Effects to simulate higher difficulty modes on NPCs?

[Mud]

So it's no secret that Skyrim's difficulty settings are woefully inadequate, but I recently learned that on top of just modifying the player's damage dealt and taken, Bethesda neglected to even make those modifications apply to the player's follower, making them quickly become much more powerful than the player if you keep their equipment up to speed. With that in mind, I wanted to create some equippable items with harmful enchants that would reduce the wearer's damage dealt and taken just like increasing difficulty level does, but does the game even have magic effects I can use to achieve that? The main thing is, I know there's a weakness to magic effect I can use to increase magic damage taken, but what can I use to increase damage from weaponry? And I only know of specific modifications for two-handed, one-handed, ranged, destruction etc. power in the base game, is there anything I can use to decrease damage dealt across the board to cover stuff like damaging spells from other schools?

[Mud]

So after poking around in the CK for a while, it looks to me like my best option is to create perks that modify incoming and outgoing damage for each difficulty setting, but I have no idea how to set up items that give this perk while they're equipped. I tried looking at items from the base game that use perks to achieve their effects, like Wuuthrad's +20% damage against elves effect, but all I'm able to see is that I need to create MGEF and ENCH entries for them and I can't figure out what tells the game to apply the perk when those effects are present.

[Ayn Sof]

Try this one: (target your follower) modav attackdamagemult -0.2 (-0.1, -0.3 or anything depending on your taste/difficulty)

reduce their physical damage output

 

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Console_Commands_%28Skyrim%29/ActorValues

use modav, it acts like buff and can be reversed

or use SkyTweak

 

edit: values

[afa]

Minor details, but this has been something this has been bothering me for a long time too.

A better way to think of the difficulty setting is actually to think about it in terms of "damage NPC takes" and "damage PC takes" it has little to do with damage dealt by either side. Novice difficulty produces more frail followers because NPC damage taken is increase and the opposite happens at higher difficulty as NPC damage taken is decrease. The opposite is true for PC.

Skytweak let you independently adjust them so you can have cases where both PC and NPCs take increased/decreased damage at the same time.

 

NPCs if leveled the same as PC are actually stronger than the PC.

NPCs (followers included) have a higher light/heavy armor and one hand/two hand/bow damage multiplier. Meaning if both PC and a NPC have the same skill value, same perk and using the same piece of equipment, the NPC will get more out of it. I guess that is to counterbalance the fact that crafting is not available to NPCs. However followers can get the best of both worlds.

 

What I have been doing is don't equip followers with tempered equipment so they are at equal footing with enemies (baring any op followers), and then mess around with Skytweak to adjust damage independently.

[Mud]

Well, NPC vs NPC damage isn't modified at all, is the thing. Only the damage the player inflicts to and receives from NPCs. I've been staggering my followers' equipment for a long time, but I've grown very tired of that.

 

I'm still having trouble figuring out how to make a perk get assigned when an item is worn, though. Is this even doable without scripts? Gah.

[Mud]

Well, damn, I don't think this is gonna work. Besides the fact I can't quite get the perk to be applied when an item is equipped, NPCs don't like to work with perks that aren't part of their list by default in their ESP...

[afa]

Not sure exactly the script you are messing with. But I think the 3 Dragonborn DLC Dragonprist masks add perk to the wearer to achieve its effects. Maybe you are looking for something similar to that?

 

If you just want to sort of balance the game out

You might be better off messing around with the follower's perk/skill/health values/growth directly in esp and/or use a mod that boost hostile NPCs.

[Mud]

Well, I think the script is okay, I just modified another script I found when googling how to do this, but I think I'm not setting up the item to apply it properly because the item I created doesn't do anything when I equip it myself, though the perk I created properly reduces damage output when tested.

 

 

Scriptname DifficultyRingExpert extends ObjectReference  

 

Perk Property DifficultyExpert  Auto  

 

Event OnEquip(Actor akActor)

 

If !AkActor.HasPerk(DifficultyExpert)

 

akActor.AddPerk(DifficultyExpert)

 

EndIf

 

EndEvent

 

 

 

Event OnUnequip(Actor akActor)

 

If AkActor.HasPerk(DifficultyExpert)

 

akActor.RemovePerk(DifficultyExpert)

 

Endif

 

EndEvent

 

But if perks can't be properly applied to NPCs outside of an ESP, then getting this to work wouldn't serve my purposes anyway...

 

If I could get something to work, I was hoping I'd be able to release it for others to use as well, not just to modify my own specific set of followers with a personal ESP.