Companion Share Recruit, Version 3.26. By Talkie Toaster!
Installation
Extract folder to data files, check Toaster Says Share.esm.
You must be running OBSE v18 or greater!
It is highly recommended you use Elys Silent Voice to prevent dialogue from disappearing too fast.
Usage
To recruit an NPC, use the "Friend..." topic and select recruit. If they have a disposition
towards you of 65 + the level difference between the two of you, they'll be pleased to follow.
The other options in that menu allow you to check the stats of an NPC before recruitment, and to give them gifts or borrow/lend items (if they have a high enough disposition). When lending NPCs items, or giving them gifts, their disposition changes, depending on the value of the item and the value of their clothes- so if you give expensive clothes as gifts, you make things harder for yourself.
Equally, borrowing items lowers their disposition. The borrow/lend function doesn't require them to be a companion, so it's useful if you want to kit out people like Martin who follow you by default.
When you've recruited a companion, you can set their combat style (ranged, melee, varied,
defensive), their aggression (attack on sight, attack when you draw your weapon, attack if hurt,
don't attack at all). If the NPC can heal, you can order them to heal in combat or not.
The meat of the companion system is the order system, split into three parts. To use them, you'll be asked to select an order key when the mod starts. If you ever forget the key you can look at your Leadership Journal to see it.
1. Context Orders.
Hold the order key and tap left click.
? If the target is a chest, it'll be unlocked (by anyone with Security as a major) or looted.
? If the target is hostile, your followers will focus their attacks on them.
? If the target is friendly, and you're sneaking, any follower with Sneak will pickpocket them.
? If the target is a companion, they'll be healed up, buffed and repaired by any other followers
capable of it. Only companions with Restoration as a major can heal others, Armourer as a major can repair, and Alteration as a major can buff.
2. Support Mode.
Hold the order key and right-click to toggle support mode. When support mode is on, followers
will heal/repair/buff each other and you automatically, as well as looting any corpses. This is
probably the most useful part of the mod by far!
3. Self Orders.
Tap the order key. Any companions capable will heal, buff and repair you.
The companion order menu has more orders you can give, that don't involve following you. Companions can be told to wait nearby, to pick ingredients from plants, to wait there and create potions if they have Alchemy as a major (creating potions takes one day per batch, and you must give them appropriate ingredients), or to sit down and relax.
They can also be assigned into four squads, each following a leader you assign. Squad leaders can be told to bodyguard other NPCs (useful for escort missions), and show up on the map if you select the Squad Management quest. Squad leaders will obey context orders, but their followers will not.
If you need to gather all your companions together should they have gotten lost, simply cast “Call companion”.
Important Notes
Respawning and non-persistent NPCs, like guards, bandits, necromancers and basically anything else that doesn't have a name, don't work properly. You'll see a message notifying you when you try to recruit one. Their inventories and orders get reset when you leave their cell, or fast travel. This can cause some pretty major problems if you just gave them an important or valuable item, so that's not advised. There is no way to fix this.
Optional
NPCs are set up to automatically run back to you in combat if they pursue an enemy too far away. This functionality can be disabled, by using “Set CompanionRunBack to 0” in the console. They will automatically teleport to you if they get even further away, and that can be disabled too by using “Set CompanionTeleportBack to 0” in the console.
Faction Recruitment changes how recruitment applies to Guards, Evil NPCs, and members of the
Fighters Guild, Mages Guild and Blackwood Company. Guards will be more likely to follow you if
you're famous whilst evil NPCs will be discouraged, and visa versa if you're infamous.
If you aren't in the Fighters guild or Blackwood company, you can hire them weekly (price varies
depending on Guild rank). If you are in the Fighters or Mages Guilds, you can pull rank on
lower-seniority NPCs and order them to follow you, with no minimum disposition required.
Change Log
3.00- Release!
3.01- Fixed Bravil/Leyawiin Bug.
3.02- Fixed wrong level adjustment to disposition.
3.10- Added learning spells, horse riding. Minor bugfixes.
3.11- Stopped teleporting on horseback.
3.12- Bugfixes, added loot options.
3.13- Fixed wandering off, reworked horse riding.
3.14- Fixed healing in combat, looting 0 weight items, more bugfixes.
3.15- Added organisation for non-persistent NPCs. Upped default range on teleport back. Added disable teleport option.
3.20- Migrated party handling to leveled list. Major behind the scenes changes.
3.21- Fixed horse riding errors caused by migration. Fixed healing.
3.23- Fixed list not clearing.
3.24- Fixed context follow, added master armourer perk to NPCs.
3.25- Fixed armouring when unarmed, stripped out nonfunctional sneak attack.
3.26- Fixed armouring when unarmed, no, really.
Thanks
Many thanks to the beta team- Mark Quinn, Giskard, Dzorro and wiz0floyd.
Thanks in particular to Lurrkurr, for helping test and fix a huge stack of bugs.
Modding Details
Are you planning on integrating the recruitment features into a quest? Making an NPC that you want to be unrecruitable? Here's a few pointers-
1. NPCs must have the Rumours topic to be recruitable by conventional means. If you check “No Rumours” on the NPC form, then they're unrecruitable. Easy as.
2. To add an NPC to the player's party, all you need to do is add one aaaPartyToken. To remove them, add one aaaDismissToken. This can be done through dialogue, spells or whatever you want.
3. Another feature is the aaaDifferentMenu item- add this to an NPC and they won't use the default recruitment method or order menu. You can recruit them however you want by adding aaaPartyToken, and you'll need to create your own order menu, which you can add
extra topics to or remove some (for example, adding extra features or removing the “Meet me at” menu). Take a look at the Faction Recruitment esp to see how this works.
An example of how everything fits together can be seen in TSS Custom Companion Template.esp. Throughout, GetInFaction is used as an example condition- so for example, you could replace it with GetIsID, add aaaDifferentMenu to your NPC, and write whatever dialogue you wanted in the topics included to have a companion NPC with custom recruitment and a custom order menu. It does take a bit of thought to see how it all fits together, so each topic contains a guide as to what it's about and what you should and shouldn't do.
For more complicated usage, two lists are kept by the mod, both in the aaaList quest.
? aaaList.Friendlist records each NPC the player is 'friends' with, including those he's talked to and have a disposition towards him of 65+, and all recruited NPCs.
? aaaList.Partylist records each NPC in the player's active party- all those following, looting and so on, and not currently waiting/harvesting/performing alchemy.
They're stored in no particular order, and can be retrieved with scrolling through the list with GetNthLevItem- the level they are stored at contains no information.