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[Discussion] Having multiple playable characters in Skyrim for one play through.


Niobia

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Posted

What I mean is; what if there were a mod that allowed you to do the following:

 

-Have, say 2 to 5 characters that you can play as in one playthrough.

-When you're not controlling the other character(s) they become NPCs that can be recruited and act as any other follower like Familiar Faces.

-when you control a character it's just like any other character you have. it has an inventory, you can change it's appearance via showracemenu, change it's name etc etc

-Things that mention the PC's name could refer to the first character's name

 

 

I'm sure plenty of people have thought of this, but I realized how badly i wanted it when I decided to start yet another playthrough hoping it would be the last one becuase I keep starting over and just want to play the game. Anyway, I wanted to play a pure healer class for the most part and have followers and role play this group of characters that i came up with which has a heavy armored sword and board fighter, a healer, a destruction mage, a gunner (flintlock mods), and a ninja. In this playthrough, I want to do all the quests and guild stuff in a way that makes sense. Normally, i play a character that's mainly a sneaky fighter that uses some magic so they can fit all the guild stuff. But, i've restarted my game literally over 300+ times over the years and am tired of playing the same thing over and over. I know i could just skip certain quests, but I'd rather not if it can be helped.

 

 

So anyway, being a pure healer, I can't really work my way through the thieves guild quest or DB or even Companions. So then I thought, "it'd be great if I could jsut take control of the ninja follower and have him go off on his own to become a thief and eventually assassin in order to make money to support the group or whatever". And then take control of warrior and have her do the companion stuff. Then I thought about how it'd be cool to just switch between the characters so one could play what ever class they were in the mood for without having multple saves and different instances.

 

I think i've seen mods that allow you to possess NPCs, so I wonder how possible this is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted

Reminds me a bit of GTA5.

Anyway, in theory that should be somewhat possible, I think. There is a console command with which you can take control over an NPC. Maybe even creatures, not so sure about that one. So if you give all NPCs a proper AI you somewhat can get what you suggested. Might need some immersivebreaking use of console though each time you want to switch characters.

Posted

Reminds me a bit of GTA5.

Anyway, in theory that should be somewhat possible, I think. There is a console command with which you can take control over an NPC. Maybe even creatures, not so sure about that one. So if you give all NPCs a proper AI you somewhat can get what you suggested. Might need some immersivebreaking use of console though each time you want to switch characters.

 

Neat. i never knew about that. I currently use EFF + FollowerLivePackage. But I supposed the trouble might happen with the orginal PC.

Posted

I have considered this many times.

 

The game only has 1 set of data for the player to control perks and such.

 

Controlling another NPC is easy. You cannot however level that NPC up with a dynamic perk tree. The NPC also will not level by you doing things with it, like, one handed attacks leveling one handed. Anyone Not The Player levels according to the leveled character and its class system.

 

It is maybe technically possible if the mod remembers all the skill points and perks before you switch characters, then completely resets the entire character each time you switch. It would be a metric assload of work though, and still that level and perk system will never apply to the actual NPC.

 

You'd have to do something like, have multiple sets of perks/points, then you copy Lydia's appearance and apply lydia's build on switch. Switching back, reapply the new updated points/perks to lydia and reset back to your original appearance. The appearance part could probably be done with Racemenu presets or NiOverride.

Posted

The closest solution I can think of at the moment would be to use Familiar Faces which lets you recruit other characters you've made as followers, with Alternate Actors which lets you basically posess and control NPCs. I haven't used either, so I don't know how well they'd work together, nor do I know how well leveling and such would work with them (Alternate Actors' description page says you can level up the NPCs' skills, though I don't know how exactly that functions), but it might be worth a try.

Posted

I have considered this many times.

 

The game only has 1 set of data for the player to control perks and such.

 

Controlling another NPC is easy. You cannot however level that NPC up with a dynamic perk tree. The NPC also will not level by you doing things with it, like, one handed attacks leveling one handed. Anyone Not The Player levels according to the leveled character and its class system.

 

It is maybe technically possible if the mod remembers all the skill points and perks before you switch characters, then completely resets the entire character each time you switch. It would be a metric assload of work though, and still that level and perk system will never apply to the actual NPC.

 

You'd have to do something like, have multiple sets of perks/points, then you copy Lydia's appearance and apply lydia's build on switch. Switching back, reapply the new updated points/perks to lydia and reset back to your original appearance. The appearance part could probably be done with Racemenu presets or NiOverride.

 

Oi. i didnt even consider perks and skill levels. i can't even begin to wrap my head around that. I'd personally be fine with just being about to fight and attack as them without leveling up. Taking control of your allies would still be useful because you can jump into the healer and heal more effectively than the AI (assuming you use a mod that allows it like FollowerLivePackage). or jump into the sneaky character, tell everyone to wait and then scout ahead and then just have the follows level up with the player. 

