't define the queen as his character's contact, he can define one of her chambermaids as a contact. Skill Contacts are useful for what they can do. Some skills - especially categories of Craft, Profession and Knowledge - are rarely possessed by PCs. A special category of the skill contact is the linguist.

Bards get contacts every 2 levels. Clerics, Paladins and Rogues get them every 3 levels. Fighters, Sorcerers and Artificers get them every 4 levels. And Barbarians, Druids, Monks, Rangers and Wizards get them every 5 levels.

There are a few more details on pages 179-180 of Unearthed Arcana, but that's the basics. Any thoughts?