What does it mean to set something in the CS as "Blocked"?

When you set something as "blocked" in the CS, it prevents you or another person from modifying the object's stats and data in the CS unless they uncheck the blocked. For example, the NPC shady smuggler is an Imperial thief, but you can change him to a high elf mage if you wanted to, you can also change his AI to make him friendly or a complete jerk and attack you on sight. BUT if you check the "blocked" box, you won't be able to change him or his AI unless you uncheck it. You also won't be able to open the dialogue window with said npc's dialogue automatically filtered. Another example, in books you won't be able to modify the text or art files if you block it. I imagine this is just for those people who accidentally change stuff with clumsy fingers, as I can't imagine why you'd have something blocked otherwise. Hope this answered your question

It just prevents that item from being edited again until you un-Block it.

It might have been just a way for the dev team to label an object as "do not touch."


As far as I know, it has no bearing on anything in-game.


edit: Ninajd

Recently Morrowind Code Patch has started using it in a more effective way, maybe we will see it used for other object properties soon.

162 See all standard potion effects

Allows the player to see all of the effects on standard potions, instead of a limited number depending on alchemy skill. Player-made potions still show effects based on alchemy skill, as do potions that are flagged 'Blocked' in the Construction Set.

Keep in mind that the Construction Set was originally created as a tool to be used by the Bethesda developers to create the Morrowind game world. With a large team of devs all working on the same mod, being able to block something from being unintentionally changed would have been critical to protect it from being inadvertently modified (and possibly broken) by another team member after another dev had it set up just the way it was supposed to be.

When Bethesda released the game, they released the Construction Set along with it, pretty much in the same form as when they used it. Blocking an object isn't really that useful when it's just one person working on a mod by themselves, but I can see it as still being useful for large projects being working on by a team of people.

As another poster pointed out, blocking an object has no effect on anything in the game: it just affects your ability to modify the object in the Construction Set.