In my mod, I have a custom NPC belonging to a custom race (based on the Draugr art & AI) who's set up to ambush the PC via a trigger. For reference, the ambush is based on the Draugr "get up from horizontal bed/alcove" templates in the ambushes warehouse.

The actor and ambush work exactly as intended, with one annoying exception: after being killed, the NPC isn't searchable/lootable - his inventory can't be viewed, and clicking "Search [NPC name]" gives no feedback other than the soft default "nothing happened" sound effect.

Here's my checklist so far, yielding no change or improvement:

• Other NPCs' inventories (in the same cell, starting as dead) function correctly
  
• NPC's inventory functions correctly if he's placed directly into the cell and not an ambush
  
• Made custom race, and NPC itself, match default ambush Draugr in all ways in any way relevant to inventory and equipment settings
  
• Positioned the alcove marker (ie, what the NPC ambushes/gets up from) at the exact same Z location relevant to the ground as the default ambush
  
• Inventory contents are items flagged as playable, function correctly
  
• Aforementioned items exist in NPC's inventory, are not equipped
  
• NPC outfit (Draugr beard) exists in NPC's inventory, is correctly equipped & displayed
  
• Cell is navmeshed, navmesh works correctly for actor movement
  
• Cell's room bounds contain entire cell contents with generous padding

Am I missing something obvious? Or have I hit a game/CK bug? I'd love some help/ideas on this one. Thanks!

do you run any onactivate blocks on this actor? maybe there's one preventing normal activation

Did you give a name to that NPC? If you didn't that may be the cause of this problem.

Nothing of the sort that I'm aware of - no special behaviour at all other than the ambush, using the master ambush script on the actor.

The NPC is named -- though the short name field is blank -- and it displays correctly in combat and when moused-over once killed.

Thanks for trying, guys. I'll experiment some more with different things in the mean time.

it sounds like you have attached a script that calls BlockActivation() on it (or it is somehow inheriting it from another alias script that it is filling, whether intentional or not)

Solved-

In the end it was as simple as unchecking "Parent Activate Only" in the NPC reference's Activate Parents tab. To get my trigger-only ambush working properly, I'd originally played with a lot of these flags and settings, and this trial-and-error remnant seems to have caused, well, this behaviour:

Thanks for the hint - presumably flagging "Parent Activate Only" does exactly that, at least insofar as activating the associated actor's inventory is concerned.

Thanks guys!

yea, the parent activation is used if you have an external activator like a button, that passes its activation event into the child object.

in your case, whether you actually had a parent on the npc or not, the parent only flag will prevent any activation from happening directly on the child object (exactly like calling BlockActivation on itself)

this comes in handy for things like mannequin, where you want the activation to happen on the 'invisible' activator instead of the mannequin itself. that way it says "Activate Mannequin" instead of "Talk Mannequin"