Hey guys. I created a custom follower and placed them in Riften Jail. He was working fine from multiple saves until I started a new game and went to collect him. He was attacking everyone in the jail. Worse, when I released my current follower (Faendle) from service in front of him they went at it and the new follower killed him. I asked my new follower to follow me then tried leading him to the Bee and Barb and releasing him from service there. He tried to kill everyone in the place. He is set to Unagressive and has no crime faction and when I load the game from a higher level he works fine.
I tried changing the Rift crime faction to like potentialplayerfollowers and it worked in the jail, but obviously the effect only lasted there. I'm sure there's a simple solution... I just can't think of one.
Grrrr!
I'm not sure if it's him or the npcs that start the fighting but they clearly don't get on! Any ideas much appreciated. I'm pulling my hair out here.

Thank you.

- Maybe the inmates don't like the PotentialFollowerFaction. Try removing your NPC from the Potential Follower Faction and see if that changes anything.
- Some script may be changing his aggression or factions when you enter the jail. Use console to confirm his aggression is what you expect. GetAVInfo("Aggression") should be 0, at most 1.
- As far as where a script might be triggered, it could be a trigger or it could be a story manager event node.

As far and Faendal attacking him: when NPCs are TEAMMATES, they are blind and deaf to everything in the world but the Player and other Teammates. So it sounds like Faendal has it out for this guy, but restrains himself until you dismiss him.

Finally, in addition to Aggression and Faction relationships, there is relationship rank. Two people can be a member of the same faction and still attack each other if their relationshiprank is low enough. I have had followers attack each other when dismissed because they hit each other with fireballs or area affect spells... which made them hate each other, but they restrained themselves until I dismissed them. So the question is: Is Faendal attacking the NPC, or is he attacking you? That is easy to test, just try releasing him before you enter the jail.

Could be related to that follower being member of a faction enemy to the attacked NPCs. You may have also add that follower an aggro radius behavior.

Thanks so much for your thoughts. You've certainly given me a thing or two to think about re quest triggers etc. I managed to get to my new follower before he shot the place up and took him to Whiterun and tried releasing him there... he went crazy and tried to kill everything; people, cows, chickens, you name it. I then loaded up a save from a level 20 character and went to see him in the jail (for the first time as far the game knows) and he was behaving himself. I took him out for a test drive and dismissed him in a few places, he stayed calm and reacted the way he should. I just wish I knew the trigger that's setting him off. I've only been doing this a week or two so I guess I could be missing something simple. I'll keep testing.

Thank you again for your reply. Have a lovely day/eve and please let me know if anything else comes to mind.
Cheers!

OK - still no joy. I tried moving my follower's start point from the jail to the Bee and Barb with the same outcome... he attacked everyone the moment I walked in the door. This is such a strange one. Everything still works fine from the later, higher level saves so it must be something to do with game progress... maybe. I just don't know. Mmmm. Anyone out there have any further thoughts?
Cheers.

Right! I think I've got it! If anyone else has the same problem here's how I fixed it - I removed my follower from his cell and removed his relationship with the player and remade it. You'll have to re ref some of your follower commands etc, a bit of a pain in the neck but it worked.

Curious, was there any custom dialogue/quest that was start game enabled associated with this follower?

Nope. It's an odd one. It's just a random bug to do with your agression level being changed after your npc is in a cell... or so I heard. The fix worked for me though.

Makes no sense.

Something odd here somewhere. (possibly in the quest/code written by the OP, not in the game)

Bee & Barb shouldn't give any Follower (on hire, or released) any killing issues. You gotta try hard to be an enemy of everyone in that place.

Something is not correct with the Factions assigned the to NPC.




And another thing: Getting an NPC to run amock is very tough to achieve ... So I'd love to know exactly what triggered this behaviour, it would be very very useful for something I'm playing about with, if it can be properly replicated

He was quite fun to watch. It wasn't anything to do with the Bee and Barb. It turns out he would frenzy anywhere you released him. Those poor souls in Riverwood.
Apparently it's quite a common bug (even though I only found one guy mention it in one YT comment). He said parent/child relationships involving the player should be made last,
after placing a follower in a cell. Not doing so can sometimes confuses the creation kit - Then if you change the aggression level before and after the relationship was made
(like I did) the follower's aggression can get stuck in a one state even though it's reading as another. I think that's what happened to me. He was
frenzied even though his aggression was set to unaggressive in the kit. I never would have seen the problem at all if I hadn’t started a new game and tried
meeting him fresh. All my saves from later levels were fine because I'd met the follower before I messed with his attributes and so on just a short time after he was placed in the cell.
Who knows. It’s doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to be honest. I’m just glad it’s over!