Tactics

Tactics are condition-action rules, evaluated every 0.5s (a “tick”) for the player and followers for which they are enabled.

The list is evaluated top-down. When a condition is met, the corresponding actions are tried. If none can be executed, evaluation moves to the next rule in the same tick. See Unavailable.

The Tactics tab runs in combat, including Combat start and Combat end rules. Idle Tactics runs out of combat. Each character has both lists; add a rule to both if you want it in both.

Player tactics

The player’s page has the same rule editor. Use it to drink potions, cast spells, use powers and shouts, or change equipment automatically.

The player aims their own spells and blows. Attack is not offered; Power Attack, Bash, and Power Bash are. Equip actions last until you or another rule replace the item; they do not pin it.

Automatic casts use your hands and normal casting animations. Tactics pause during dialogue, while mounted, swimming, using furniture, knocked down, in a kill move or beast form, or when fighting controls are disabled.

Idle Tactics

Use Idle Tactics to maintain buffs, heal after a fight, cure diseases, or change equipment out of combat.

For example, IF Self: Any THEN Self: Cast Oakflesh recasts the spell when its effect expires. Use Self: Diseased to trigger a cure, or a health percentage condition to heal.

Combat-only choices are omitted: enemy conditions and targets, Combat start, Combat end, Hit by, Fleeing, Attacker, attacks, and bashes.

Combat end actions finish before idle rules begin. When combat starts, any remaining actions in the idle sequence are dropped.

Conditions

To set a condition, first select a target by clicking on the condition cell:

• Self is the character whose tactics you are editing.
• Player is the player.
• Follower is a specific follower, chosen by name.
• Ally is another party member: the player or a follower. In the player’s rules, it means a follower.
• Enemy is any NPC hostile to the player.
• Corpse is a dead body in the area.

Then select a condition:

Conditions explained

Most conditions are self-explanatory. A few are worth highlighting.

Combat start is checked the first tick after combat begins. Combat start rules are checked first, before other rules. If there are multiple Combat start rules, their actions are concatenated in rule order.

Combat end is checked the first tick after combat ends, before idle rules. If there are multiple Combat end rules, their actions are concatenated in rule order.

Attacks with is the kind of attack the target uses (e.g. Melee or Magic, Fire or Frost).

Hit by is the kind of attack the target is being hit by.

Armor is shown as percent of damage reduction, rather than absolute values.

Effect is met while the named effect is active on the target, whatever applied it. The list offers lasting effects available from the whole party’s potions, food, spells, scrolls, powers, and shouts, including toggle powers. Negate it to act while the effect is absent.

Rallied, Calmed, Feared, and Frenzied detect active illusion influences on the target. For example, use a negated Calmed condition to avoid trying to calm an already calmed enemy.

Time checks the part of the day: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, or Night. It is offered in idle tactics. The day is divided by the sun as the game’s climate times it: morning from sunrise to noon, afternoon until sunset begins, evening through sunset, and night after it. In the unmodified game that is 5:30, 12:00, 16:00, and 20:30; weather mods may move sunrise and sunset. Hover over a part of the day to see its hours in your game.

Location checks where the target is: home, interior or exterior, a hold, or a type of building, dungeon, ruin, or settlement. It is offered in idle tactics; for example, use Self: Location → Home to change equipment at home. Place types follow the game’s location tags, including parent locations; a dungeon or mine filed under a town is not in the settlement.

Weather checks the weather over the target: Pleasant, Cloudy, Rain, or Snow, the game’s own weather classes. It is offered in idle tactics, and only outdoors: indoors none of them is met, whatever the weather outside. Pleasant includes partly cloudy days; Cloudy is fog and overcast; Rain and Snow are met while it is falling, and Snow includes Solstheim’s ash storms.

Weapon → Bound → Active means a conjured weapon is in either hand; None means neither hand holds one.

Arrows → None / Available checks whether the character carries arrows or bolts, whether equipped or not. It is offered for Self.

Bleeding means an active bleeding damage effect; Bleeding out means the character is down. Burning, Frostbitten, and Shocked detect damage affecting the target, not a cloak they wear.

