Anyway of dealing with Skyrims Overpowered Followers?

[Mebantiza]

Problem:Most of Skyrims auto-level followers are insanely OP. I have managed set up a build where my damage and AC scale reasonably well with the mobs, bears with 2000+hp, Draugrs with 2500ish+ and so on, so that part is working out not too badly. But as soon as the follower joins in, that bear, Draugr, wolf whatever, are dead in seconds. Is there a mod, that can globally scale back follower power? At current, its starting to trivialize my game again, even though the results were pretty good at lower levels. Once you break out into the 'high end' game, and get decently equipped, they mostly go back to being OP killing machines.

 

For example, hers are Jessicas current Stats.

 

Diff.-Legendary

 

Im Level 61

She is 54. (I adjusted her level Calc from 1.0 to .90 so she levels behind me.

 

Level 54

Health 680

magic 100

Stam 360

Regen 100(all)

Armor 1102!

 

Dual Wielder

 

No gamey 'cheat' mod or gods weapons-lot of custom armors but no weapons. All Vanilla basically.

 

Skyrim doesnt have an ATK, or dps stat one can easily reference, Ive long noticed this. Of course it has skill levels for various weapons, but that doesnt really tell you what we really need to know, what the 'effective dps' of followers actually is at any given time.

 

 

She has a pair of max Smithed Ebony swords. When I look at her sword in trade window, their ATK rating is 228. Now what I find is, at the lower end of the game, levels say 1-30ish? Follower power isnt out of line and scales reasonably well with what I have been doing, especially with the mods im running to boost mob power. BUT, once you get your crafting cycling done, Smith Alc 100, and can craft Max power swords and armor, they are back to killing machines. About the only mobs that give follower trouble are Deadly Dragons and a few selected encounters Revenge of the enemies adds. Most standard encounters, Deathlords are dieing way too easily despite 2000+ HP levels and lots of buffing form Deadly Monsters.

 

Do any mods exists where one can globally tone down follower power in any way? I cant seem anything remotely like this anywhere.

 

Here are some things that simply dont work

 

-Turn down difficulty. It doesnt work, I dont why or how people get the idea that tones down follower power but it doesn't help OP followers at all.

-Lowering follower level. I tried this, and based on what im seeing right now-its not much of a help(at high level at any rate)

 

 

Should I be giving all followers rusty iron daggers and not modify there armors in any way? I realize there is also the classic 'Dont use Followers', but they are important to the overall experience and immersion and I dont regard that as a serious suggestion.

 

I could boost Mob power through Deadly Monsters, currently they are around 100-250% and for me, as a character, thats plently. Most fights are challenging, but since follower power isnt scaling with everyone else-they become wrecking balls and thats what I am trying to deal with. I could boost Deadly monsters to Max +500% level and Im sure even that would make followers work-but it would also make the game effectively unplayable for characters.

 

So any ideas please....

 

[notmyhome]

For non-mages: Take away all their weapons and outfit them with wooden swords.

[scissorhands]

I'm pretty sure having them use wooden swords is also pretty unrealistic. If you don't want them using some unrealistically bad weapon, open the dev console, click on the follower, then type "setav onehanded 20" (without the quotation marks). That should lower their damage quite a bit. Of course, it might increase to an OP level once you (and by extension, they) level up again, but you won't be leveling up that often at such a high level, so it shouldn't be too much of a coincidence.

[LOL50015]

Well, can't you just give them mildly tempered gear? You don't need to go maximum power with your 100 alchemy, smiting and enchanting.

 

I wish I have your problem, I'm puking rainbows here, despite being level 44, I'm still getting killed by cave bears.

[Mebantiza]

@LOL50015 Actually, just after I made this post-thats exactly what It occurred to me to do :geek: . So I ran 3 test cases against the same bear...and finally figured out just where the root of the problem lies. Yes its, in been in there gear strength all along. Since there seems no way to scale them properly automatically(that I know of), its going to be mildly tempered gear for ALL followers from here on in. sigh.

