LE Hirable live-in servants and buyable live-in pets?

[stebbinsd]

Here's a great idea for an immersion mod!

 

In Vanilla, the only live-in servants you have are your housecarls. However, they mostly serve as security guards, not domestic servants. Sure, they use the cooking spit, but you never see them have meals ready for you, so I'd assume they're themselves a meal and eating it immediately.

 

Also, the only pets you can get are animals that fill your "pet follower" slot. They cannot live in your house and be fed by your housecarl when you're away.

 

Also, they're free. Only hirelings require a fee, and even that's a flat fee for unlimited service. Hearthfire bards and carriage drivers also only require flat fees.

 

I'd like a mod that lets you hire NPCs who you are on friendly terms with to come live in your home.

 

Of course, the mod would need to include a "servant's quarters" furnishing option with the steward (the same way Hearthfire added the "kids' bedrooms" furnishing options). But that shouldn't be too hard.

 

The number of live-in servants per house would depend on the size of the house. Breezehome and Honeyside, being the smallest homes, could accommodate only a single live-in servant. Vindrel Hall and Hirelm, up to three live-in servants. Proudspire Manor, up to five, and the Hearthfire homes, up to seven (of course, one of those seven slots would be taken up by your steward, so only six you can hire afterwards).

 

You could then assign your servants various domestic tasks. By default, all tasks would be assigned to all servants, just in case your house of choice can only accommodate one servant. However, it is recommended (but not required) that at least one servant be assigned to each task.

 

The tasks are:

 

Maid/butler: With one of these, you can walk straight inside your home, dump everything on the floor, and then leave. The maid or butler will then take your droppings and place them into corresponding containers, according to the instructions you give them. For example, Proudspire Manor has a safe in the master bedroom. You could tell your maid/butler to place all spare septims, gold & silver ingots, gems, and jewelry in that safe.

 

Also, the maid or butler would take any plates or other loose items that get kicked around, and place them back in their default positions.

 

Shopper: You can give your shopper two different lists. A "standard list" includes a list of basic supplies (such as food or alchemy ingredients) for the shopper to buy every time he or she goes out to the market. A "special list" would apply for only a single shopping trip (such as buying ingots to make new armor, or buying a ring to give your spouse as a present, or a honey nut treat to give your kids as a present).

 

Cook: Take the food items purchased by the shopper, and cook meals for all the people in the home.

 

Olster: Make sure your horse(s) are groomed and fed.

 

Farm Hand: For Hearthfire homes, you can have this servant harvest the crops.

 

I'll also let you guys decide what other tasks need to be assigned.

 

You could also have up to one pet per household member (non-servant). A future edition would allow you to allow your other family members to select their own pets (but since you'd need to program each NPC individually, so as to make sure that they each select the type of pets that suit their personalities, this would be a tall order). These pets would not be your followers, and wouldn't even be trained in combat. They would be your pets, in the truest sense of the word.

 

I'd also like to see a "wages" system, where you have to pay your servants. There would be a safe (different one than what was already in your homes to begin with, like the aforementioned Proudspire Manor safe) that you could place gold inside. Money would be automatically drawn from that safe to pay your servants' wages. The mod would take funds out of the safe first, but if you have "Bank of Skyrim," money would be withdrawn from your accounts if the safe were empty.

 

Pets wouldn't require a salary, but they WOULD require dog food, or food for whatever animal they are. The costs are as thus:

 

1 gold per day to feed each pet,

12 gold per day to feed each human (4 gold per meal).

Salaries would differ, depending on the city you're in and how much the NPC is willing to work for.

Edited November 29, 2014 by stebbinsd

[HyperManFZ]

I like the wages idea (also paying to feed pets and people). It doesn't make sense that you pay your servants once for unlimited service + you never even pay your steward that much. In vanilla Skyrim you essentially just purchase slaves... the Dragonborn is a slaveholder...and that's messed up.

 

I'm not really interested in the other changes, but the wages I like. I know this post is pretty old, but I searched for a wage mod for skyrim and this is all I found; so if anything ever became of this idea I'd like to know. There are a number of skyrim mods I would like to make, and this idea of paying wages is one of them, so I may be making something of it in the future (for SE, not oldrim).