NPC Enhancer Gun
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This creation adds the NPC Enhancer Gun to your inventory on game load (also buyable at the Den's Trade Authority). Fire it at an NPC to open a menu for changing appearance, skills, inventory, recruiting as a follower, and fixing stuck/glitched NPCs.
NEWS (30SEP2026): Version 1.2.1 is up - thanks to everyone patient enough to wait, and to everyone whose feedback shaped this update. Tested on a vanilla game; see Known Limitations below for remaining issues.
Upgrading mid-playthrough: probably safe, but no guarantees - many script properties changed. To be safe: save, remove the old version, save again, then install 1.2.1.
SAVE BEFORE USING THE GUN!
About Non-lethal weapon (1 point of unavoidable "damage," flagged non-hostile) for customizing and managing NPCs. Only affects adult human NPCs - no effect on robots, children, or crowd actors. (Vasco is excluded under this filter for now; hoping to support humanoid-Vasco mods in a future update.)
Features (menu shown on hitting an eligible NPC) 0 - Do Nothing: closes the menu.
1 - Change Appearance
- Open Enhance Menu: full character-creation editing on the target. (Your own character is briefly used as the editing canvas, which is why you save under your own name/pronouns - the look is copied to the NPC and your own appearance restored on exit.)
- Change NPC Size: grow/shrink the target; a toggle removes the size limit at your own risk (extreme sizes may need a reload to recover cleanly).
2 - Change Skills
- Change a Skill: add/remove one of ~33 tracked skills.
- List Skills: shows which tracked skills an NPC has (not their rank).
3 - NPC Inventory
- Open Inventory
- Strip carried gear (safe): unequips worn weapon/armor/clothing only.
- Unequip ALL gear (unsafe): unequips everything.
- Steal ALL gear (unsafe): transfers their whole inventory to you.
4 - Follower Options
- Recruit as Follower: makes the NPC physically follow and fight with you.
- Dismiss Follower: stops them following (works on vanilla companions too).
5 - Reset/Unstick NPC
- Reset NPC Appearance: refreshes rendering, fixes minor visual glitches.
- Unstick an NPC: fixes geometry-stuck NPCs (living ones resume normal behavior; frozen/T-posed dead ones get a proper ragdoll).
Known Limitations and Solutions
Hostility: Though flagged non-hostile, some NPCs/factions run their own scripts that bypass this and turn hostile if hit - SysDef on the Vigilance is the main example. Save before using the gun, especially in a new area. Mods like Scared of Shootings or Souls of Cities can also change violence behavior - let me know if you see this so I can look into a patch.
Gun unresponsive / shots pass through NPCs: re-equip the gun at a workbench and try again. PC console fix: CQF NEG_EnhancerGunQuestScript ForceRepair
Appearance changer: uses your own character as a temporary editing canvas, which is why only humans are valid targets (testing on crowd/child NPCs gave bad results, hence the filter). Worn items get copied along too - vanilla clothing is fine, but modded clothing/hair can cause a crash. If that happens, strip the NPC's modded gear first. Save before using the gun.
Stuck expression: rare cases (e.g. Sarah) may get stuck with an angry/odd expression. 1.2.1 should prevent/fix this - let me know if it still happens.
Appearance reverting: an edited NPC's look can sometimes revert after a cell change. Cause isn't fully confirmed; 1.2.1 includes attempted fixes - let me know if it still occurs.
No gender flipping: currently requires directly editing the actor in the CK plus new voice files. See my Adoring Fangirl mod for guidance on that process.
NPC Skills: some skills cap below the level you request (e.g. vanilla Medicine tops out at rank 1) - that's the skill's own authored data, not a gun bug. Works with mods that add/rename skills as long as their CK names match. Cannot remove a skill that's baked into an actor's own CK entry (e.g. Andreja's Theft) - that needs direct CK/xEdit editing.
NPCs vanishing: some NPCs (e.g. Sam, Barrett at the Lodge) can disappear after an appearance change and respawn elsewhere with the new look - likely their AI package. No fix yet.
Gear stripping: stripped gear doesn't auto-re-equip on any NPC (default game AI behavior, not this mod). For most NPCs the original items stay in their own inventory; the four core Constellation companions (Sarah, Barrett, Sam Coe, Andreja) can't be stripped/unequipped at all - you'll get a notice instead, since their default gear is specially flagged and unrecoverable once removed. Everything else about them (appearance, skills, recruiting, inventory viewing, extra items they carry) works normally.
Gun replacement (PC console): "help enhancer" to find the gun's item ID, then "player.additem 1".
Recruit as Follower - please read This makes an NPC physically follow and fight with you. That's it - it doesn't grant or fake dialogue, trading, or other companion abilities, which depend entirely on the NPC. Crew (Elite or generic) still need normal paid recruitment before trading works; the gun only controls whether they're currently following, not whether they've been hired. NPCs with no dialogue framework will just follow silently. Recruiting a new companion/Elite Crew member auto-dismisses your current one (matching vanilla's one-at-a-time rule for that role) but does not dismiss other gun-recruited followers - those can stack.
Removed Features The Relationship/Romance option has been removed rather than left half-working. Starfield's affinity system needs real research before this returns as something that actually works.
