LE How to make an NPC flee from the player?

[nerdofprey]

I have an idea that I've had trouble implementing. The basic concept is that the dragonborn bursts into the room and an insignificant background character gets startled and runs away/hides. Pretty much just a sight gag.

 

I found one really easy way to do it: set the character to be hostile, "very aggressive" and "cowardly" so that they aggro on the player, start combat, but then their combat reaction is to flee. I don't like this solution because other NPC's in the area will react as if a bloody fight has broken out. Sometimes the results are bizarre and unpredictable. People start randomly killing each other. I'm looking for a more elegant method that keeps everybody OUT of combat.

 

My best guess is some kind of triggered event where by stepping in a certain area, the player triggers the NPC to stop what they're doing, run to an idle marker somewhere and cower there for X amount of time. I don't know if this should be a quest, a script, an AI package... I'm kind of a noob at this creation kit thing.

 

If this is something that's insanely complicated it's probably not worth it for a throwaway joke, but if there is a reasonably simple solution, I'd like to know it.

[DDProductions83]

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1912704-easy-tutorials-for-the-ck-it-aint-that-complicated/

[Ceruulean]

How about a custom fear spell that's non-hostile and has no visual effects? When the player enters the room, a script from a quest or something casts a spell on the background character and he runs away.

http://www.creationkit.com/Cast_-_Spell

[DDProductions83]

Its easier to just make a triggered scene fire

Info is in my tutorials :P specifically quest one but there is scripted events firing on the scripting tutorial

[nerdofprey]

I forgot to reply earlier, but I did watch all your videos and there's a lot of good info there. At least now I have some idea of how to make it work. Thanks.