As an combat oriented Death Alternative Framework, Acheron aims to enhance hostile encounters for both player and NPC by creating an alternate way of being taken out from combat (and combat only) which it calls Defeat-State.
This state can be provoked through various means, such as Hp reaching 0 or just being hit at the wrong time, unlike other Death Alternative mods, it will however not attempt to completely negate death as a whole such that executions (for example, through a Killmove) and non-hostile damage will still kill you as usual.


Acheron uses 2 custom status effects (marked through Keywords), called Pacification and Defeat. Pacification stops an Actor from entering combat with any other actor, this works in both directions s.t. that a pacified actor is never attacking or being attacked by anyone. The defeat state on the other hand is preventing any (regular) damage.

1.1 Conditions

• Lethal: This is the default way of applying the defeated status. This condition will prevent a damaging attack from killing you, negating its damage and putting you into a defeat state instead. The chance of this happening can be customized for both Player and NPC separately.
• Trauma: A slightly more involved condition, utilizing the stagger value of weapons and the direction of the attack itself to calculate the likeliness of an attack inflicting trauma, and defeating in the process. Acheron will use the actual stagger value of the attack that hit you, not the base value, s.t. any multiplies affecting stagger potency, such as Perks or Blocking, will be considered appropriately based on the balance in your own game.
• Exposed: Something for people with Armor Break-Type mods (and other kinda people that like running around with "less" clothing), the exposed condition will allow you to be defeated depending on how much armor you are currently wearing. Armor breaking during combat may cause more issues now that simply increasing the damage a little, and seducing your attackers! (For those who do not use Armor Break mods and still wish to use this condition, Acheron also offers a very minimalistic Stripping Feature, which removes armor at a certain chance when being hit in combat)
  

1.2 Rescue
Any defeated actor can be rescued, either by handing them a potion (more on this later) or using a healing spell on them.
There is also a passive recovery method which allows the Player, Companions and other NPC to naturally regenerate from a defeat under certain conditions, such as HP that is naturally regenerated or being unloaded from the map.


In order for the player and their party to interact with Acheron without creating major disturbance in common gameplay, Acheron uses a special system made specifically for the Player called Hunter's Pride. This system is divided in two parts: A toggleable ability to disable or enable the player from defeating targets and a new menu to interact with already defeated NPC.
The ability is assigned in the MCM through a Hotkey and acts as a passive buff in your spell list and can be toggled on or off anytime.

2.1 Hunter's Pride Menu
The menu is accessed by activating any defeated NPC and allows you to choose a variety of ways on how to interact with the activated NPC. The options available can also be extended by other mods. By default, Acheron offers the following options:

• Rescue: Uses the most effective potion in your inventory to rescue your target. This will free them from their defeat status.
• Plunder: This will open the targets inventory, allowing you take everything out of it. This counts as an assault and will alarm surrounding NPC.
• Execute: Defeated actors are usually immune to damage. You can use this option to kill them through their defeat status. (This is treated as murder)
• Drain (Feed): As a vampire, you may feed on defeated targets, killing them in the process. (This too, is treated as murder)
  

Consequences are selected once combat ceases or the player is defeated (chance adjustable). To ensure consequences fit the current context as much as possible, Acheron uses multiple different categories:

• Hostile: The most intuitive situation, in which some to the player hostile faction survived.
• Follower: When being rescued by your companions.
• Civilian: When being rescued by some friendly/civilian faction.
• Guard: Same as hostile but there is at least one Guard nearby which you were in combat with.
• NPC: Encounters in which the player was not involved at all. For example, a Stormcloak Patrol fighting an Imperial one.
  

By default, Acheron itself only offers two very basic events which will teleport to some close-by location. For a proper experience it relies on other mods to provide more complicated quests.


While there is a great amount of focus being put on reliability and keeping the systems intuitive, there are certain limitations that Acheron has in place which may seem unnecessary or contra-productive to a Death Alternative mod. These are implemented restrictions to how the mod works in order to keep gameplay smooth and not have the "removal of death" be too intrusive to the overall behavior of the game, create issues with other mods, cause scripts to become stuck or soft-lock the player in a "death loop".
The following will still kill you even while Acheron is active:

• Killmoves
• Unowned Hazard Damage (such as the wind on the way to Paarthunarx)
• Trap Damage
• Self Inflicted Damage
• Fall Damage
• Scripted Damage (e.g. DamageAV("Health", N) in a Papyrus script)
  

Additionally, Acheron includes a list of locations where it will skip processing partially or entirely and a list of NPC which are natively excluded, either as assailant, victim or both. You can view the list of natively excluded targets and locations here.
It is also possible to create custom exclusion rules to not have Acheron intervene in quests from other mods.


Acheron offers a variety of console commands to debug itself and mods building up on it. These commands offer a variety of utility options to view or alter the defeat and pacification state of actors.
You can use "acheron help" in the in-game console to view all available commands and their parameters.