#7260 [CORE] - *SPOILERS* NPC Dies When Spoken To

Emptiness

As part of the quest "Aran's tasks to receive the Shadow Thieves' aid", the party is sent to confront Bodhi in her lair. The lair is sealed by heavy doors, and Aran sends a Mage (whose Golem can open the doors) to assist the party to enter the lair. The Mage is named Haz.

Attached is a saved game (note that this is a multiplayer game) just before approaching Haz. Move north to stand near Haz and he will initiate dialog and send his golem to go open the doors. Approach the first set of doors (just north of Haz) and Lassal will initiate dialog and then leave to warn Bodhi. Fight the Grimwarders in the immediate area.

Depending on how you do this, you may or may not see the problem I am reporting. "Normally", Haz will be attacked by one of the Grimwarders, and will exclaim "No! Stay back!", and then die. If you overwhelm the attackers (ie none of them get into melee with Haz) then Haz will survive the combat. If Haz survives the combat then he will stand there until you talk to him, at which point he will exclaim "No! Stay back!", and then die - as if you were one of the Grimwarders attacking him.

To maximize your chance of replicating this problem, move the entire party to Haz together, and then immediately block the doorway with them after Lassal leaves. This will usually ensure that Haz is never attacked, and thus survives.

This problem is not serious, because it has no impact on the mission's success or failure, and does not prevent progress. However, it is unrealistic and immersion breaking, and so should be fixed if possible. If Haz does survive the combat (because he is never attacked and thus his death scene is not triggered), then ideally he should say something along the lines of "Well, my work here is done. Good luck.". Alternatively, he could simply despawn, like his golem does, after a certain period of time - but if that route is taken then there still needs to be a fix so that if you talk to him he doesn't trigger his death scene.

Smilge

I just tested it and Haz said "That is all I can do for you." and leaves when all the Grimwarders die. He does not speak to me when I try to initiate dialog early. Are you using any mods?

Emptiness

No mods.

I'm not sure what to say about this one. I've just tried 10 times to replicate and now Haz keeps dying. This time he seems to charge in and attack, whereas in my testing before I reported the problem he was standing in place. So, all I can conclude is that I encountered some sort of very rare situation the exact nature of which I do not understand. Since this seem to be both very rare and inconsequential, there's probably no point in trying to fix it.

Emptiness

@Gate70: Okay, I have managed to work out a reliable way to repeat the issue I reported using the save I attached to the original post. I don't think this is what I was doing originally, but that may be mind fog at work. Ignore the steps to repeat I originally gave; load the save and follow these steps:

1) Select Seromina and switch her to using Poisoned Throwing Dagger (F3).
2) Select Sinjin and move him north along the very left edge of the bridge and then corridor, up to the point where the first Grimwarder and Lassal are both visible. (This will cause the Grimwarder to move to attack and Lassal to trigger his conversation. Note that at this point Haz will not yet have triggered his conversation.)
3) Attack the Grimwarder with the five ranged party members (all except Sinjin) as it moves to attack Haz. Note that the Grimwarder moves up to Haz but does not actually attack him, and so does not trigger his death script. (At some point Haz's dialog (to send the Golem to open the second set of doors) will trigger. It doesn't seem to matter when this happens; the Grimwarder doesn't attack. My guess is that it needs for Haz's dialog to trigger before it becomes hostile in order to get proper "permission" to attack Haz, probably to make sure that Haz's dialog can't be prevented (which would mean the Golem was not dispatched and the second set of doors could never be opened).)
4) Once the first Grimwarder is dead and the Golem has opened the doors and started attacking one of the Grimwarders that are beyond visual range (which will mean that they are focused on attacking the Golem), it is safe to attack with the entire party. Select them all and move north, attacking the nearest living Grimwarder until they are all dead. (The Grimwarders and Haz never enter visual range of one another, and so Haz does not rush forward to attack and the Grimwarders do not switch from their current target and move to attack him.)
5) Once all four Grimwarders are dead, select a character and speak to Haz. This will then trigger his death script.

The key here seems to be triggering Lassal's conversation and aggression from the first Grimwarder before Haz's conversation is triggered. I was able to achieve similar results by having Lady in Black hide and move alone past Haz to trigger Lassal and fight the Grimwardens. One of the Grimwardens moves to attack Haz, but never actually executes an attack.

It might be possible to solve this by increasing Haz's sensitivity to the presence of player characters, such that he will dispatch his Golem and enter a state where he is ready to die well before any character (hidden or not) will be within visible range of Lassal or any of the Grimwarders. (I say might because I'm totally ignorant of the way the game handles creating such triggered events and the options available for adjusting the trigger on Haz's conversation.)