Less powerful vanilla companions - is there a mod?

[Durakwolle]

Hi all

 

 

I've been spending some time looking for a modification that makes vanilla followers a bit less, well, allmighty.

 

I did my first playthrough without any followers until I met Fawkes during the main quest and thought: How cool is that? A Super Mutant who fights with me! Lets go, mutie!

Well, his strength is arguably too high, as I found out soon (the already WAY to easy boss battle became a mere cinematic, with him doing almost as much damage as the giant robot) and as discussed in countless other threads, so I decided to not pick him in my next playthrough and go with Jericho instead.

 

But after fighting some raiders in the DC ruins (whose main weaponry was rocket launchers and assault rifles) I soon came to the conclusion: Dammit, Jericho could probably fight all those super mutants and raiders on his own! No need for my lvl 10 character to assist him. How boring!

 

I did some testing, guiding him to a bunch of maybe five or six raiders, letting him do the job and watch the battle from a safe distance.

One minute later all raiders were dead (although Jericho took some indirect rocket hits - which would have killed me instantly), while his health never dropped below 50%, and immediately after battle he gets magically healed (another thing that bugs me a lot; did in Skyrim, too), so he can take another three rockets to the face and still kick raider and mutant ass like nothing ever happened.

 

For the next test I took him over to a place where two mutants were waiting, both of them equipped with miniguns (which I have modified a bit, their rate of fire is doubled; and I also use a mod that makes mutants a lot tougher...).

Same thing again: Both mutants keep firing their guns simultaneously at him, and while I would have died in this bullet rain after a few seconds, he manages to take them out with his assault rifle and still have 30% health or so left.

 

 

Seriously, this is crap game design.

Why implement - seemingly unbeatable - followers in a game who take away the last bit of challenge from the player?

I don't want to know how ridiculously easy the unmodded game would be (I played only a couple of minutes without mods, probably until the first battle was over...)

 

Difficulty setting hard, XFO with stronger raiders, stronger weapons, tweaked mutants with doubled or tripled health and DR, insane ROF for those mutant's miniguns - and still 9 out of ten times these followers survive every danger I put them in (without a scratch, thanks to auto heal), while my own character has to stay in cover in the same kind of situation, use the terrain to his advantage, do short aimed bursts, take out the most dangerous enemies first or at least cripple their arms so they won't fire as accurate, or target their weapons, slow down approaching melee attackers (because XFO makes melee attacks really devastating...), use mines, grenades and a lot of stimpacks...

 

 

 

So, to bring this (complaint, I guess. Hmm... sorry for that :) ) to an end:

Does anyone know about a mod which makes vanilla companions less powerful?

For example:

Disables auto healing after combat? (so I have to heal them; or maybe makes them regenerating health slowly, not instantly)

Reduces their base DR / Health / accuracy, whatever?

 

The only mod I found was CBO, and that's too intrusive, fancy and complicated (and thus bugged) for my liking.

All the other mods seem to make followers even more powerful (making them essential and whatnot).

 

All I'm looking for is a balanced plain anti-semigodmode for companions, because a 1000 caps is too cheap for a superhero...

 

Thanks and have fun

Durak

[Durakwolle]

Searched the web a bit more, found nothing appropriate.

 

So I fiddled with GECK, lowered recruitable NPCs' base HP by 100, but made them essential. Raised the time NPCs stay unconscious to 180 seconds, so everytime they get knocked out I'm on my own for the next three minutes.

Going to raise this even further, I think...

 

Seems like a compromise, but still sucks in a way, because they awake with 100% HP, not with 30%, and immediately start fighting again. This behavior is hardcoded, as far as I know, changing the settings for this (HP on awakening) in the GECK does nothing.

Also it seems they get teleported to me in awake and fully healed state when I move from exterior to interior cells or vice versa.

 

I'm absolutely clueless with scripting, so this is probably the most I can get out of it.

 

At least, Jericho doesn't look like an alpinist anymore, I changed his awful lip color during the process... :)

 

 

Cu

 

Durak