Future Updates Testing compatibility with other mods (appearance/preset mods, crime mods, humanoid-Vasco, etc.) - feedback welcome, and patches possible for popular mods. Still working on the hostility issue. Feature requests welcome (e.g. body disposal, follower romance) - let me know what you'd like to see.
Installation: One esm + ba2 archive. Extract to your Data folder, or use a mod manager (preferred). Load order shouldn't matter, though one user fixed a non-working gun by changing load order.
Updating: Save, remove old version, save again, install new version.
Requirements: Base game only.
Tools Used: Starfield Creation Kit
My Mods: Adoring Fangirl, NPC Enhancer Gun, Lets go to Enhance - all on Starfield Nexus.
Release notes
Xbox
-
1.2.11.2.1 - Added fixes to prevent NPC's expressions getting stuck in angry mode.
1.2.0 - Complete rewrite of scripts and logic, moving change npc functions to quest instead of magic effect and implementing more health checks.
Menu reorganized into submenus (Appearance, Skills, NPC Inventory, Follower Options, Reset/Unstick.
Removed Relationship/Romance functions.
Follower Options: recruit/dismiss any eligible NPC as a follower who fights with you.
Reset/Unstick NPC: fixes NPCs frozen, T-posed, or stuck in geometry; separately, fixes glitched appearance rendering
List Skills: check which tracked skills an NPC currently has
Toggleable size limit: on/off switch for the scale cap, for anyone who wants to go past the normal range
NPC Inventory split from one option into three: Open Inventory, Strip Gear (safe — now also removes the weapon, not just armor), and separately Unequip All vs. Steal All (previously one option, now two with distinct behavior)
Weapon now properly redraws itself after an appearance change, instead of needing a manual draw.
Core Constellation companions are now protected from Strip/Unequip specifically, since testing showed their gear can't be reliably restored afterward. -
1.0.4This version (1.0.4) does the following:
Adds the ability to change crew skills.
Unequip NPCs
Open NPC inventory
Puts a weapon case in the Den Trade Authority kiosk with the Enhancer Gun and some ammo.
Makes the esm a full master instead of small. I did this because xEdit does not work with small masters. Once that changes, I will move back to a small master.
-
1.01== New version changes the gun ammo to standard heavy fuse to fix the gun not reloading. I also cleaned up some unneeded changes. Tested on Nexus, so should work! ==
-
1.00Initial release
Playstation
-
1.2.11.2.1 - Added fixes to prevent NPC's expressions getting stuck in angry mode.
1.2.0 - Complete rewrite of scripts and logic, moving change npc functions to quest instead of magic effect and implementing more health checks.
Menu reorganized into submenus (Appearance, Skills, NPC Inventory, Follower Options, Reset/Unstick.
Removed Relationship/Romance functions.
Follower Options: recruit/dismiss any eligible NPC as a follower who fights with you.
Reset/Unstick NPC: fixes NPCs frozen, T-posed, or stuck in geometry; separately, fixes glitched appearance rendering
List Skills: check which tracked skills an NPC currently has
Toggleable size limit: on/off switch for the scale cap, for anyone who wants to go past the normal range
NPC Inventory split from one option into three: Open Inventory, Strip Gear (safe — now also removes the weapon, not just armor), and separately Unequip All vs. Steal All (previously one option, now two with distinct behavior)
Weapon now properly redraws itself after an appearance change, instead of needing a manual draw.
Core Constellation companions are now protected from Strip/Unequip specifically, since testing showed their gear can't be reliably restored afterward.
PC
-
1.2.11.2.1 - Added fixes to prevent NPC's expressions getting stuck in angry mode.
1.2.0 - Complete rewrite of scripts and logic, moving change npc functions to quest instead of magic effect and implementing more health checks.
Menu reorganized into submenus (Appearance, Skills, NPC Inventory, Follower Options, Reset/Unstick.
Removed Relationship/Romance functions.
Follower Options: recruit/dismiss any eligible NPC as a follower who fights with you.
Reset/Unstick NPC: fixes NPCs frozen, T-posed, or stuck in geometry; separately, fixes glitched appearance rendering
List Skills: check which tracked skills an NPC currently has
Toggleable size limit: on/off switch for the scale cap, for anyone who wants to go past the normal range
NPC Inventory split from one option into three: Open Inventory, Strip Gear (safe — now also removes the weapon, not just armor), and separately Unequip All vs. Steal All (previously one option, now two with distinct behavior)
Weapon now properly redraws itself after an appearance change, instead of needing a manual draw.
Core Constellation companions are now protected from Strip/Unequip specifically, since testing showed their gear can't be reliably restored afterward. -
1.0.4This version (1.0.4) does the following:
Adds the ability to change crew skills.
Unequip NPCs
Open NPC inventory
Puts a weapon case in the Den Trade Authority kiosk with the Enhancer Gun and some ammo.
Makes the esm a full master instead of small. I did this because xEdit does not work with small masters. Once that changes, I will move back to a small master.
-
1.01== New version changes the gun ammo to standard heavy fuse to fix the gun not reloading. I also cleaned up some unneeded changes. Tested on Nexus, so should work! ==
-
1.00Initial release
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- Published
- Jul 10, 2024
- Last Updated
- Oct 03, 2026
- Platforms
- Playstation, PC, Xbox
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