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About this mod
A follower framework that allows you to manage and keep track of a thousand NPCs.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Mirrors
- Changelogs
I now accept donations on my website!
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It can be tough to manage all my followers, as I always end up getting a lot of them. It's hard to know: who is a follower, how many do I have, how can I easily switch one out for another, where can I find them, and why can't I have more? In order to handle all the followers, I knew I needed to use a follower framework, a mod that manages multiple followers at a time. But what mods are available? How many do they allow? How well do they manage my followers? And to what extent? With all the quirks of managing, outfitting, cloning, resurrecting, and more, I realized that I really wanted something that can handle a lot of followers. So I set out to make:
NPC Party
Features
a pool of 1024 members
up to 16 followers at a time
clones of humanoid NPCs
a pack per member to carry your items
multiple outfits per member you can customize
horses for your followers to ride
settings to fine tune your experience
dialogue commands
an MCM menu
numerous hotkeys
settlers who will live where you tell them to
immobile members who will stay where they are
warriors, mages, archers, cowards, and classless teammates
mortal, protected, essential, or invulnerable followers
and thralls to sustain vampire players
they can be renamed to whatever you want
summoned to wherever you are
moved out of the way
made into mannequins to show off your armor
displayed on command
and they level as you level
a pool of 1024 members
up to 16 followers at a time
clones of humanoid NPCs
a pack per member to carry your items
multiple outfits per member you can customize
horses for your followers to ride
settings to fine tune your experience
dialogue commands
an MCM menu
numerous hotkeys
settlers who will live where you tell them to
immobile members who will stay where they are
warriors, mages, archers, cowards, and classless teammates
mortal, protected, essential, or invulnerable followers
and thralls to sustain vampire players
they can be renamed to whatever you want
summoned to wherever you are
moved out of the way
made into mannequins to show off your armor
displayed on command
and they level as you level
Members and Followers
A member is an NPC that is managed by the framework, and a follower is an active member who will travel with you and fight for you. You can have up to 1024 members and 16 followers at a time. Whenever you please, you can switch out followers for other members by using the MCM menu. No longer will you have to go searching for a lost follower! It's as easy as clicking a few buttons and they will come to you.
Clones
Cloning NPCs allows for less conflicts with other mods and even vanilla Skyrim. Though a clone can still cause conflicts, by using them this framework changes more while altering original NPCs less. Additionally, cloning an exact lookalike of a generic NPC, such as a town guard or bandit, is now possible. Cloning gives you more stable followers and copies of NPCs, whether they be unique or generic, friend or foe.
Packs and Outfits
It is frustrating when follower's randomly add items to their inventory, or when they equip things you only want them to carry. With NPC Party, each member has a separate pack, which acts as their inventory, and they never equip anything inside it. They have several outfits on the side, which will not randomly fill up with junk. Each member will consistently wear what you tell them to. Optionally their outfits can be filled with equipment, or start out empty. You may also have members automatically change their outfit depending on their role. Both original and cloned NPCs within the framework have their own pack and outfits, so there's no cross-contamination. Only items that are in each individual outfit are equipped, while the items in their pack remain untouched.
Style and Vitality
Followers can be styled as a warrior, a mage, an archer, a coward, or fight however they choose. A follower's style effects their in-game attributes and skills as well as what weapons they are most likely to use. Vitality is the state of their vulnerability in combat. If they are mortal they may die at the hands of your enemies. Protected status shields them from outright death, except should you be the one to deal the final blow. Essential status will keep even you from killing them, but they will take a knee when they run out of health. And Invulnerable status speaks for itself. Style and Vitality gracefully allow you to change how your followers handle combat and allow you to get the most out of your members.
Beta
This mod is currently in beta testing. You may run into a few hiccups every now and then, including slow execution, unpolished features, unexpected behaviors, and sometimes even outright bugs. I hope to resolve any issues and bring the mod out of beta into version 1.0.0. Mid-game updates are supported in the mod and will be the usual method. But sometimes updating may require a fresh save game. Also, there is currently no uninstall feature. Just uninstalling the mod is not the end of one's save game, but it will leave behind data that is no longer in use.
