Gain experience through companion NPC?

[netramz]

Is there any mod currently doing this? I created a mod that duplicates the player as a custom summon, and I think it would be really cool if that custom summon's actions could cause the player to gain experience toward whatever skills the summon utilizes. For example, if my summon casts flare, I would like the player to earn destruction experience.

 

Any help on this would be much appreciated. I'm pretty sure there is no current framework in place for NPCs to gain experience in skills. It would be nice if there was, because then I could duplicate/redirect those skill advances toward the player. Instead, I think it would probably be required that I add scripting behavior that hooks into every action the NPC makes that would advance a player skill and then add a standardized experience value to the player as a result of that action.

 

I'm hoping there's an easy way to detect when a spell is cast and what spell school it belongs to when cast by an actor you already have a reference to, but I'm not completely sure how that works yet (will be looking it up).

 

Hopefully then there is some easy way to detect when an NPC is attacked and what gear they have equipped, so they can reward the player with heavy or light armor experience. The same would then go for when they are attacking and what weapon they have equipped for weapon experience.

 

I don't think I'll worry about acrobatics, athleticism, sneak, security, or any other similar non-combat skills for the purposes of this mod.

 

I think this would still be a reasonable approach, but would love to hear any feedback on how this could be made easier or simply why it just won't work.