A good guide for NPC and leveled list editing?

[A_Dim_Mismatch]

So I'm doing some work on what I hope will produce a huge, sweeping overhaul on enemy balance for the fairest experience possible, across vanilla, Dawnguard and Dragonborn.

 

Just one problem: I don't have a good understanding of basic NPC editing in the CK. My troubles stem from the CK wiki not really having good resources on this sort of thing and nexus resources being hard to sift through. I was wondering if either anyone on here knew a good resource or, failing that, could give me a few tips. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

PS: If this mod ever comes to pass, I wouldn't dare charge money for it. I just want to make my own gameplay overhaul and maybe share it with the community if it isn't a total mess. :P

[kryptopyr]

There are a lot of different variables that affect NPC.  There's of course the actor records, but also their race, class, factions, and combat styles. All of these are different records.

 

These pages describe what many of the different settings in the Actor records do, and where I'd recommend starting:

https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Actor

https://ck.uesp.net/wiki/Stats_Tab

 

Without more specific questions, that's about the best I can suggest.

[A_Dim_Mismatch]

Thanks. To be more specific, what I hope to edit revolves around different kinds of NPCs according to class. For example, if I want to edit the stats of Bandit Marauders, I'd be better served altering the stats of the basal Bandit Marauder than any individual Bandit Marauder npc, right?

[kryptopyr]

Yes.  Many of the leveled actors use a 'template' actor that determines their base stats.  If the actor in question uses a template, then this will be listed in the actor record.  Also many of the stats and settings in that actor's record will likely be grayed out since they are instead referencing the settings used by the template.

 

You might need to track these connections to determine which bandits trace back to which templates, since there may be several base templates that control different types of bandits.  There may also be bandits that, for one reason or another, don't use the templates or only use parts of the template record (there are check boxes that control which part of the template actor gets referenced by a specific actor record, and anything not checked will be overwritten by the settings on the individual actor record).  In these cases, you may need to individually edit those bandit records.

 

Another tip for helping track where template actor records are used, is to right-click on the record and select the "used by" option.  This will give you a list of other records that are referencing that actor record.

[A_Dim_Mismatch]

Ah thanks! That was something I was wondered about but it makes sense now. I'm still not yet at the point of editing NPCs in the CK since I have to figure out stats, but I'll keep this in mind as a reference. And I guess ask future questions if I have them.