So here's the problem. I'm doing a perk that applies a 20% chance of a stagger per hit with a Warhammer (nevermind the fact that it fires off the effect every other hit instead of only 20%, for absolutely zero reason at all despite me copying the EXACT same condition for Warmaster).

However, the stagger spell never actually staggers. Nothing happens at all. I know I got this to work on the player, but it seems to do nothing to NPC's, despite almost all vanilla force effects using this spell archetype. Whenever I use it though, it does absolutely nothing (I'd like to try and do a similar effect to unrelenting force, but not as severe). And I know my spell effect is correctly applying because I get the correct hit sound.

Any help on this? Or is it impossible to stagger NPC's without using Papyrus or using hard-coded effects that I can't actually take advantage of? Or is it just yet ANOTHER thing in the CK or game code that is totally broken?

Any thoughts/help on this matter?

I'm thinking the only way to get NPC's to stagger on call is to force an animation call through a script, which seems like a rather hacky and inefficient method of doing so for a function that clearly seems to be built right into the game and the CK.

I think using the effect StaggerAttackFFContact might solve your problem, with no script needed.

Thanks that did the trick.

Things I was missing:

1. Magnitude of 100+ on the spell

2. Taper (for duration? I can't remember) on the effect set to 1, even though I'm not using a duration

Things are so picky with the CK