follower mod NPCs going out on their own prior to being recruited?

[anjenthedog]

So an odd thing happened yesterday while I was playing Skyrim. I ran into a team of two follower mod NPCs (fwiw Yuih Sha, and Maxine from the Faerie Elves mod) fighting together against an Astronoch and a bear out east/north east of Windhelm just barely up the path to Boethia's temple.

Have not recruited either Sha or Maxine so far in this game (level 35), nor any other followers, and I wasn't aware that followers did anything other than hanging out at their assigned homes (Tavern in Riverwood for Sha, and the Apothecary in Falkreath for Maxine) unless recruited by the player. Doubly strange since they even come from different towns and still hooked up as a team.

Anyone else run into oddities like that? 

[7531Leonidas]

I believe that Immersive World Encounters has an MCM setting that defaults to potential followers (and other NPCs, esp. jarl's housecarls) being involved in situations out in the world, like patrolling/escorting prisoners, etc.  I usually turn this off, as this can be a real pain if the NPC has some kind of scripted intro quest, or your potential followers are not set to 'essential' or 'protected'.

[drsemmel]

18 hours ago, anjenthedog said:

So an odd thing happened yesterday while I was playing Skyrim. I ran into a team of two follower mod NPCs (fwiw Yuih Sha, and Maxine from the Faerie Elves mod) fighting together against an Astronoch and a bear out east/north east of Windhelm just barely up the path to Boethia's temple.

It might depend on the AI package, your modded followers come with. For example my 3DNPC  go very much about their daily life without me (they have a schedule and some are wandering around). If they encounter an enemy somewhere, they will fight it (and die, if they are not set as protected or essential).

[anjenthedog]

19 hours ago, 7531Leonidas said:

I believe that Immersive World Encounters has an MCM setting that defaults to potential followers (and other NPCs, esp. jarl's housecarls) being involved in situations out in the world, like patrolling/escorting prisoners, etc.  I usually turn this off, as this can be a real pain if the NPC has some kind of scripted intro quest, or your potential followers are not set to 'essential' or 'protected'.

Thanks that's what it turned out to be. New game, must be a default setting. And yeah, I made sure to check them both to make sure they're marked as essential. I guess I need to do that for the other follower mods I have installed, just to make sure they can live their virtual lives without concern for being yeeted. 

[7531Leonidas]

Take a look at Protect Your People ( https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10297 ).  It helps, but not perfect.  There is also a settings loader for IWE ( https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/56865 ) to keep the settings from reverting (it needs MCM Helper).  I have found that it works best if you leave one save game from the previous character before generating a new character/new game.

I seem to remember other mods to protect NPCs, but I don't remember them.  I think that NFF also has something similar integrated in it for current followers, maybe former followers.  I often make sure a follower/npc is set as 'protected' if I have to make any other adjustments to them in xEdit.

[anjenthedog]

Thanks for the suggested mods. Will see if I can dump a few old things I don't use any more and squeeze them onto game (current active plugins at 254). Otherwise I'll just have to rely what I already have.

[7531Leonidas]

I the IWE settings loader doesn't have a plugin, and PYP seems to be all light plugins.