 

The strong gear case creates a sickly overpowered follower that basically wrecks game balance.

 

The weak gear case is far too weak.

 

The medium gear case(no 32% fortify enc potions) or Smithing Pots, is in sweet spot. It was just about right-though I may run further tests. The results surprised me. The weak vs strong case Jessica Dual wielding ebony blades was 14X stronger than the weak test run. :ohmy:

 

That was vs a Arctic Bear with 2025 hp with Follower@Level 54.

[dennis20014]

I'm thinking you could probably click on your follower in console mode and type

 

setav attackdamagemult xx Default damage is 1, so just put it like something like 0.1 or 0.2 (0.5 would be half)

 

I'm certain you can do this. I know I have edited some followers speed in a similar fashion as those particular followers have always had problems falling behind.

 

If you use something like Amazing Follower tweaks, some options you can use are unchecking "Boost follower stats" and perhaps making them able to die? I mean that seems pointless at first but if they kill so much anyway, least now they have some weakness...assuming enough dragons can attack at once xD haha

[Mebantiza]

I might look at those commands, but I am guessing the changes are temporary? At least if one attempts to regulate follower power by giving them sub-par weapons and armors-at least then its a equip and forget system. Now I just need to test and decide what the optimal weapons and crafting strengths are. Of course, another way to approach this is look at how mods assign AC and weapons ratings. Its pretty clear, Armor ratings are being set way too high by mod makers generally. If I give jess for example, just three pieces of Ghorza armor-no helm even, produces a result of 1102AC. On my character is 744. Thats with 29%+32% enhancements. On a follower-she gains over 400 more AC than I do...bizarre but the upshot of it all is-it makes her pretty well invulnerable to most attacks so Ive canned that program permanently. Now they are going to get non-enchanted upgrades only. Both Armor and weapons power have to balanced against each other or my quest is for naught.

[dennis20014]

I think they are temporary, however you can change out 'setav' to 'forceav' and I believe that will save it into your next save. setav you can use however for testing until you get the right damage.

 

As for the armor problem, I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure armor levels with the followers, so what you could try to do, is manually set there level to something lower. They are so OP right now, take 20 levels off and see how they do LOL

 

I think AFT has a manual editor that you can reset them and then apply their perks and skills. It's really tedious, so you could try even a leveling console command. I think it would work out. I'm not sure what the level command is, but I believe you'd do it in the same fashion as I have mentioned before.

 

I agree though, you could give them subpar things, but where is the fun in that?? You have worked so hard for all this stuff and you want them to be bad ass like you :tongue:

Edited July 13, 2014 by dennis20014

[Mebantiza]

Perhaps sub-par was a bit of a misnomer-I am giving them full 29% smithed armor-just less the +130% smith pot. That part is what's making them essentially unstoppable tanks. Again, if mod makers didnt make armors with such high AC in first place, it would be less of an issue. But I can understand why. Most modders assume(correctly) the armor is essentially for player Characters, and only as afterthought-for Followers. I have whole sets of armor that I DL only for follower use-and they all produced massively over-armored tanks. ATM, Jess is running a 680 AC on the toned down plan, which is much more reasonable than the 1102 AC she had when I started. She actually takes hits and staggers a lot(like a lightly armored DW person would) Still a little OP and tanks far too well for what is basically a lightly armed assassin type class, but a lot better than it was.

[Signette]

There are soooo many ways to make Skyrim super difficult or super easy, making your followers OP gods or useless like skeever, console and mods are your friends here :)

 

But keep in mind, AI bots (in any game) are very dumb and can be exploited it every possible way. Thus in singleplayer games I don't tend to build my playstyle along the challenge, you can't get one no matter how hard you try, so I rather get down to immersion and enjoying scenery, fighting usual way avoiding exploits to make it seem as realistic as I can. We are playing as Dovakin after all, he meant to be most powerfull creature in the world, isn't he?...