I know some people like to kill, rob, loot npcs inventory, but Elmo? Hiring him and paying 200gp, then looting his inventory and then dismissing him is pretty dumb. It appears his inventory is locked to prevent that but when time comes to upgrade armor, shield,weapon he has to be given new stuff. You can't move anything to a crafter. He needs a boost in strength to keep from being encumbered. Just curious.
If you use the radial menu to talk to him, I believe you can either buy his items from him (and give him new ones) or he allows you to mess with his inventory.
By the way, has any other NPC been given this treatment? From what I've seen, others just give away their equipment freely. At least, that's the case for Furnok (he has a ring of Invisibility and a Magic Dagger) and Serena (also got a ring of Invis). Also, many NPCs still have the 'hang on to your equipment' line. As far as I know, it's completely redundant given that NPCs don't sell their equipment - does anyone see any reason it should stay?
According to Ted, it was done for Elmo (drunk and sober), Zert, Kobort, Ronald, Otis, Thrommel, and Zaxis. I think that it should be done for everybody (also Ted's intention, I think), and might even go so far as to suggest that all of everybody's gear be made non-transferable initially, even leather boots and all that. It's theirs, after all, and an across-the-board implementation would probably be easier than picking and choosing (just a lot of cut and paste). I see no reason for the 'hang onto your equipment' lines to stay, personally.
No doubt the humble_npc exploit was severly abused. You can still take Fruella's cleaver and do her in one way or another. Pretty sleazy.
I believe the way it works (it's already been on the books for the NPCs listed above since 5.7, I think) is that eventually they may sell you their starting equipment and then you can re-outfit them, but they won't ever part with items that define them (e.g. Elmo's axe, I think, Thrommel's sword ...) or magical gear. This is intended to promote the impression of their autonomy. Also, it's delayed to create the impression that they have to get to know you before you can manage all their stuff (more autonomy) and so that you don't recruit them and just clean them out and dump them, which an autonomous person would never allow. The ultimate intent is to improve upon the original implementation (by using the Humble NPCs mod, essentially) while still allowing them to be NPCs instead of PCs that masquerade as NPCs.
Has 5.9.3 been released yet or an ETA disclosed? I was wondering about any way the stuff that Elmo has can be tagged to be recognized by Otis. It says in the module that he will come after anyone who does his little brother in - perhaps a la Skole and goons.
Yeah, thanks for fixing the others Gaear. For the record, the thinking behind this was to stop people looting NPCs but not stop them personalising them with a uniform look, or ditching all the girls' clothes, or removing surplus to prevent encumbrance, or whatever. But its not a big deal. Agreed, for what its worth. Meant to get rid of those lines myself.
