Greetings!

I run several mods that add wilderness-roaming NPCs of various sorts. Most are Imperial Legion centric. One is not...PT Roaming NPCs. That mods adds a number of traveling NPCs. Merchants and their guards. Adventures of various sorts. Mounted adventurers. Problem is, all but the merchants are attacked by legionnaires and city guards. Oddly, though it happens far more often than not, it doesn't always happen. I'm at a loss as to why. Mod documentation mentions nothing of it. The NPCs are not aggressive (toward guards and legionnaires). It is always the legion or guards who initiate combat. Opening the Roaming NPC ESP in TES4edit shows nothing that would trigger attacks. The NPCs all seem to belong to legion-friendly factions. The only other mod that touches them is the Bashed Patch (Python), but that changes only skeletons, as it does for most every NPC. I also run VOILA, which seems to do things in tricky ways, but what little I can decipher of it doesn't show anything amiss, and in any case so far as I know VOILA affects only Legionnaires, not city guards????

Oh, I almost forget. Those NPC 'cultists' added during certain stages of Ayleid Steps suffered from this too. But with them I assumed it might be normal behavior so never investigated with TES4edit.

Has anyone heard of this or run into it?

Any cure or insight is most appreciated.

-Decrepit-

Yes. The problem is that many of the added travellers have ranged magic or bows, and have a tendency to accidentally hit guards with them. Then the guards fight them, the travellers kill the guards, and then have a 'death warrant' on them, so more guards attack them. For me, the most notorious is the Dunmer bodyguard who can summon stuff, and his summons tend to start the aggro with the guards.

The only cure I have found is to deactivate the plugin.

Eloise

Same problem here,. You can try the bash patch tweak of allowing a large number of friendly hits (if that is the intention of it) or try a friendly fire mod (I think skycaptain made one). I do not have links but remember seeing those.

I tried the Wrye Bash tweak several days after it was suggested here. Set it to eight (8) to be on the safe side. I can tell it works like a charm in certain scenarios. Sadly, it doesn't appear to help with Roaming NPCs. To this day (well, as of my play session yesterday) they are still attacked by legionnaires and guards of various sorts for no obvious reason.

Last time I saw this happen was rather odd, but not unusual. A mounted Roaming NPC adventurer of some sort was riding along the Gold road west of Skingrad headed east. As he passed the easternmost Kvatch Watch Tower (mod) the guards there attacked him. The adventurer remained in the saddle riding peacefully along as he was hit. Eventful, I assume when the eight-blow-safety-limit was surpassed, he dismounted and began fighting back. My avatar had dismounted by then. Vilja, almost dismounted, all of a sudden lets out a yell and rushes to attack the Roaming NPC. We were not close enough to the battle to be affected be melee damage. I exited the game at that point.

It sure seems like something is triggering hostility toward those Roaming NPCs. But what? TES4edit turns up nothing obvious, and CS is beyond me. I understand TES4edit doesn't register certain types of conflicts, scripts I believe?

So far as I can tell, road traveling NPCs from other mods and vanilla Oblivion are never afflicted with this...but maybe I'm just lucky there.

Can't really think of anything else that might have a bearing on this. Oh, wait...I did upgrade from Wrye Bash 287 to 29x at about the same time Phitt's Roaming NPCs was installed. Surely that wouldn't have anything to do with it?

In any case the problem is not yet solved for me.

-Decrepit-

Vilja is another issue all together for me. Once in a while she gets into fights with guards especially when she participates in killing a monster. I use companion compatability but do not think that has anything to do with it. My only resolution in those cases is to console kill the guard and resurrect them. Then they just walk away.

Do a formid finder on the NPCs in question when this happens and see what factions they belong to. Maybe that will tell something.

Hmm...yeah, I may well try that. I do began to wonder if it's some script that silently (to us) overrides faction or greatly bumps up aggression.

As to Vilja, you can also just have your avatar "activate" her (space key). I do that then back out of it without doing anything else. It calms her a good nine out of ten times, and the guards don't seem to hold a grudge. You can do something similar with Wolfgang when he goes after a guard or ally. Activate him with the space bar. Click "follow me". That usually calms him. These methods seem more immersive to me than consoling guards/allies. (In Vilja's case I pretend my avatar grabs her, shakes her by the shoulders, and gives her a good dressing down over her rashness and lack of judgment.)

Doesn't always work, but worth attempting before resorting to more intrusive methods.

-Decrepit-