"I have killed a member of the Mages Guild..." : IV

» Sun Dec 11, 2011 9:07 am

Twice during the Ambush MG quest outside Silorn my char has been suspended from the Mages Guild because she has killed a member of it. Both times Iver, Merete and Thalfin from the MG was closeby and one of them got killed - but not by my char. The first time my char hadn't even hurt anybody yet, much less been even close to hurting/killing one of them - and it was before the first dialogue so I think they should be essential anyway. The second time was during the ambush fight and my char didn't hurt one of the Mages Guild NPCs then either. Anyone who has an idea what might cause this? My char is currently doing the Mighty Umbra quest if that might have anything to do with it - although it seems unlikely.

EDIT: When I think about it, I got a murder count when killing Mankar Camoran, which also was odd. Not sure if it's connected with this.

Also, while I'm at it - once in a while a dialogue subtitle with "Ah ha" pops up. It seems to come from nowhere as far as I know. Anyone who has an idea what that is?

» Sun Dec 11, 2011 10:28 am

Mankar Camoran unmodded is in an Evil faction, so killing him should not count as murder unless another mod has changed his faction.

The three Mages Guild NPCs are all set to essential initially, but once the battle begins they cease to be essential, to encourage the player to work to keep them alive. You can be expelled from the Mages Guild for attacking a guildmember, but you say you did not accidentally harm any of them, and the reason given is killing, so I can only guess that again another mod has changed the conditions for expulsion/broken the conditions.

"Ah ha" as a random dialogue subtitle is from a mod, absolutely no dialogue in the vanilla game contains that two-word sentence.

so you have one or more mods installed which make changes they probably shouldn't do, if you want to resolve this you'll need to track those mods down either by loading all into TES4Edit and checking the records you know about, or else by disabling mods and testing to see if it still happens.

» Sun Dec 11, 2011 1:07 pm

Have you done the Thieves Guild questline? Or at least part of it? There's a mission where you have to break into Fathis Ules' (spelling?) tower and steal his staff or something (He's a prominent member of the MG, though not essential). There's also a good chance that you wind up killing him during that quest. Happened to me, and since I was a member of the Mages Guild at the time I had to spend ages searching for all those daedra hearts and vampire dust.

» Sun Dec 11, 2011 8:51 am

The 'ah ha' subtitle is from when NPCs are fatigued or injured.

Can't recall if it just Realist Fatigue or that and MMM extra wounding.

» Sun Dec 11, 2011 1:19 pm

Mankar Camoran unmodded is in an Evil faction, so killing him should not count as murder unless another mod has changed his faction.

The three Mages Guild NPCs are all set to essential initially, but once the battle begins they cease to be essential, to encourage the player to work to keep them alive. You can be expelled from the Mages Guild for attacking a guildmember, but you say you did not accidentally harm any of them, and the reason given is killing, so I can only guess that again another mod has changed the conditions for expulsion/broken the conditions.

"Ah ha" as a random dialogue subtitle is from a mod, absolutely no dialogue in the vanilla game contains that two-word sentence.

so you have one or more mods installed which make changes they probably shouldn't do, if you want to resolve this you'll need to track those mods down either by loading all into TES4Edit and checking the records you know about, or else by disabling mods and testing to see if it still happens.

Checking in TES4Edit nothing but the usual suspects (OOO, UOP, Cobl Races TNR) is affecting the MG NPCs. Hm. In the beginning of the Camoran battle my char killed the dude that follows you there and IIRC that can cause a murder count - but the message turned up much later, just after killing Camoran. Might have been a question of "queued" stuff perhaps as it was rather busy. But that still leaves the MG "killing" issue.

Have you done the Thieves Guild questline? Or at least part of it? There's a mission where you have to break into Fathis Ules' (spelling?) tower and steal his staff or something (He's a prominent member of the MG, though not essential). There's also a good chance that you wind up killing him during that quest. Happened to me, and since I was a member of the Mages Guild at the time I had to spend ages searching for all those daedra hearts and vampire dust.

Nope, haven't touched the TG questline.

The 'ah ha' subtitle is from when NPCs are fatigued or injured.

Can't recall if it just Realist Fatigue or that and MMM extra wounding.

Thanks, it was RF Pants from Realistic Fatigue.

» Sun Dec 11, 2011 3:19 pm

I've also run across groups of NPCs that are panting without having gotten into a fight. Kuertee and I were able to track it down to a mod interaction that you might recall us posting about.

Kuertee notes this about MMM:

MMM's diversifaction system uses ModActorValue to vary the Health, Magicka, and Fatigue of actors.
Unfortunately, this causes I think, some unusual effects to the actors in the game.
Two examples are:
1. Health is healed rather than lost when physical damage is inflicted.
2. Actors continously casting healing spells because their AI detects a loss of health due to the modified base Health with ModActorValue. This was confirmed by shadowborn: http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1049752&view=findpost&p=15272211
"kuertee MMM OnLoadCS disabled hmf effects.esp" disables these effects from MMM's scripts.
Note, however, that MMM's diversifcation system on other attributes (e.g. Strength, Intelligence, etc...) are still intact.

The esp he is referring to is in http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=24604.

One time when entering a dungeon (part of Hoarfrost questline I think) I came upon a huge dungeon level where all of the NPCs were in unison 'ah ha' over and over again. Kinda creepy. It was that MMM contributed to them being spawned with lessened fatigue and their gear alone was fatiguing them via Realistic Fatigue effects.

Something else though may have thrown off why they all got assigned the same level of fatigue damage. Anyway that mod prevents those kinds of scenes when using MMM. I no longer use Battle Fatigues but still use kuertee MMM OnLoadCS disabled hmf effects.esp with MMM. So I only hear people pant when they are hurt or have fatigue damage that makes sense (I see it happen).