cons of attaching to vanilla objects?

[starfire42]

I'm building a variation of the Kynareth/Mara/Julianos 's blessing. I'd like to have it received by activating meridia's shrine (used in the "Break of Dawn" quest). However, most mods I've seen use their own activator, rather than attaching to a vanilla one which makes me think attaching to a vanilla object is problematic or dangerous (as in corrupting a save or interfering with some key vanilla interaction)..

 

The script I'm thinking of attaching is the same one used for the 9 divines' shrines, just modified to use my custom spell and effect.

[IsharaMeradin]

Technically there is no problem with utilizing existing in-game objects for scripts.

 

The problem arises when a player decides to remove a mod which has applied a script to a stock object and then continues to use that same character without going backwards to a point prior to adding in the mod which assigned scripts to stock objects.

 

The save game will notice that the script is missing but will still attempt to do whatever it was last set to do for that object. A well designed script can leave very little impact behind in such a scenario. However, most scripts are not well designed for such a scenario. Since mod added objects are no longer called upon from the save, many authors prefer to use their mod added objects for scripts so that their time building and testing the mod is much easier.

 

What you may want to consider is to make a new form and duplicate the existing activator(s) that you wish to use and place them in the exact same position in the render window. Then utilize a quest script that will disable the original and enable your mod version when the conditions for using it are correct (if necessary it can be set up to flip the original back on and turn the mod one off). That way you still get to use what appears to be the normal stock object without actually touching the stock object.