SSE How to make NPC use a spell?

[Lagruej]

Hey everybody, I'm having a bit of a hard time - and so I've turned here.

I'm making a mod for Skyrim which includes a couple new areas and some mini-bosses.

I can get melee units to work perfectly - but any NPCs I make refuse to cast spells. So for example - I made a boss that is a Frost Atronach - in the 'Spell List' tab of the NPC_ form, I added 5 new spells. The thing is, the boss still fights like any regular Frost Atronach, and refuses to use the spells in his list. I've made sure he has enough Destruction level and Magicka by default to cast numerous times however all he does still is his melee, slam - and for some reason spends 90% of his effort backing away from fights when his A.I. is cranked to angry, frenzied and hostile to everybody.

I've never really gotten in depth with enemy A.I. and such, so if somebody could help me out that would be great.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Lagruej

[JWGamimg75]

I don't know if this is going to be helpful or not -- I'm kinda new to this myself -- but did you make sure the "aggression" is set to Very Aggressive. I'm looking at the AI Attributes of the FrostAtronachBoss05 "actor" and it's set to:

 

Aggression: Very Agressive

Mood: Neutral

Confidence: Foolhardy

Morality: No Crime

Combat Style: csAtronachFrost

Nothing for Aggro Radius Behavior

 

I also noticed that the FrostAtronach's don't have any spells in their list by default and only one perk.

 

It's possible that spells, often used by human NPCs, are not compatible with Atronachs.

Edited June 30, 2018 by justinglen75

[Lagruej]

I don't know if this is going to be helpful or not -- I'm kinda new to this myself -- but did you make sure the "aggression" is set to Very Aggressive. I'm looking at the AI Attributes of the FrostAtronachBoss05 "actor" and it's set to:

 

Aggression: Very Agressive

Mood: Neutral

Confidence: Foolhardy

Morality: No Crime

Combat Style: csAtronachFrost

Nothing for Aggro Radius Behavior

 

I also noticed that the FrostAtronach's don't have any spells in their list by default and only one perk.

 

It's possible that spells, often used by human NPCs, are not compatible with Atronachs.

I actually had his aggression one higher at Frenzied, so he would just attack everyone and everything around him.

 

I went in last night and removed all the spells from his list for now, but I'm really hoping incompatibility isn't a thing here. If it is, it will suck, but I really hope not. All I want is for him to have a few simple spells to him like Ice Spike and Wall of Frost.

[thumbincubation]

I've never tried this on an atronach, only humanoid NPCs, but you might try changing the combat style. Try combat sorcerer or something, first. If that doesn't work (not sure about non-humans) then try the combat style for flame atronach. If he starts casting ice spikes or something, then you can go into combat styles, right-click and duplicate the one you chose, rename the duplicate something unique, and start changing the sliders to reflect more of what you want.

[cumbrianlad]

I think you might look at the class you give to your atronach.

 

Under the 'Attribute weights' section, the normal frost atronach has health = 3, Stamina = 2 and magicka = 1. This means that only 1/6 of its skill points are given to magicka.

 

Compare that with a flame atronach having health = 2, stamina = 1 and magicka = 3, the flame atronach has half of its skill points given to magicka, making it much more likely to use its spells.

 

I'd suggest equalizing the attributes in the combat style for your frost atronach, so health, stamina and magicka all = 2. If that fails drop the stamina to 1 and up the magicka to 3: that should make it more likely to cast spells and less likely to thump its enemies.

 

I'd also cut down on his spells, just give him a couple of decent ones to choose from and then add perks into his spell list, so for example you give him 'Icy Spear' and 'Wall Of Frost' which are both expert level destruction spells and give him the 'Destruction Expert 75' perk to go along with it, so his spell cost is halved.

 

Also, I've noticed that the ability ABatronachFrostFX has a high (792) cost. I'm not sure if this affects his magicka but if it does, he could well be unable to cast anything because of this ability which runs all the time he's alive. You could try making a duplicate of this ability and lowering the base cost to see if this has any positive effect. None of the other magic wielding atronachs have any abilities with such a high magicka cost.

 

As for his combat style, try giving him csWEbattlemage, which has magic heavily loaded in the general tab, or you could duplicate this and tone down things like ranged attacks.

 

I didn't see anything in the race tabs to suggest he can't cast spells, so you probably don't need to make a new race.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Edit: You didn't say how you created your boss frost atronach. Did you make it from a duplicate and if so, which? There are big differences between the various frost atronachs in the game, depending if they are summoned by the player or an NPC and whether they are 'potent' or not.

 

Justinglen75, I doubt that atronachs are incapable of casting spells since flame atronachs and storm atronachs seem to do it ok. Also, the frost atronach race has spells checked in its 'combat data' tab. Still, there could be something I've missed.

[Lagruej]

I think you might look at the class you give to your atronach.

 

Under the 'Attribute weights' section, the normal frost atronach has health = 3, Stamina = 2 and magicka = 1. This means that only 1/6 of its skill points are given to magicka.

 

Edit: You didn't say how you created your boss frost atronach. Did you make it from a duplicate and if so, which? There are big differences between the various frost atronachs in the game, depending if they are summoned by the player or an NPC and whether they are 'potent' or not.

 

Justinglen75, I doubt that atronachs are incapable of casting spells since flame atronachs and storm atronachs seem to do it ok. Also, the frost atronach race has spells checked in its 'combat data' tab. Still, there could be something I've missed.

Alright, so what I did was copy the "encAtronachFrost" version of him in the CK. Just made a duplicate of that one and then gave him a predetermined level as well as adding offsets to the Magicka and Health which should mean he has 12,000 Magicka at any given time. If his active ability is impeding that, then that's insane. His "class" is also set up 10 Health, 10 Magicka, 1 Stamina.

 

I tried csBattlemage as suggested and he stands there doing nothing. I then tried making a copy of csAtronachFrost and tweaking that copy to favour magicka and lowering things like unarmed etc., and he still doesn't cast the stuff in his spell list.

 

I'm wondering if the Attack Data tab on the enemy itself is the issue. It looks like it determines his patterns, but I don't understand it.

Edited July 2, 2018 by Lagruej

[cumbrianlad]

Hmm.

 

I'm out of ideas then.

 

I've done this before creating everything from the race up and it works.

 

Next time I'm in CK I'll have a fiddle with the encAtronachFrost and dump him in the cell I'm testing see if I can work something out from there. I'll leave my own dwarven automatons enabled without altering their factions... frost atronach versus dwarven centurion... should be fun!

 

Hope somebody else can suggest something in the meantime.

[TheWilloughbian]

A lot of getting NPCs to cast certian spells is done with scripting, like some of the Healer Followers. As I understand it, you basically have to make them look for a condition and when that condition is met you tell them to cast them spell.

 

Also it has been my observation that NPCs avoid some spells for reasons that I'm not certain of. They also seem to pick whatever attack will do the most damage. Which is why my attempts to have a follower that just turns enemies into bunnies have not yet been successful.

 

I'm not much of a coder, so I can't really be more helpful about it, I'm afraid. Maybe take a look at the scrips in the Vilja mod. The author managed to get her to do some pretty complex things. One of the few followers that can cast "Buffs" that I know of.

[cumbrianlad]

I've also noticed that the frost atronach has no animations relating to magic.

Both the storm and flame versions do have animations for magic, as do any NPCs that cast spells.

 

I'm thinking it can't cast a spell because it doesn't have these animations.

 

Adding them is not possible in CK animations tab and the process of extracting the animations and applying them to a new race is well beyond me, I'm afraid.

[TheWilloughbian]

Check the skeleton it uses for a magic node maybe?