I don't believe they do, or don't work fully as intended.

Spells:

Created a levelled spell list of all the vampire drain spells at different levels, gave this list to my actor. Never used any spell, no matter how many I spawn.
Change the actor to use one of the spells, now it will use the spell.
Other actors have a list of minor spells they can use, first one aways being healing spell. In my encounters, every spawn is using the healing spell, I can't believe every random spawn is getting that healing spell.
These same actors also have a levelled list similar to the bandit mages spell list, and it seems IF they get the frostbite spell, they will use it, otherwise, meele attack. The other destruction spells are ignored. I don't believe I've seen magic bandits ever use fire or lightining on me, but I'm not sure (as I'm frequently just one shotting them with my arrows )
Whats interesting is that levelled spell lists are hardly used in Skyrim, which makes me wonder....


Levelled Actors:
I've got some that are supposed to get to lv25, and some to lv30. My character is level 32. I can easily 1 to 2 hit kill these actors. I have a elven waraxe with a 31 damage lighting enchant on it. I can't believe my weapon is causing so much damage.

Is there some way of querying a spawn to see it's current health and magic, and what spells they have?

The level mult is set to 1, which as far as I'm aware, if the players level is 10, the actors level is 10?


Is there some way of getting the actors to switch spells? My vampire clone type actor has the invisbility spell, drain spell and a custom short duration paralyze spell, but all it wants to do is drain me.
Spell system and NPCs are being very frustating compared to earlier games.

I also have had a lot of trouble with levelled spells and actors.
Recently I found out that one of my save games was corrupted somehow which caused nothing to level properly, I started a new game with no mods loaded, got out of the first cave then made a permanent save I would not overwrite. Now I load that save up every time I test a new technique or mod to make sure I don't have any conflicts.
I actually made a mod that gave the player a spell/lesser power that on hitting any NPC it would bring up a message box with their Health, Magicka Stamina, Level, skills and resistances because I got tired of typing the same commands into the console.
Shameless self promotion...

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12453

The console commands I used where once the console was up I clicked my target which put their FormID in the middle of the screen just above the console then I used...
GetLevel
GetAV Health
GetAV Magicka
GetAV OneHanded
etc.etc
I'm now in the process to setting every (normal enemy) NPC to be a levelled target with the player and testing a new script that adds two resistances that increases with level.
I haven't had much luck with levelled spell lists at all so scripting the resists was much easier and seemed to work every time.
Hope this helps.

Also don't forget how encounter zones interact with levelled lists.

Heh, from my experience, they're totally bonkers.

To add to the "wtf" mix:
If you add an NPC that templates to a LList ONTO a LList, the CK throws a fit. (you can't actually do this inside the CK... you have to do it by manually editing the .esp by hand)
It functions fine and as you'd expect it to in-game. I don't know why they flag it as dangerous and undoable, as it seems like a perfectly acceptable setup.

The weird part is (from what I've gathered) if you have this setup
LList -> NPC --templates to--> LList
CK will be mad, but it will spawn fine, no matter what you pick to spawn along the chain.

However, if you then add another NPC to it
NPC --templates to--> LList -> NPC --templates to--> LList

Spawning the leftmost NPC will make it flip out. In my case, it doesn't accept the traits templating, and defaults to the FoxRace traits... resulting in funny invisible barking falmers, for example.

Yep, I've noticed that when I tried putting Silver Hands into levelled lists. CK dosn't allow it.


Side note, now I think about it, I've never seen bandit mages attack me with anything else apart from Frost spells, which IIRC, are the first spells in the levelled spell lists they use. If they are bugged, no wonder Beth made a whole load of themed style mage enemies, instead of having a generic name with random spells/abilities.



Thanks Leon, I'll use those commands to get the stats, to prove if the levelled actors are getting levelled stats or not. I think I might just end up doing what Beth did with virtually all their actors, have have levelled versions that use specific spells, and build up a levelled list to group them all together.
Another reason to hate the CK/Engine

Heh, sounds like a lot of work. 8\

If you're savvy with Java at all you could look into setting up a SkyProc plugin that would do the record building for you. "shameless plug".. but that's what it's here for, to make those gruntwork jobs easier.

Could have the plugin have a list of spells you designate, and a list of NPCs, and then just

• duplicate the NPCs,
  
• add the different spells (one to each dupped NPC)
  
• load them onto a LList
  
• Locate all current LLists that have the original NPC and replace them with your custom one.
  
• and export the changes to a plugin.

It doesn't even have to be "dynamic" and accept load orders from all mods on the user's list.. you could just set it up for your single mod to do the gruntwork for you.


I swear.. Bethesda has added all these "half assed" things to make templating and records more flexible.. but in the end they're just bugged or half-way done to the point where you just have to duplicate everything anyway to be its own separate record. 8( Alllmost there, it seems... but just not enough.

Agreed, there's a lot of stuff that just isn't implemented correctly, or was used pointlessly.

I'm used to grunt work, having come mainly from Morrowind modding, where templates and levelled spells didn't exist, but at least your actors did what you were expecting! I'll stick with what I know

Ok, some useful information regarding PlaceAtMe and actors scaled level.

The actor is set to the correct level when using placeatme, but their health and magic is set to the lowest health. Since all my testing of the actors was based on placeatme spawns, this explains why they didn't appear to be scaling correctly. Explored about, found some, and they have over 200 more health and magic at the same level, for exactly the same actor ID.
Although I didn't test individual skill levels, it's safe to assume that these are not being updated either with PlaceAtMe, hence why it appears my levelled spell list was not working, the actors haven't the skill for that spell.

Also discovered that Resurrect does not restore the actors magic either. Was testing on a bandit mage. That'll explain some other odd things with my test encounters.


I'll do some tests with levelled spell lists to see what's going on there, but so far, don't trust PlaceAtMe to be a true representation of your actor.

Interesting. 8) Thanks for posting the info.

Pluto should be fairly interested considering he's having issues with his Increased Spawns, which uses placeatme extensively

Definitely interesting..

Been considering the implications of it all. Not sure how to manipulate it. I haven't noticed much like that, besides some face/body skin mismatches.. But I'll be sure to check into it. I think the different we have is that my actors are actually set levels, while yours are level multiples of the player? With a PC Level Multi = 1 or something like that?

Brings to mind other issues I had, though; notably, in utilizing encounter zones to force NPC levels to above the player level, any NPC using a level multiplier was set to the base stats. This seems identical to the issues you are having. :/

I have a feeling I know what's going on with the levelled spells, still to be tested to be 100% sure.

I made clones of the vampire spells, as I noticed they had zero cost and auto-calc cost turned off. So turned on auto-calc, they all had a magic cost, but my actor still refuses to use a spell from the levelled list.
Further delving, I then discover that the spell effects are not assigned to a school of magic. This is the only remaining difference I can see between normal spells and the drain spells.