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Followers Wear Any Apparel (Skyrim + all DLC)

REQUIRES HEARTHFIRES, DAWNGUARD AND DRAGONBORN DLCS.
For vanilla Skyrim only version: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=352461586

Mod description:
With this mod, followers will wear whatever you put in their inventory, including items of lower value than their default outfits. Follower AI will firstly prioritise the highest armour rating items (modified by the follower’s skills and stats), secondly prioritise the monetary value of the items. Works with all followers from the main Skyrim game and official expansions Hearthfire, Dawnguard and Dragonborn.

Followers will begin the game with their default armour/clothing in their inventories. These items can be removed, but they will continue to APPEAR to wear their default armour/clothing unless you give them other armour/clothing.

NOTE: While your followers may continue to APPEAR to wear armour after you clear out their starting inventory, these items are COSMETIC ONLY AND HAVE ZERO ARMOUR RATING. Thus, if you access their inventories and they have no apparel, they have no armour protection, no matter what they look like they’re wearing (keep this in mind especially with regard to housecarls and Companions).

If you apply this mod to an existing saved game, you’ll find two sets of armour/clothing in the inventory of follower characters: one set is their default outfit from before the mod, which they were wearing / was hidden and now has become normal inventory, the other set is the items given to them by this mod to compensate for their now stat-less outfit. If you start a new game with this mod, you’ll only find one set of armour/clothing in their inventory.

When inducting followers into the Blades, the game uses a script to add Blades equipment and change their outfits. This mod also modifies these scripts, but does not retroactively applies them to characters who have already become Blades. This means that Blades inducted after this mod takes effect with have Blades armour that performs consistently with other follower outfits in this mod. Blades inducted before this mod is applied will continue to have their normal Blades armour outfit, and will not wear anything of a lower armour rating and value.

Certain follower NPCs are equipped randomly from a list of possible equipment (Farkas, for example, can wear any combination of one of two steel gauntlet types, one of two steel cuirass types, and one of two steel boots types). Due to the randomness of these lists, the armour/clothing in the characters’ inventories might not exactly match their outfits. In other words, if you remove Farkas’ steel armour from his inventory, for example, he might switch to the other variety of steel armour in appearance.

Ahtar’s default outfit is an unplayable executioner set. This mod changes it to a zero value version, but does not add the original items to his inventory, because they cannot be accessed anyway and would interfere with lower value apparel. Amulets and rings in outfits are retained unchanged. This includes a random ring for Mjoll the Lioness, a Skaal amulet for Frea.

This mod is designed to minimise incompatibilities with other mods by minimising the use of scripts, but might conflict with any other modifications to the followers’ outfits and starting inventories. It does not not change the default appearance of followers. It does not modify any existing items or outfit lists; new items and outfits were created and applied to the follower NPCs. This mod modifies scripts associated with the mission “Rebuilding the Blades”, specifically BladesChangeOutfitScript and FreeformSkyHavenTempleAScript, which are involved in assigning equipment to newly inducted Blades. Any conflicting mods that also modify these scripts will likely lead to unexpected behaviour, including Blades armour not being assigned.


How this mod works:
In Skyrim, your followers each have a default outfit that cannot be changed in game, which the game recognises to be a part of their inventory, but which cannot be accessed by the player. For example, your housecarls have steel armour as their outfits. If you remove all other apparel from their inventory, they’ll be wearing this steel armour. If you give them any other apparel, they’ll only wear what you give them if it is better than their default outfit (higher armour rating first, higher monetary value second).

Because the game AI prioritises armour rating and monetary value, the way to de-prioritise the characters’ default outfits is to make those outfits zero armour rating and zero monetary value. But simply changing the values for steel armour, for example, would mess up all other instances of steel armours in the game. Therefore, it is necessary to create new apparel items with the same models and textures as the originals, but with zero armour and value. When using these new items in the followers’ outfits, the follower AI naturally will wear these items only when nothing else is available, because everything else in the game is better quality.

However, doing this creates a secondary problem in that your followers may initially have far less armour protection than you would expect. This is why their original armour from the unmodded game has been added to their inventory, so they will wear this at first. Note again that if you remove this armour from their inventory, they’ll be left with no armour protection, despite appearing to still wear their original armour. The modified, zero armour rating, zero value outfits are flagged as “unplayable”, meaning they cannot be looted or equipped in game, even from dead followers.


Why I made this mod:
To put it simply, I sometimes want to play dress-up with my followers, and I’ve been less than satisfied with the other mods that have attempted to address the problem of followers not wearing lower value apparel than their default outfits.

One such mod is “Change Follower Outfits” by PrinceShroob (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23798/), which uses scripts to assign and unassign outfits as you hire and dismiss followers. While this mod works as advertised, the script is complicated, and I believe that my approach is less prone to errors and crashes. My mod also behaves more like the unmodded game, in that removing all apparel from your follower leaves them with their default appearance, not naked.

Another related mod is “Use Any Armor For Your Housecarls! (Vanilla)” by ArcticChampion (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=296140242). This is essentially a less complete version of my mod, where the housecarls have been assigned miner outfits instead of their default steel armour. It only works with the housecarls, and it makes them look like miners by default. With a bit more work, my mod works with all followers and preserves their original appearances.

Other mods exist and I won’t list them all here. Generally, they involve quite elaborate scripts. While I find these solutions quite impressive, I also find them inelegant, and I think scripts are too prone to unexpected behaviour, especially when interacting with other mods. Thus I prefer a solution that minimises or eliminates the use of scripts.