How to Make Essential Followers Not OP?

[Demonifox]

Let me explain. Any follower that is marked as "essential" will just be downed when their health reaches 0. They will then get up in a few seconds and resume fighting like some immortal beast. Honestly, I think this mechanic is over powered as ♥♥♥♥ and I would like to know if anyone knows of a way around this? With the current mechanic, I feel like my follower is the MVP of the team, going down and then reviving over and over until a strong NPC is finally killed.

No, I don't want my followers to die when they go downed, but would there be a mod or way you can have them stay downed for the rest of the fight or, when they get up, have them not continue fighting and simply watch?

[MrStoob]

Dunno if looking in GECK at how they did it for FONV would help - in that, if followers went down they'd just remain unconscious until the fight was over.

Edited March 20, 2018 by MrStoob

[cdcooley]

Yes there's a few game settings that can keep all essential NPCs (not just followers) down instead of magically recovering after just a few seconds and I find that much more realistic.

 

In my personal tweaks mod I've changed 4 GameSetting values to these:

 

fEssentialDownCombatHealthRegenMult=0.001

fEssentialHealthPercentReGain=0.01

fEssentialNonCombatHealRateBonus=0

fEssentialNPCMinimumHealth=-90

 

The first directly effects what you're talking about but I found that using 0 caused some really strange quirks. The last one makes sure that if they've taken a massive amount of damage that at least a reasonable amount is actually used. I forget the original value but is was high enough that it was way too easy for the NPC to recover. The two in the middle don't directly affect your issue but I find that I like their effect because it also helps to make them feel so overpowered and also gives me more opportunities to use Healing Hands, Heal Other, etc. to help them.

[jones177]

Hi

 

The mod Death Alternative keeps them down until combat is over unless you or a healer/follower revives them.

 

This mod allows me to play a more classic RPG game with a 4 member team usually a warrior, rogue, mage & healer. If one of the team survives combat, the whole team survives & no "gameover" even if the player goes down.

 

With this setup it is more challenging being the healer than one of the fighters.

 

If there was a mod that switched the player to one of the followers if the player went down it would be perfect.

 

Later

[Demonifox]

Yes there's a few game settings that can keep all essential NPCs (not just followers) down instead of magically recovering after just a few seconds and I find that much more realistic.

 

In my personal tweaks mod I've changed 4 GameSetting values to these:

 

fEssentialDownCombatHealthRegenMult=0.001

fEssentialHealthPercentReGain=0.01

fEssentialNonCombatHealRateBonus=0

fEssentialNPCMinimumHealth=-90

 

The first directly effects what you're talking about but I found that using 0 caused some really strange quirks. The last one makes sure that if they've taken a massive amount of damage that at least a reasonable amount is actually used. I forget the original value but is was high enough that it was way too easy for the NPC to recover. The two in the middle don't directly affect your issue but I find that I like their effect because it also helps to make them feel so overpowered and also gives me more opportunities to use Healing Hands, Heal Other, etc. to help them.

Thanks that some great info however...

 

Hi

 

The mod Death Alternative keeps them down until combat is over unless you or a healer/follower revives them.

 

This mod allows me to play a more classic RPG game with a 4 member team usually a warrior, rogue, mage & healer. If one of the team survives combat, the whole team survives & no "gameover" even if the player goes down.

 

With this setup it is more challenging being the healer than one of the fighters.

 

If there was a mod that switched the player to one of the followers if the player went down it would be perfect.

 

Later

This was actually the fix I found. I just customized all the random dying and everything out just so that it had the follower thing. Thanks mate.

[brentw89]

What SECTION heading in the SkyrimPref.ini do I change to fix essential followers so they can be beaten down during combat? I can't find the following values in my INI:

fEssentialDownCombatHealthRegenMult=0.001

fEssentialHealthPercentReGain=0.01

fEssentialNonCombatHealRateBonus=0

fEssentialNPCMinimumHealth=-90

Thank you!

[thumbincubation]

Yes there's a few game settings that can keep all essential NPCs (not just followers) down instead of magically recovering after just a few seconds and I find that much more realistic.

