Why Acheron does not prevent every death This is a rather controversial point of Acheron's design that I've seen people being confused about, so I want to give some more insight to why I decided to not prevent every death in the game per se, and there are in fact multiple reasons for this:
1. Preserving the gameplay loop Killmoves in particular are a great example here. I believe that having your throat cut open, having your head removed from your shoulders or your flesh being burned to cinders is something that you should not survive. Killmoves are, by design, a cinematic execution, and not having an execution execute you is missing the point of an execution and creates inconsistencies, disrupting your (hopefully) fluent gameplay loop by making you guess if the guy you just impaled is actually dead or not. I do not want to disrupt your killing spree with that question, I want you to instinctively know, that your target is in fact dead.
2. Not intervening with other mod designs Because any author that puts "Player.Kill()" into their script wants you to die when that line executes, maybe they soft locked you and want to force you into going back to the last "checkpoint". Maybe it's not the player that's been killed and that actors death mandatory to progress your story. Fundamentally, if another mod author puts something in their script that causes someone to die for any reason, then I assume the author explicitly wants that actor to die. If the death is not intended, then the respective script is faulty and should be corrected. Either of those 2 instances is not something Acheron wants to intervene with, which is why Acheron ignores any scripted damage/death. It ensure compatibility with other mods.
3. Preventing soft locks Lastly, even in the Vanilla game, there are instances where you enter a room and the door behind you closes, you can no longer escape and are forced to fight an enemy to the death, some of those instances also include a papyrus script running in the background for the entire duration of the fight. What do you think happens when Acheron prevents your death during such fights? It may even teleport you out of the Arena. The door is shut, the papyrus script keeps running, you have no way of going back into the arena. You're forced into either using the console, or accept such a soft lock - and the potential consequence of a papyrus script eating resources until a new game is started (said script may even include side effects that hinder further progression in other ways, like a DoT, or debuffs). Obviously, neither of these solutions are optimal.
Skyrim, fundamentally, is not designed to support death alternative mods. How exactly a game treats "death" - how it treats your Hp reaching 0 - is something that is fundamental to a game's design. While in Elden Ring, a death is merely a soft reset taking you to your last resting place, in Binding of Isaac and Hades it's essentially a perma death. In Skyrim? It's a hard reset to your last save, that's just how it is and that's how a lot of quests - both Vanilla and modded - expect the game to behave. It isn't about whether or not there is a modder out there who can just remove death entirely, it is in fact possible to achieve that today, the earliest of DA mods are doing just that. The irony here is that the one thing that sets Acheron apart from other DA mods, is that Acheron has the ability to choose when to let you die and when to rescue you. At the end of the day, you have to choose between two evils: Use a DA mod that prevents every death and thus might softlock/break your game, or use one that not always has an alternative to offer you.
Under "Defeat" catagory the player fallback timer never seems to work for me Scrab. I have to always use health regeneration because of that.
Not sure if I can figure out a specific conflict but I removed all defeat/death alternative mods I can possibly think of. This setting never works for me. Could be there's something more at play but I might need advice.
Edit: Might've spotted a bit of a pattern but I think there's a correlation with it being tied to being "defeated" too quickly after the prior time. It seems like hopping straight back into combat too soon is problematic?
Came here for the same reason. I thought CommonLib solved this a year ago. Just about every mod updated in the last couple years support both editions of the game, except Acheron. 🤔
is this compatible with Ad Mortem ? In a way that when defeated it doesnt necessarely trigger Ad Mortem's death unless the outcome is actually death on this mod.
Every time I reload a save after booting the game The default defeat scenario returns to its default setting regardless of what I set it at before. How do I fix this broken setting?
if you're in MO2 open overwrite > skse > acheron > consequences > weights.yaml, edit it with notepad, save, and right click, properties, mark as read only. you wont be able to change it in game but it should keep your numbers. I had this issue too.
For everyone that does have that missing dll error AND usjing a wabbajack modlist that use the STOCK GAME folder check the version of skyrim.exe in the stock game folder. Skyrim.exe inside the steam one was on the latest patch but the one inside the wabbajack stock folder was on 1.5.9.7 that's why it wasn't working (because wabbajack in my case use the stock folder not the steam one). hope it helps
I use consoleUtil NG. Do we really need the extended? Or we can stay with ConsoleUtil NG? It say experimental for consoleUtil extended so i rather stick to NG for now. Experimental means it might not work, not fully done. I am on 1170 AE too.
ConsoleUtil Extended is, currently, only required for the console commands. Without it, the commands will be unavailable, but everything else will still function as expected.
Hello! Sorry but i don't understand for the optional killmove fixes in requirements and also there are 2 versions for the killmoves. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/140398 The mod prevent death for the player? We need it and which version? If i don't install it, what will happen? Thanks.
I use Sacrosanct which give a second wind after you die and you get back up. You die if you are killed a second time if you didn't drink a blood potion to be sated. I don't know if maybe this will be a problem with Acheron?
Oh and is a new game from scratch necessary? My save game is actually inside the prison of live another life mod( Didn't talk to the mara statue yet). Just wandering if I can continue my save because tweaking my mcm take a long time. lol And if it doesn't matter about where I am in my save file, then I will continue. I didn't see in the description if it needs a new save? If I missed it, sorry.