Compatibility
One of the goals of this mod was to touch as few vanilla assets as possible and to be compatible with other mods. We strive to have full compatibility with all other follower frameworks. This means you can run NPC Party alongside any framework of your choice. Individual follower mods and packs are also supported, although mileage may vary. Universal outfitting mods are compatible as well.
If you are using EngineFixes, there are four settings which are incompatible with this mod. In the "EngineFixes.toml" file, all of the following settings need to be set to "false" or you will get crashes:
MemoryManager
ScaleformAllocator
FormCaching
TreeLODReferenceCaching
ScaleformAllocator
FormCaching
TreeLODReferenceCaching
There is a Combat Gameplay Overhaul setting that switches two-handed weapons to be one-handed. Make sure to disable that setting if you run into any strange animation glitches. This may be less of an incompatibility and more of a glitch in that mod.
For Developers: Any mod that modifies Actor.SetOutfit() in Papyrus or in any SKSE plugin will be incompatible. NPC Party includes a rewritten C++ version of this method that fixes a vanilla bug and allows for compatibility with other mods. If you need to make changes to this function in your mod (very rare), please PM me to see if we can come with up with a generalized solution. If you use this function without modifying it, your mod is compatible.
Conclusion
I hope that this mod changes your follower experience for the better. My goal was to spend less time dilly dallying with obscure issues in the follower system, vanilla or modded, and to enjoy the game with as many followers as I want to. I wish the same for you. Whether you want to have one cherished follower who defines your journey, or amass a cult following of NPCs to do your every whim, whether you want to have mortal followers who can truly die, or a team of invincible power-houses to rock the world, whether you want them to wear armor, or no armor, whether you want them to carry all your items, or nothing at all, whether you want to rename them, clone them, resurrect them, or even just move them out of the way when they are blocking a door, I hope this mod benefits you. Thank you for playing NPC Party!
Thank You
- Bethesda for Skryim, which is such an endearing masterpiece.
- SSEEdit/TesVEdit/xEdit Team for such an amazing tool.
- Mod Organizer 2 Team for your indispensable program.
- SKSE Team for your extender, which has extended the life of the game itself.
- SkyUI Team for not only the mod and the MCM menu, but also for the fairly good wiki that comes with it.
- PapyrusUtil Team for your work and especially the sorting functions, which are wonderfully useful and lacking in vanilla Papyrus.
- Amazing Follower Tweaks developers! Your mod is a great inspiration for how a follower framework can be fun and consistent.
- My Home is Your Home developers for such a wonderful idea, and the methods with which you implement it.
- Dress Up Lover's NPC Outfit Changer developer kuroko137 for inspiring me with your awesome mod.
- Simple NPC Outfit Manager developer confusedchim, for showing the basics of how to get things to work.
- joelday for papyrus-lang and the excellent guide on how to use the Creation Kit with Mod Organizer 2.
- fireundubh for your parallel papyrus compiler pyro and the wiki that goes with it.
- OldMansBeard for helping me reuse vanilla voices without copying and redistributing them.
- cumbrianlad for a discussion on persistent references, and how this can take a toll on the player's gameplay.
- Ian Patterson of the SKSE Team for telling me how to save outfits on a form in the SKSE plugin.
- Ryan-rsm-McKenzie of CommonLibSSE for decompiling useful parts of the SkyrimSE engine.
- meh321 of Address Library for SKSE Plugins for making it easy to get the executable's offsets.
- Creation Kit Wiki for the wealth of knowledge with which this mod was made.
- GitHub for giving my codebase a place to live online.
- NexusMods for such a great site, and for hosting my mod!
- beta testers, for your interest, bug reports, and suggestions to make this mod better and better.
- my family, for giving me the time, space, and sustenance to make this mod.
- and every one else who has helped me directly or indirectly, if I have failed to mention you!
Last but not least, a big thank you to all who try out my mod, and to all of you who enjoy it and find value in it.
NPC Party is on GitHub!