I have a pose for some NPCs, where they have their 2H sword out and are holding it with both hands in the center of their body.

I want them to
A.) Have their swords out
B.) Look directly ahead, not at other nearby NPCs
C.) Play the animation.

I can't make all three happen.

I make them pull their swords out with setalert. I use setrestrained to keep them from looking at other npcs, and I use pickidle for them to pick the animation.

It seems like they won't draw their swords with setalert if they are already playing the animation, setrestrained prevents them from doing both, the animation won't play unless pickidle is called first, etc.

Any ideas?

I suppose what would really be the perfect solution is to have a clothing item that look like a sword in the NPC's hand..

Problem solved, I called setalert via quest script before the cell is entered.