I've created a situation where the player has to pass through cells where he/she is trespassing in order to get to an NPC who is in a cell marked owned, but public. My problem is that the NPC is marked as a guard, and detects and reacts to the trespassing you did to get there. Is there any way, short of updating the CrimeGold directly to remove one count of trespassing, to avoid or undo this?

Alternatively, is there any way to change the guard status of the NPC? There's an IsGuard function to test the status, but I don't see anything to set it. I could consider having two instances - one guard, one not - but then I'd need an opportunity to disable one and enable the other in a fixed location without the player watching it happen, and that's not easy to arrange.

How does the NPC know you were trespassing?

Maybe you could temporarily reduce the crime distance setting?

I'm not sure yet, still experimenting to find out if it's direct detection, or "guard telepathy". The intervening area is a guard barracks, so the player could be detected there by another guard, and the NPC guard in question "just knows" about that. I need to step slowly through the path and determine when the bounty is set before I know the answer. It may be related to the last door's ownership, or something like that.

I assume it's the alarm distance you're referring to, and as I understand it, it's the distance between affected NPC and nearest guard. Since all the possible detectors of the "crime" are themselves guards, even a zero distance won't stop it.

I'd say a scaOnActor call on the player should absolve them of their crimes.

I tracked my issue down to having a bounty before I even entered the building :banghead:

I'd compounded the mistake by testing with a character that was the Grey Fox, so guard reactions were multiplied by eight, and placing the NPC guard in the most reactive faction, with -3 per level instead of the more usual -2, gave me a -24 to disposition before any crime adjustment! No wonder I wasn't too welcome.

I don't want to give the player a blank check on this piece of the quest, I'm just trying to ensure that the player/NPC interaction is in the player's control, so if they need to sneak, they'll sneak, etc. However if full chameleon wasn't enough to allow the dialog to be started, I'd have a problem. Anyhow, if I go carefully through the barracks, the final conversation is not causing any issues now, without resorting to any resetting, so my problem is resolved, and I can get on with the rest of the quest.