Hi there!

The goal: I want to have two NPCs, a farmer and a bear, spawn as the player approaches (but out of sight) and begin to fight. I want them to remain very near the space they spawned, which is on top of a rock bluff. I want these two NPCs to be invincible so that neither will kill the other until the player arrives. When the player arrives, their health should suddenly be active and they should become vulnerable allowing the player to step in and kill one or the other.

The current solution: I have a trigger box that, when loaded, enables a pre-placed bear and farmer and starts them fighting one another. Then, when the player reaches the box itself, an OnEnter script activates and, currently, does nothing except pop-up a message. I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it and I'd be totally open to suggestions but so far it seems to work well.

The problem: I have no idea to freeze the NPCs' health (making them invincible) and then unfreeze it. They also have a nasty habit of wandering off and I'd like to keep them rooted.

I appreciate any help you could give!

I'm just wondering if you would be able to disable the AI for the farmer and the bear (Stop them doing anything), it would not make them invisible, but it would stop them killing each other before the player got there.

You can find out about the function here:
http://www.creationkit.com/EnableAI_-_Actor

It simply freezes them in place, so while it does not make them invincible, it may be the next best thing??

I've never used the creation kit, but, couldn't you set some variable for the NPCs, say, IsEssential, to true, and when the OnEnter script activates, set IsEssential to false?

Looking on the wiki, there is a Function called SetInvulnerable which sets whether an NPC is invulnerable or not, not sure how that works, but you could give it a go?
Wiki page is here : http://www.creationkit.com/SetInvulnerable_-_ActorBase

So yeah, there is also an SetEssential function as well if that does not work and you want to try that. - http://www.creationkit.com/SetEssential_-_ActorBase

Seems like there are multiple options in that field?

Good Luck

Essential actors can still get their health drained, though, they just go into bleedout rather than dying. SetInvulnerable is probably what you want.

SetInvulnerable would probably be what I'm looking for!

However, it works on ActorBase, which means its going to go ahead and apply itself to all instances of that actor and it looks like it might work a bit oddly on leveled actor. Is there a way to apply this function only to a specific reference of an actor? Is that something that can be done?

What about SetGhost? The actor can neither deal or receive damage and it's an Actor function, not ActorBase.

SetGhost is definitely working. Never would've thought of that thanks!