[SSE] Stop followers picking up weapons/force follower active weapon

[BlutsaugerMedic]

For context, I am trying to make a follower use the "Arcane Hands" weapons from the mod known as "Phenderix Arcane Brawler", but they keep picking up other weapons and using them instead all the time. I have been searching the internet a lot for a solution to this, and the only proposed solution I have yet to try to no avail is installing AFT, which I would prefer to use NFF or EFF for the purpose of compatibility with PROTEUS. I would very much appreciate a mod that allows the player to make followers use any particular desired weapon without the follower ever automatically picking up and equipping a weapon the AI perceives as better and plays nice alongside either NFF or EFF.

 

I wonder if it would create any incompatibilities or glitches to simply remove the ability of NPCs to pick up and equip weapons during combat entirely. Obviously Alvor would not be able to pick up his warhammer, but this would be a very minor issue that can be either lived with or easily fixed by the player in-game by giving him his hammer using other mods. I did find out about a mod that allows the player to force NPCs to equip and keep wearing certain armor, known as "NPC Clothes Changer and Maintainer", and a mod doing the same thing this mod does except with weapons instead of clothing could work for this issue as well. NPCs might still pick up weapons randomly, but this would be fine as long as followers do not equip the weapons they pick up or they automatically switch back to their specified weapon whenever this happens. Perhaps picked up weapons could automatically be sent to the "player chest" added by NFF or sent to some other container. I would even personally be fine with just deleting picked up weapons even if followers running around eating all the good weapons would be quite strange and annoying at times. As someone with little experience with the Creation Kit, I am not sure how viable either of these approaches would really be, and a more experienced person might be able to come up with something better.

[Sphered]

The direct no bs route would be the race level. You can toggle whether they can pick up all items, so that might be overkill. But also at the race level you can determine what equip types they can use in their hands, and I THINK*tm they might not pick up invalid weapons at that point, but its something I dont remember for sure

 

If not too inconvenient, above custom race idea would be the easiest fix to let you just move on and continue your adventure. Otherwise you will need to mess with combat packs and AI to see if certain settings will accomplish what want. Off the top of my head I cannot think of a way that definitely will do both of those goals. Scripts definitely can force equip a weapon though. I prolly should have waited to respond. Tired and just waiting on coffee to kick in. Good luck