I've been using Acheron for a few months now in my non-lethal playthrough. Overall, it has been a great addition. I appreciate how it allows followers to defeat enemies rather than outright killing them, which aligns well with my preferred playstyle which is trying to go for a more non-lethal approach.
However, I do have one concern: the feature that enables NPCs to subdue enemies applies to all other non-follower NPCs. It would be ideal if these behaviours could be separated and toggled via the MCM so that the player has the option to make it so that only follower NPCs use the non-lethal defeat mechanic against their enemies, while unaffiliated NPCs (such as Guards and Bandits) continue to engage in standard combat to the death with each other. This distinction I think would help immerse the player a bit more in the world and maintain the regular fighting interactions outside of the player's choice. It makes sense as I personally want my group to not kill other NPCs as it counts as a kill on my stats which I do not want (can affect other mods, such as Faction Warfare and/or Reputation), but I don't see why other NPCs outside of my group should be following that rule as well?
363 comments
This is a rather controversial point of Acheron's design that I've seen people being confused about, so I want to give some more insight to why I decided to not prevent every death in the game per se, and there are in fact multiple reasons for this:
1. Preserving the gameplay loop
Killmoves in particular are a great example here. I believe that having your throat cut open, having your head removed from your shoulders or your flesh being burned to cinders is something that you should not survive. Killmoves are, by design, a cinematic execution, and not having an execution execute you is missing the point of an execution and creates inconsistencies, disrupting your (hopefully) fluent gameplay loop by making you guess if the guy you just impaled is actually dead or not. I do not want to disrupt your killing spree with that question, I want you to instinctively know, that your target is in fact dead.
2. Not intervening with other mod designs
Because any author that puts "Player.Kill()" into their script wants you to die when that line executes, maybe they soft locked you and want to force you into going back to the last "checkpoint". Maybe it's not the player that's been killed and that actors death mandatory to progress your story. Fundamentally, if another mod author puts something in their script that causes someone to die for any reason, then I assume the author explicitly wants that actor to die. If the death is not intended, then the respective script is faulty and should be corrected. Either of those 2 instances is not something Acheron wants to intervene with, which is why Acheron ignores any scripted damage/death. It ensure compatibility with other mods.
3. Preventing soft locks
Lastly, even in the Vanilla game, there are instances where you enter a room and the door behind you closes, you can no longer escape and are forced to fight an enemy to the death, some of those instances also include a papyrus script running in the background for the entire duration of the fight. What do you think happens when Acheron prevents your death during such fights? It may even teleport you out of the Arena. The door is shut, the papyrus script keeps running, you have no way of going back into the arena.
You're forced into either using the console, or accept such a soft lock - and the potential consequence of a papyrus script eating resources until a new game is started (said script may even include side effects that hinder further progression in other ways, like a DoT, or debuffs). Obviously, neither of these solutions are optimal.
Skyrim, fundamentally, is not designed to support death alternative mods. How exactly a game treats "death" - how it treats your Hp reaching 0 - is something that is fundamental to a game's design. While in Elden Ring, a death is merely a soft reset taking you to your last resting place, in Binding of Isaac and Hades it's essentially a perma death. In Skyrim? It's a hard reset to your last save, that's just how it is and that's how a lot of quests - both Vanilla and modded - expect the game to behave. It isn't about whether or not there is a modder out there who can just remove death entirely, it is in fact possible to achieve that today, the earliest of DA mods are doing just that. The irony here is that the one thing that sets Acheron apart from other DA mods, is that Acheron has the ability to choose when to let you die and when to rescue you.
At the end of the day, you have to choose between two evils: Use a DA mod that prevents every death and thus might softlock/break your game, or use one that not always has an alternative to offer you.
Not sure if I can figure out a specific conflict but I removed all defeat/death alternative mods I can possibly think of. This setting never works for me. Could be there's something more at play but I might need advice.
Edit: Might've spotted a bit of a pattern but I think there's a correlation with it being tied to being "defeated" too quickly after the prior time. It seems like hopping straight back into combat too soon is problematic?
None.
Lol
Edit: I use Lorerim, Stock Game contains 1.5.9.7 version.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/140398
The mod prevent death for the player? We need it and which version? If i don't install it, what will happen? Thanks.
I use Sacrosanct which give a second wind after you die and you get back up. You die if you are killed a second time if you didn't drink a blood potion to be sated. I don't know if maybe this will be a problem with Acheron?
Oh and is a new game from scratch necessary? My save game is actually inside the prison of live another life mod( Didn't talk to the mara statue yet). Just wandering if I can continue my save because tweaking my mcm take a long time. lol And if it doesn't matter about where I am in my save file, then I will continue. I didn't see in the description if it needs a new save? If I missed it, sorry.
However, I do have one concern: the feature that enables NPCs to subdue enemies applies to all other non-follower NPCs. It would be ideal if these behaviours could be separated and toggled via the MCM so that the player has the option to make it so that only follower NPCs use the non-lethal defeat mechanic against their enemies, while unaffiliated NPCs (such as Guards and Bandits) continue to engage in standard combat to the death with each other. This distinction I think would help immerse the player a bit more in the world and maintain the regular fighting interactions outside of the player's choice. It makes sense as I personally want my group to not kill other NPCs as it counts as a kill on my stats which I do not want (can affect other mods, such as Faction Warfare and/or Reputation), but I don't see why other NPCs outside of my group should be following that rule as well?