I created a 'summon dragon' spell. The player can equip it an use it just fine, but when i give it to an NPC and then start attacking, he wont use the spell!

Even if i make it a zero cost lesser power he won't use it.
I tried giving him the fus-ro-dah shout, and he uses that against the player. So i turn my 'summon dragon' spell into a shout, assign it to him, and again, no dice.

Why won't the NPC use what i gave him!!??

This is making me so sad....

Short answer:
- The NPC knows what "Fus Ro Dah" does but doesn't know what this 'summon dragon' spell is.

If you give them healing spell, they will use it, cuz the engine 'knows' it, and the AI 'knows' it. They just dont know the new, custom spell , unless you 'tell' them when to use it

hokay, so, How do i 'tell' them to use it? Can it be done with a package override? or is this something you can't do without acess to the source code?

There are few ways to do it
- Add a small side property to custom spell. For instance, if that a buff spell, you might want to include the 'healing effect' of 1pt to that spell. NPC will tend to cast them when they are wounded. Add a small hp dmg to the spell, NPC may try to use in like any other destruction spell.
- The better way yet with no side effects is via Scripting . But very complicated......You can script 'force' NPC to equip that spell of yours, and he may use it

EquipSpell(Spell akSpell, int aiSource)

Or even better if you could program the AI to use that spell in some combat situation

so are you able to get them to say the words when they are shouting?

well, that still didn't work. But on the bright side: i was able to get him to summon the dragon by hacking it in with scripts. Just doesn't look as good as the spell i made. Stupid NPC's ><

my guess is that it is related to the NPC's combat style, try editing it to include that spell as the first one they cast (combat style is listed on the "AI data" page of an Actor)