I am going to try out the NPCs Alive beggars plugin that according to Nexus comments could cause issues with them dying. Nothing is said explicitly why but I assume it is due to them stealing alot?
One comment complained about losing beggars for the thieves guild quest (I never had a beggar help me with that since I guess my Choices and Consequences gave me another route to be invited when I stole from some member; I found a note in my inventory - how and when did it get there - about sometime talking about returning that which I had stolen).

Comments talk about changing them to essential or raising their sneak and security to 100.

I am looking at them now in Edit and I see the author changed all the listed beggars' responsibility to 0.

Wouldn't that help them to not steal all the time too, heading off the fact that if they are dying to stealing, why not make them not steal so much in the first place? I figure I could also just check the Respawn box as well.

My problem is I don't understand these values and how they relate to the possible problem. I also want to know how to define "essential" across the board with "copy to selected records" without overwriting other flags that are already there, such as "female".
Individually marking them "essential" would get tedious if I do that route.

They die because they steal. They steal because the "Find Food" AI Package of NPCs Alive make them do so and because they have low Responsibility. Higher Responsibility makes them not steal, but also makes them report crimes if they see them, and doesn't fit with the idea of beggars working for the Gray Fox.
Personally I just deleted the Beggars from NPCs Alive and kept the Goblins, Bandits and some others.

What is supposed to be so special about the beggars plugin anyway?

If you remove the find food AI what else is left of them to be interesting, if anything?

Excactly. That is why I deleted them.
The bandits and goblins have more interesting AI Packages. I've seen bandits moving along the roads at nights for example.

PetrusOctavanius

you all are talking about that old mod - does it effect leveled lists or just assign new AI?

What does it do to bandits and goblins exactly?

How does NPC's alive behave with Reneers Guard Overhaul?
If the problem is that the beggars keep getting killed, then maybe reneers will alleviate that a bit since the guards will be less trigger happy.

cool... I installed Smarter Bandits (not sure how smarter other than the author made them be in groups) as well as Realistic Sneak for NPCs (with dynamic sneak set in the ini). That should make it more interesting.

I merged all of those except the beggars into one plugin so I can deactivate the beggars if things go wrong. For safety's sake I made all of the ones listed in the plugin essential, so if I see them getting attacked even with RGO I will have that answer.

Raise their responsibility to stop them stealing. I believe 30 should be enough to stop theft. Also, adding food to their inventory ought to discourage stealing for food as they would already have some on them.

Just AI Packages which make them more mobile and less predictable.

Their default is 25 across the board, but the author made them all 0.
I guess he wanted them all to steal or didn't know what he was doing. There are other things altered from Oblivion.esm as well such as Aggression 5>25, Confidence 5>75, etc.

Aggression that high will mean those NPCs will always be starting fights. Needs to be dropped back at least below 10 to prevent them aggressing other NPCs.

Yeah and the confidence boost will make them pretty brazen too. That seems completely out of character for a beggar to me...

25 is high for aggression?

I guess I will put them back to default then. No idea what the author was thinking. That comment on Nexus is right...Beggars have Balls...

btw what is "energy level" for? Looking at more comparisons ...50 default, mod 35

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/AI_Button a pretty good description of all these values.

thanks.

I don't know what the author had in mind for this mod unless he views beggars as a bunch of rowdy people.

edit and an side question/comment:



Is this the reason why that orc merchant lady in the chapel in Chorrol follows me around the place like I was in a shop? It sure makes for sneaking around annoying.

Could be. I think the UOP fixed it for FG porters though - I've noticed they don't follow me around anymore. If you are looking at mods in TES4Edit, you might want to bring up the UOP and check the Non Player Character section and see what they changed. You might be able to compare those records to the orc in Chorrol... Another possibility is a mod that you're running. I remember that there were a series of immersion mods a while back and it made people follow you as soon as you started sneaking. They assumed that if you were sneaking, you were up to no good Probably true... I think at the time it was the MOE series of mods, but my memory might be faulty...

I never tried to sneak since they always followed me around without sneaking. I am on a new build so I will have to experience it later to see if it still happens.

I think what I will do is let them have default responb/aggression/confid and keep eat package, while giving them respawn or essential flags so I can pretend they have been either knocked senseless and / or sent to jail for the respawn time.

Reading that energy level description a few times still leaves me confused on what it does, especially the last part:




so many uses of "it"/"itself" that I don't understand what "it" is referring to. "It" the actor, "it" the package, the location..."it" for "following" - what is this "it" that is following the "actor" (NPC).

If the NPC is energetic, they will wander more often and farther from their target.