This mod causes all (human) enemies killed via energy weapons- lasers, plasma, fire, electroshock, nukes- to be reduced to an appropriately-colored skeleton, freezing in place briefly before collapsing to the ground, Mars Attacks-style!

Realistic? No. Hilarious? Yes!

This mod changes none of the stats of any energy weapons, nor does it change the vanilla critical effects- enemies are still reduced to piles of ash/goo on a critical kill, with the exception of flamers and other fire-based weapons. The only thing that changes is when any human character (I.E. not feral ghouls, super mutants, abominations, etc.) is dealt a killing blow with an energy weapon, their body burns away in a spectacular flash of colored fire, leaving only a skeleton behind- as well as whatever weapon they're holding and some accessories such as hats and glasses. This effect is also dealt by weapons wielded by other NPCs, including embedded weapons like Mr. Gutsy's plasma gun and the flame breath of Fire Geckos/Fire Ants!

Effected weapons can still cripple limbs, but they will not dismember limbs upon death, even with the Bloody Mess perk active. This is mostly an aesthetic choice on my part, as otherwise those who get skeletonized will end up having one or two intact limbs floating alongside them, or in the case of Bloody Mess effects, are turned into a hovering cloud of bones and gore, which just looks weird. I've painstakingly tried to ensure the anti-dismemberment effects are constant, but it's not 100% perfect - some explosions can still result in seeing gibs and limbs during skeletonization.

Compatibility: the latest version of this mod changes the way that the scripts trigger different skeletonization effects: instead of detecting what weapon an NPC is killed by, it detects what projectile/explosion last hit them, thus any mod that changes the projectiles or explosions associated with energy weapons (as well as energy-based ammo for non-energy weapons, see lists below) will conflict, as well as any mods that add new energy weapons that use custom projectiles/explosions rather than reusing vanilla effect assets. So unfortunately this mod doesn't play well with EVE, or any other similar effect replacement mod (a patch for EVE is currently pending).

Requirements: The only requirements for this are the official DLCs as well as the following NVSE plugins:

JohnnyGuitar NVSE

ShowOff xNVSE

JIP LN NVSE Plugin


Permissions: Anyone is free to edit, dissect, vivisect, and otherwise dick around with this mod should they download it, but please ask permission before you post any modified versions should you make one, and of course send me a link of your finished mod; I'd love to see what other people do with this.

Note: If you see the "Skeletonizer Activated" notice appear but your weapons don't skeletonize, just un-equip and re-equip whatever you're wielding and it should work.