Protection of unarmored companions

[Emma]

Reposted from old forum

I don't want my companion to wear armor. How do I keep her/him well protected?

There is a bug in the game engine, so that a completely unarmored player or npc won't benefit from their unarmored skills - unless they are wearing one piece of armor. To deal with this, DinkumThinkum has released an 'Unarmored corrector'-mod, available here.

However, this only works for the player.

For companions, there's a simple solution. If you want your companion to fight unarmored, just give him/her a wig! A wig is considered a helmet, so it will be the only armor your companion needs in order to benefit from his/her unarmored skills and be a lot better protected.
There are many wigs available in the numerous clothing shop mods.

If your companion has an unarmored skill that is higher than his/her armor skills, he/she might refuse to wear a common wig. What you have to do then is to open up the mod with the wig in your construction set. Change the armor rating for the wig to 400. Then, any companion will wear it!

[Emma]

Original poster: Decardo

As an alternative to a wig, Qarl made some necklaces in his 'Qarls Gothic attire' Mod which act as light armour, so maybe they could be of use instead?

[Emma]

Original poster: Dinkumthinkum

If it's armor and the companion will equip it, that will fix the Unarmored bug: as long as the companion has some type of armor equipped their Unarmored skill will work correctly.

However, the problem is that NPCs choose what armor to wear based on the armor skills they were given when they were created in the Construction Set. So if an NPC was created with a high Unarmored skill and low skills for other armor types, then they won't equip armor unless it has a very high rating. That's why Emma suggested setting the armor rating for a wig to 400: that's high enough that a companion should equip it regardless of what their armor skills are.

Note: changing an NPC's armor skills in the game (using the console or a script, for example) will not affect their armor choices. NPCs auto-equipping of armor is only based on the armor skills they were given in the Construction Set.