Weird Hungry Bandit Recruit Bug

[Dragon Slayer Ornstein]

I've just encountered something a bit odd... If you Rescue a Hungry bandit from a jail cell...

My method is to get into a cell next to them pick your own lock then pick theirs when they wake (no criminal activity), immediately escape the cell then and pick them up before the guards hit them, run them off to about a zoomed out screen distance from town and put them down. If they follow you then you have a chance to recruit... run them off from about the distance from Stack to just before the rebel base.

The Hungry Bandit will try to demand food from you, tell them no, they will try to hit you but neither them or you can hit each other, not even a crossbow shot can land. ?!?

After a about a minute they will ask to join your squad... wut?

I love these odd Kenshi bugs.

[Bomb Bloke]

Members of the same faction generally can't attack each other. There are ways to make them try, but their attacks will always just whiff through the air. This prevents groups from accidentally beating up their own allies when fighting within small spaces.

Even though they aren't technically in your faction, the same rule is applied to rescued NPCs: for quite some time after, they'll be unable to damage your PCs. This isn't specific to Hungry Bandits, and it doesn't seem to matter whether the rescued character decides to follow you or not.

The idea appears to be that average players are pretty likely to get into a fight with their captors after escaping, and it'd kinda suck to be accidentally taken out by any characters they tried to rescue in the process. And so a bit of special treatment is applied.

[Dragon Slayer Ornstein]

Ahh that explains it, still weird they started a fight with me but could not hit me, so they are an enemy and a member of my faction at the same time.

[Bomb Bloke]

Yeah you normally have to jump through a few hoops to convince rescued characters to swing at your guys. The Hungry Bandit dialogue trigger is an easy way to trigger it by accident.