Immersive Follower Framework
A Follower AI Overhaul
Introduction
Let's Say Hello!
*You can manage three active followers at any given time
*You can manage one animal follower at any given time
*Your followers will ride horses when you want them to (If using CH, you need to pick ONE follower horse management system, this one or CH's.
*Your follower's horses can be set to graze, letting you continue on foot
*Your followers can have new outfits set
*Your followers will hang out and relax
*Your followers can use potions and learn new spells
*Followers are smarter ‘n the average bear, Yogi
*Followers are essential (with an option to allow them to die)
*THIS WILL NOT INTERFERE WITH INIGO OR FOLLOWERS ON THEIR OWN FRAMEWORK!
*Potential followers can be invited to hang out in your party palace**
The mod is set up out of the box without having to tinker every aspect of your followers for hours on end, leaving you with hundreds of extra sexy minutes to actually play the game. The game itself has limits however – how can you have a troupe of ten people fit inside Windcreek or Embershard at a time?!! You can't. So this limits you to a party of five (you, an animal, and three sexy followers). I find it unimmersive to allow more than a few people at a time to share my adventures. And you don't want be unimmersive do you?! That's what I thought!
Start
Let's Have Some Friends!
Sexy Options include: Allow Followers to Ride Horses, Set Home or Call Follower if they are stuck.
If you forget to dismiss a current follower on the vanilla system, you will get a notification on it that you forgot to dismiss your follower. You will need to roll back a save so that the system updates the quest.
Horses
Let's Ride!
Party Palace
Let's Get Down to Boogie!
Marriage
Let Love Reign!
Management
Let's Get Physical!
Followers use potions! That's right! They use VANILLA POTIONS, NOT CRAFTED. This is a nice way for you to not be burdened with potions, plus they won't slurp your more powerful ones. This is a win-win situation. Simply make sure they have a standard vanilla healing potion and it will be used. Note: we do not touch vanilla potions directly – if you use mods that edit potions, those affects are going to be on your follower as well. Yummy, potions.
No longer will your follower auto-think “OH EM GEE! I MUST BE A STEWARD HERE!!11!!” Instead the dialogue is pulled up when you are at the location of a Hearthfire home and you must pick them to be an actual steward. Hirelings are not available for this option- they are there to be paid for their work, not your house slave. Note: If you already have a Hireling as a Steward, the game will keep him or her in that alias.
OldMansBeard is one sexy programmer! The idea of followers learning spells is a tad daunting. This can be a bloated feature or a streamlined feature. We decided on streamlined because bloat is never good for anyone (we prefer our mods salt-free). There are two ways to teach your follower a spell, via dialogue or handing them a specially crafted spell tome. OMB has a special set up for placing the book in the follower's inventory: they will only learn the spell if they've proven to be an actual spellcaster by having actually cast a spell themselves (after all, a two handed warrior has little use for a firebolt!).
In order to do this, you must take a regular spell tome to a tanning rack and convert it into a Learning Tome. Then you either talk to the follower or hand them the tome. That's it. Super easy. Please remember- a follower will not cast a spell if they have a two handed weapon in their hand. Spells are cast by their left hand, or sometimes right, so if you wish you can give them a dagger for their right hand.
The following spells are able to be learned:
Frost: Ice Spike, Ice Storm, Frostbite, Icy Spear
Fire: Firebolt, Flames, Fireball, Wall of Flames, Incinerate
Storm: Lightning Bolt, Sparks, Thunderbolt , Chain Lightning, Wall of Storms
Other: Conjure Familiar, Conjure Flame/Frost/Storm Atronach, Stone/Oak/Ironflesh, Lesser/Greater/Steadfast Ward
Combat
Let's Learn!
A class determines how points are distributed when leveling up. If a follower's class is supposed to be mage, but they have more points in one handed, at some point they're going to want to fight with a one handed weapons instead of magic. Combat has slider options for how often they will perform a spell, or fighting, and also sets for Dual Wielding. So even if you teach your follower every spell, they're only going to use them if they want to. #followersarestubborn
Inside the CK are two values in their given Class that the PC doesn't worry about. As you know, when you use a one handed weapon, after so many swings/connects you earn Actor Value Points in that specific tree. Afters so many points you earn a Perk which is a bonus to the fact you've been using that tree. During this time you also earn enough Experience Points to level up and distribute those points. You control that on yourself. The game controls what NPCs do. These weights are governed by the Class (more below).
Classes given by Bethesda fall short of what is appropriate for NPCs, especially followers. Perks like Smithing, Alchemy and Pickpocket are wasted because NPCs don't actively use anything from that tree. Since this mod edits for a better follower system, I have altered all the base game system to remove useless point distribution and allocated them to more useful slots. Since “light foot” is useless without actor value points into the sneak tree, so every class has the ability to allocate at least one point into sneak which should be helpful.
NPCs get 16 Skill Weight points. (The base game was 8 which leads to improper calculations later on). These weights will NOT affect the toughness of the game or interfere with combat mods. This is by far more of a patch to the vanilla framework to keep it in line with what the game actually does at run time. #omgdonelearning
Please note this only works on traps that are labeled with “Bear trap” or “trigger trap base.” No, I don't have time to comb through EVERY trap in the world ever made by Skyrim, so whichever traps that you, the player, won't trigger with the right perk, your followers should be good as well. I'm not about to create bloated scripted events to handle this so be smart about the fact that even the smartest of people can bumble into traps. #Level9Immersion
Followers only benefit from very specific enchants, notably fortify health, magicka, stamina and their rates, carry weight (although this is buggy so use their backpacks instead, you rotten pack muler), fortify unarmed damage, resist to magic types and waterbreathing…well they can't drown anyway but this causes them to not surface. If you insist on using mods that bloat how many enchants you can wear and your followers wear, YOU run the risk of destabilising your game.
Outfits
Let's Get Outfitted!
Trading
Let's Share Burdens!
You are limited to 120 Backpack capacity (they carry 40 pounds extra junk per follower). Please remember that by default, the game is limited to a certain amount of memory of data for inside cells. By going over this amount, you will cause instability and crashing which is why I provide for your spouses to be vendors as well. But seriously, stop picking up everything. It's okay to let that bucket be a bucket (Embry might have use for it, after all). Remember: only YOU can prevent stupidity.
Relaxing
Let's Hang Out!
Compatibility
Relationship Dialogue Overhaul (if using)
Cutting Room Floor (if using)
Immersive Follower Framework
IFF/RDO Patch (if using both)
It's really that easy!
Credits
Tarshana: initial follower framework set up, horses, outfits, let's chat/update function, backpack and saddlebag options
OMB: scripting work and idea guru for potions and spell tomes, fixes to the DB and Serana follower framework, makes it so unique followers in other mods can't sneak into IFF's dialog, makes it so Delphine will still recruit blades, adjustments to the Stewards and hooking the mod into the USSEP fixes so that everything runs peachy keen
Testers: OMB, Tarsh, Kojo, Ender, Doc, DeusZERO and Chris