

Even assuming that you don't want the players to suddenly have their controls locked up as an AI takes them over, you have to take special precautions to make sure that never happens. So from what I can tell, Bethesda put in three failsafes to ensure that the Hero cannot be taken over by NPC Illusions:ġ) A general policy to not have many Illusion-focused NPCs, and when there are, to not give them any actual hostile spells from that school,Ģ) Some kind of Lobster Trap in the coding that causes enemies to not equip weapons enchanted with Illusion-type effects,Īnd 3) Nerfing the Illusion effects so that if they are somehow inflicted onto the Player Character, they never actually do anything. I used console commands to try to equip the weapon on him, but he refused to wear it. When I opened up the Status Effects menu, I saw that the Hero had in fact been inflicted with Fear, but it was a version of Fear that affected "Creatures and people up to level 0."īefore that stunt with Lydia, I tried to do the same with a Bandit Chief.

I saw a blue mist around my screen, indicating some kind of status effect, however I didn't notice anything else different and was still in full control of the Hero. I then attacked her until she hit me back with the Illusion-enchanted weapon. I found this out by spawning Lydia next to my PC, taking away her weapons and giving her a fully charged Iron Greatsword of Fear. Okay, so the player can technically be afflicted with negative Illusion effects, but Bethesda put in a failsafe to ensure that it doesn't actually do anything even if you are hit by it.

"I know that it is possible to have the hero temporarily put under the control of an A.I., but I don't know if vanilla Skyrim can do that for PC Illusion effects. Illusion mages could be extremely dangerous and could really add a different type of enemy threat than what we currently have. Being a vampire would give you a pretty big advantage in this case, since you'd be immune unless the caster has the Master of the Mind perk. What would be even more interesting is if the player was actually susceptible to enemies' illusion spells: you get hit with a frenzy spell, for example, and you watch helplessly as your character starts attacking your follower, assuming you're not of high enough level to resist it. recognizing that an enemy is immune to a fear spell and not casting it) was more than Bethesda wanted to handle, but it's very odd that the dragonborn seems to have a monopoly on illusion magic. Maybe getting the AI to work appropriately for casting illusion spells (e.g. Enemies, followers, and the like never use fear, calm, or frenzy spells in combat. As far as I know, the only NPCs who ever use illusion magic are vampires, and even for them, it's just that invisibility spell they cast when they're fleeing from combat.
