I was wondering if making Dovakiin essential through some kind of hard-to-acquire power could break part of the main quest or the game in any kind of way (apart balance, which is obviously broken)...

...has anyone of you tried in this attempt? May be via console or in another way?

Thanks,
Jashkar

Can the player even be set as essential? I know you're simply an actor that's controlled by player input instead of AI, but I'm not sure if you could do this.

You can always try it and see what happens.

I am sure that he can be set as essential.

In fact the "player" is just an unique actor called "Prisoner" with specific stats which could be changed through the RaceMenu...

...but, in fact, he's...in a certain sense...that specific actor with an alias put over it.

The big doubt is what it could break in the game...and I've not played enough to see that.

Thanks,
Jashkar

Can't think of a quest where it would matter. But if you make the player essential and they enter bleedout, they could be stuck helplessly watching an animation of themselves kneeling for rather a long time. You'd probably need to trap the OnEnterBleedout event and heal them a bit. (Unless you're making them invulnerable.)

I thought he was Bendu Olo? Anyway, I don't think making him immortal will hurt anything, but I wonder what would happen if he takes a decapitation shot?

One shot kills like decapitations and kill moves cant be done to essential actors.

They player can be made essential through scripting, this script will do the trick:

Game.GetPlayer().GetActorBase().SetEssential()

This will make him essential, but if you want to disable this then just type in false in the set essential part so it looks like this:

Game.GetPlayer().GetActorBase().SetEssential(false)

I didn't think this worked unless the "Player" was also under AI Control (I'm sure I remember a command to do that ... but I can't find it now) ... maybe I'm making it all up (seems to happen to me, sometimes!)?

Thanks, but I knew how to do it...my issue was whether this could break the game or not...

I mean...if there are quests that require the main player to be killed or end up in dying state.


Nah...I am sure that this will work on player exactly as npc...

There are mods which already make the player essential and they seem to work.

My idea is to merge the concept of being essential with boosted stamina and health recovery AND with the capability of drawing Quickening from the beheaded enemies. So I need to ensure myself of the following issues:
- How the Dragon Absorption "animation" works (it seems to be a quite complex script, not a real animation)...because it's very much like the Quickening absorption of Highlander.
- How decapitation works in-game (it seems to be a kill + equip decapitated head "thing")...because decapitation is the only way to take Quickening.
- If being essential would cause main quest breakings or not (which means...I need the feedback of someone who already tried using the setessential trick above...).

As for the skill gain (which would be the core of the whole skill and stat gain "thing")...I've already found a very good way for doing that (and used it in a necromantic mod of mine)...

...however...I need to be pretty sure about how to make this, because making an Immortal in an "Highlander-like way" seems quite complex...

Thanks anyway,
Jashkar

Well I haven't played every single quest in Skyrim, but I've played most of them and none of the ones I played required the player to die in any way. As far as the set essential thing I posted above, it does work I've tested it in-game and was going to use it for a mod but it's not needed anymore. Other people have made mods that make the player essential so I don't think it breaks anything besides balance, meaning it should be fine.

Great...thanks a lot!

Honestly I'm just starting to play with mods enabled and I never got much far with vanilla...that's why I was really wondering...

Jashkar