 

One can still dream at least. i hope they make a better follower system in future games

 

 

 

The closest solution I can think of at the moment would be to use Familiar Faces which lets you recruit other characters you've made as followers, with Alternate Actors which lets you basically posess and control NPCs. I haven't used either, so I don't know how well they'd work together, nor do I know how well leveling and such would work with them (Alternate Actors' description page says you can level up the NPCs' skills, though I don't know how exactly that functions), but it might be worth a try.

 

I current use this (I alright mentioned Familiar Faces in the topic post). I use it to make all the followers I use ( i dont care about custom voiced stuff that much considering I start over so much and relive the same content over and over)

 

It's not really good enough for what I'm wanting to do. i mean, i could just pretend the NPCs are speaking to a certain follower, but it also doesn't help with wanting to do multiple play styles in one playthrough without being a jack of all trades character.

Posted

This is the type of thing that would be a lot of fun to have built into the core game... multiple characters you can play that exist in the same world.

Posted

 

Oi. i didnt even consider perks and skill levels. i can't even begin to wrap my head around that. I'd personally be fine with just being about to fight and attack as them without leveling up. Taking control of your allies would still be useful because you can jump into the healer and heal more effectively than the AI (assuming you use a mod that allows it like FollowerLivePackage). or jump into the sneaky character, tell everyone to wait and then scout ahead and then just have the follows level up with the player. 

 

One can still dream at least. i hope they make a better follower system in future games

 

 

 

i'm actually really close to having this in Untamed. i wanted to be able to take control of say, my bear, and charge him in so everything attacks him first. hit the tag team button and now im back on my beastess healer healing the bear.

 

i could yank that code out and make it a standalone any-follower mod. it was actually pretty trivial so far. im not sure about equipping spells though. when you give control of player controls to another actor, the menu system and such is still for the PC, not the NPC. i dont think there is a way to make equipping spells and items when you have control easy to do right now. i'd probably have to invent a new menu system (with UIExtensions) to do it.

Posted

 

 

Oi. i didnt even consider perks and skill levels. i can't even begin to wrap my head around that. I'd personally be fine with just being about to fight and attack as them without leveling up. Taking control of your allies would still be useful because you can jump into the healer and heal more effectively than the AI (assuming you use a mod that allows it like FollowerLivePackage). or jump into the sneaky character, tell everyone to wait and then scout ahead and then just have the follows level up with the player. 

 

One can still dream at least. i hope they make a better follower system in future games

 

 

 

i'm actually really close to having this in Untamed. i wanted to be able to take control of say, my bear, and charge him in so everything attacks him first. hit the tag team button and now im back on my beastess healer healing the bear.

 

i could yank that code out and make it a standalone any-follower mod. it was actually pretty trivial so far. im not sure about equipping spells though. when you give control of player controls to another actor, the menu system and such is still for the PC, not the NPC. i dont think there is a way to make equipping spells and items when you have control easy to do right now. i'd probably have to invent a new menu system (with UIExtensions) to do it.

 

 

 

that sounds awesome. I'm no coder/scripter, but I have an idea that may or may not work. Though honestly, it's not a full thought. What if, when you hit the tag team button/power and go into an NPC, that NPC is then equipt with a power/shout ability that brings up a menu.

 

In the menu you can choose options like:

     -equip weapons

     -equip shields

     -equip spells

     -use potion

 

And each of those bring up sub menus that show the weapons, shield, spells, and potions. So the spells submenu might look like:

   -Fire Ball

   -Sparks

   -Healing Hands

   -Ice Butt

   -Lightning Boobs

   -Clear All Spells

   -Go Back

   -Done

So when you select one spell, it goes into your (the NPC you're controlling) right hand and if you select it again or another spell, that goes into your left hand. and if you goofy, you can clear them from your hands.The same goes for one handed weapons.

 

 

I'm sure (assuming any of that is possible) would be way too much work to create though. I starting thinking about, like, what if you could have like "multiple character profile" type things going. Where, you have a mod thats exactly like Familiar Faces where it saves the character's info, but take it further so that you can access them to play as them and at the same time save your character and turn them into an NPC and switch like that. So, to explain that a little more clear:

 

You're playing as Bob. You have a follower named Jane. You activate the switch character key. the mod saves Bob and Jane's info the same way Familiar Faces does. The mod then loads Bob as an NPC the same way Familiar Faces does. The mod then loads Jane's info and replaces your current PC's stats, skills, items, appearance etc etc with Janes. 

 

So you can then do showracemenu with Jane and change her hair and skin and whatever and as long as you don't change her name the mod recognizes who she is. Collect items, level, wander around etc etc. Then you can do the switch again (which could bring up a menu with a list of current follower names) then you can select Bob and the mod will do the process again, saving and loading each character. So you're still the same person/character on a technical level and the NPCs would see you as one person, but it's something (if it's even possible). I'm sure this would be a ton of work too though, but if it's possible to load info on the Pc like that without screwing anything up (like having it's race and gender altered a billion times through a game session) then maybe Familiar Faces would be a big stepping stone.

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