How To Make an NPC Playable

Introduction

This Miscellenious Tutorial will teach you how to use the face of an NPC for the player character. You'll need to start a new character, but later on I'll explain how you can import this face into an existing save. And how it's possible to use the face of a player character for an NPC.

Use an NPC face for your character

Open the Construction Set and load the Oblivion.esm. Expand the category "Actors > Imperial" in the object window. When you click on "Male" you'll see the list of all male Imperial characters in the right part of the window.

When you start a new game, your character appears as an Imperial Male before you edit him: this Imperial Male is actually an Actor named "Player" - find him, and you can change the default appearance of the player to whatever you like.

The entry "Player" is, as noted above, stored in the Imperial category. Now look for it and make a double click on the entry. The property menu will open. Do not change the ID or the class - in any case, you have to avoid changing them. And better you keep your hands off the script dropdown, if you don't 100% know what you're doing.

In the central part of the property menu you'll find some tabs; go to "Face Advanced". You might need to use the right arrow. When you've selected the tab you'll already see the head of the character generation character in the preview window.

Now we need to choose an NPC whose face our character shall have. In this example we'll use Lucien Lachance, but any NPC will work just as well. Lucien Lachance is an Imperial, so we can stay in the category "Imperial/Male" (ID: LucienLachance). Open the preferences menu and select the "Face Advanced" tab. Whereon you have to attend basically is the race. In this example player and NPC are both Imperial, but if you choose a dunmeri NPC you need to change the player race to Dunmer too.

In the "Advanced Face" tab of Lucien Lachance you find the button "Copy". Press it, switch to the player menu and press "Paste" there. The player's face in the preview window will now be that of Lucien Lachance. Now you need to switch to the face tab in both menus. Here you must enter Lucien's age, complexion, hair length, hair style, hair color and eye color to the player manually.

Close Lucien Lachance's window with Cancel or the X button in the upper right. Do not click Save. If you click Save, your .esp will register changes to Lucien Lachance (even though you didn't change anything) and therefore overwrite any mod that does want to change Lucien Lachance. That would make your mod a dirty mod. In the preference window of the player you press OK. Last but not least you save the plugin with "File > Save". Activate the plugin in the Oblivion Launcher and start a new game. If you now want to adopt this face to an existing character you need to start a new game too. That's inevitable.

Use this face for an existing save

With Wrye Bash you can import a player face from one save into another. A little installation advice: The folder "Mopy" has to be in your Oblivion directory at least. When you have installed Wrye Bash correctly, open the tool with the shortcut provided. In the "Saves" tab, find the savefile whose face you want to change. Right-click on it and select "Import Face". Choose the savefile whose player character's face you want to use, and your savefile will be given that face.

Warning!
The characters of both saves need to have the same race! Everything else will cause monstrous results.

Use the players face for an NPC

With Wrye Bash you can import the face from one save into another, but also import the players face to an NPC. Right click on the plugin you want the face from one of your characters be imported in, select "Import - Face" and look for the save with the face of your choice. An NPC with this face will be created in the plugin.

Links

• Homepage: Wrye Musings - more detailed explanation about how to use the import face function.
  
• TESNexus - playable mannimarco by jackmix69