 

In my personal tweaks mod I've changed 4 GameSetting values to these:

 

fEssentialDownCombatHealthRegenMult=0.001

fEssentialHealthPercentReGain=0.01

fEssentialNonCombatHealRateBonus=0

fEssentialNPCMinimumHealth=-90

 

The first directly effects what you're talking about but I found that using 0 caused some really strange quirks. The last one makes sure that if they've taken a massive amount of damage that at least a reasonable amount is actually used. I forget the original value but is was high enough that it was way too easy for the NPC to recover. The two in the middle don't directly affect your issue but I find that I like their effect because it also helps to make them feel so overpowered and also gives me more opportunities to use Healing Hands, Heal Other, etc. to help them.

This is awesome. One of those things I never knew I needed until I saw it. Unfortunately, I'm just not sure where to put it. Taking a wild guess at [Gameplay] in SkyrimCustom.ini ?

[DaedricBard]

Thanks for that great information, cdcooley. Now, to figure out what to do with it...

 

 

Not only are those variables not in SkyrimPrefs.ini, a global search confirms that they do not exist in ANY initialization file on my drive. (findstr /S fEssential *.ini) Nor is there any ini file with a [GameSetting] section.

 

Of course, it's not unusual for undocumented variables that are missing by default and have to be hand-entered. But you can't just insert them anywhere. More clues, please.

[thumbincubation]

I believe game settings can be manipulated in creation kit, and I've seen them show up in a heading in SSEedit before (the sandbox distance in mods like Multiple Floors Sandboxing and My Home Is Your Home, for ex.) but I took these above for .ini entries. I suspect they need to be created, as Daedric Bard has mentioned.

[Mebantiza]

One thing I started doing, is assess ALL player made follower mods in Xedit. Why? Because so many of them, are rather poorly made, and balanced. A few are fairly well done, most are not.

 

Some things you need to look at in terms of how a player made NPC is set up.

 

1). One thing that is extremely common, almost universal, is that essential flag. 99% of follower mods have the flag set. One thing I do, is change all modders OP followers to PROTECTED. That flag is....semi-OP, as opposed to ESSENTIAL, which is frankly, a lubricious setting. Protected is still a little cheesy, but, it a good compromise between invincible, and the short-comings of the games 'AI'. Your followers can die if you are careless, so, you tend to be a be more careful in battle with them.

 

The essential flag, is really meant to keep KEY quest npc from dieing prematurely. It was not really intended to be used to make invincible random followers. But, that is how it gets used a lot. Really, followers should use protected by default, and not essential, but people being what they are, will do w/e they feel like. So they do.

 

2). Another thing you need to watch for is on the offensive side. The one thing that makes melee followers extremely OP, is dual-wielding. Really. It raises there DPS so high, as they start to level up, they can slice through NPCs with ease, especially as they level ip

 

3) Perks. Some, a lot? of followers are given far too many perks. Ive opened some followers up and seen the creator literally spammed almost every perk in the list just for......because it looked cool I guess. I dont know. But, giving NPCx every perk in the game or close to, yea, thats gonna be OP, and it does happen.

 

4) Offsets. Some people, again, give the NPCs insane health, magicka, or stam(less of an issue) offsets. Like in the 1000s. Seen that happen too.

 

 

After I dial back my D/Ls perks, stats, and abilities to a reasonable level, they are a lot more 'balanced' than a lot of what you'll find. Most people of course, just d/l followers and dont really understand how they are setup, or should be. I didn't even bother looking at followers for a long time because I didn't understand them well either. Once I learned more about how the game actually works, I started looking at all of the followers and found a so many errors, poor balance and just...head scratching things that it kind of surprised me at first. Now? I just examine every follower I d/l and expect to find all sorts of dumb and or OP things about them. And often times, I do.

 

Then I fix it, and carry on. How a follower 'looks' in screenshots is not an indication of how well it is configured under the hood as it were. My fav NPC looked awesome, but was stupidly OP and was dicing NPCs all over the place. I looked into its stats, and found it was given dual-wield perks and skills that immensely OP. Just fixing that alone, made the game actually partway fun again once she stopped slicing through every npc we met like they were butter. Makes a difference in how the game plays out, it really does.