Followers and Perks

[Guest]

Anyone here have ever made followers with perks added to them?

Anyone know if lockpick perks have any beneficial use towards followers? A friend is making his third follower for public release and asked me to help him with it. But frankly I can't help him with that because I never was interested in followers using perks. Some are necessary like Light Food perk so followers don't set off traps and get you or themselves killed.  However, I use a mod that does that to any follower I have so I never use that perk.

I went ahead and tested lock picking on one of my own followers who's a warrior class with lock picking skills set to 15 and I had her open a novice locked chest, and then a master locked chest with ease. The novice one I had her just take everytyhing in it and the master locked chest I had her just unlock it, I saw no disadvantages from it for followers and I was using the vanilla dialogue "I need you to do something." So at this point I just don't see the purpose of even giving your follower any traits and skills that benefit for lock picking if they can have weak skills as is and still open any leveled chests with no problem. I can only see a benefit from this if creating a custom follower that uses it's own features and maybe some animation to go and unlock a chest or door. In fact, I believe there is a custom follower that does this, but I can't remember which one it is.

[Doublezero]

Quote

Followers can open any chests they come across, including locked chests with a master lock rating, if given a lockpick. Each time the companion opens the chest, a lockpick is destroyed.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Lockpicking_(Skyrim)

If this wiki article is correct I doubt giving followers lock picking perks would make a difference.

[Guest]

I didn't think so. I looked at the lock picking in creation kit to see if I could find any relevant info, but none whatsoever. I should clarify that not only in the Creation Kit but the Creation Kit tut site for Lock Picking.

It doesn't matter because what he wants to do with his particular follower would either require a script already made by someone who's applied it to their follower to do what he wants, or he would have to write one himself. He basically wants to create his follower to do all the lock picking for you so you the player can focus on spending your perk points elsewhere. That's out of my league, but I don't think it's impossible. If you can command your follower to unlock any skill leveled chest, it should be possible. But I don't know exactly how he wants it done. Like how his follower would approach the chest. Via dialogue, hotkey etc. But no worries it's scrapped up and he either might try to do it himself or leave it as is.

Thanks for the link and response nonetheless.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Guest
dirty edits

[Kendo 2]

The Skyrim lock picking perk is useless.  Spending a point gives like a 0.39% boost in the chances to open a lock.  I played a straight thief character and the points I spent were wasted.  If you do the lock picking mini game and just 'pick the lock' a 1st level character can open a master lock if you have the patience and enough lock picks.

Perks that I know for sure work on NPCs because I've used them building followers and enemies.

All of the weapon perks.

All of the armor perks.

All of the magic perks.

Light Foot from the stealth tree also works if you don't want followers triggering floor traps.  Stealth perks otherwise have no effect on if enemy NPCs can detect sneaking followers from what I can tell.

One thing about giving NPCs perks; they will use the highest tier you give them regardless of their skill level.  If you give a 1st level Bandit with a 2handed skill of 20 a perk that requires prerequisites and an entry point of 80 he'll use it anyway.  That's why when you looked at leveled NPCs in the CK you see a lot of duplicates with different levels and perk stacks.  The game can't use NPC Templates in that regard.