Weapon → Charge needed is met when an enchanted weapon in hand has three or fewer uses left.

Negation

A condition can be negated by checking the NOT column.

Negation applies to each target the condition looks at. Enemy NOT Type: Undead matches an enemy that is not undead, and an action aimed at Enemy goes at that one. When several match, the nearest is picked. To express “no enemy is undead”, order the rules instead: the rule for the undead first, a catch-all below it.

Any, Combat start, Combat end, the group extremes (e.g. Health lowest), and Corpse: None cannot be negated.

Actions

Actions, like conditions, first require a target:

Ally, Enemy, and Corpse are the one the condition matched. Enemy under a condition not about an enemy is whoever the character is fighting, or else the nearest enemy. Attacker is whoever last hit the condition’s target.

Then an action:

Actions are contextual. A follower without potions in their inventory will not see a Potion action. A spell that targets Self will not show up under Cast for Enemy.

Long menus are grouped: spells and scrolls by magic school, weapons by type, with shields among them, and armor by the part of the body its Unequip names. Anything that fits no group is under Other. Short lists, lists that would all fall under one group, powers, shouts, and arrows remain flat lists.

Actions respect gameplay rules. A follower who doesn’t meet the skill requirement to cast a spell cannot equip it. Per the base game, this limitation does not apply to the player.

Equip actions override equipment settings during combat. If a follower has an Iron Dagger pinned to their right hand, but an action says to equip a Steel Sword, the action takes precedence for the duration of combat. Pins and bans are restored after combat.

Equip actions effectively pin during combat. An action that equips e.g. a Steel Sword in the right hand prevents the AI from equipping something else there. Only another rule can change the equipment.

For followers, idle equip actions also create pins. Those pins become the equipment restored after the next fight. Player equip actions are ordinary equips and never create pins.

Actions explained

Most actions are self-explanatory. A few are worth highlighting.

The Any buff action for Potion picks a random potion that adds or improves a buff, e.g. Fortify Conjuration. An alchemy effect already active at equal or greater magnitude does not count as an improvement.

A named potion or food is skipped while its effects would add nothing, including when its lasting effects are already covered by alchemy of equal or greater strength. Items whose effects cannot apply to the character are skipped too.

Spells, scrolls, powers, and shouts check whether their effects can apply to the target. A lasting cast waits while that spell is already active there; dual casting does not replace its own single cast, and a scroll and a spell are checked separately. Area effects consider only targets within each effect’s reach. Reanimation checks whether the particular corpse can be raised, including its level and the caster’s perks.

For potions, food, and ingredients, Strongest and Weakest choose by effect. Weakest keeps stronger items in reserve: if the weakest item’s effect is already covered, it waits instead of consuming a stronger one. Strongest can replace a weaker active effect.

The Charge action for enchanted weapons has two policies. Strongest picks the largest gem that doesn’t overfill the weapon, or the smallest carried if every gem would. Weakest picks the smallest gem carried, even if it overfills.

Unequip takes off what is currently worn in the chosen hand, or for armor the chosen part of the body, whether pinned or not. The follower’s AI can equip something there again afterward. For weapons and spells, Unequip offers All, Right and Left, All being both hands. Armor’s parts are All, Head, Body, Hands, Feet, Amulet, Ring, Cloak and Backpack; Head covers helmets, hoods, masks and circlets alike. Cloak is slot 46 and Backpack slot 47, the slots the Anniversary Edition’s cloaks and backpacks use, and most cloak mods use 46 too. All leaves a shield on: it is unequipped from the left hand under Weapon. Armor on a slot a mod adds comes off only with All.

Dual casting and power bashing

Under Settings → Requirements, two switches control whether followers need perks for these actions:

• Require Dual Casting perks: requires the spell school’s Dual Casting perk for Dual Cast.
• Require Power Bash perk: requires the Block tree’s Power Bash perk for Power Bash.

Both switches are off by default, so followers can use these actions without the corresponding perks. Turning a requirement on hides the action for followers who lack the perk and makes existing actions that require it unavailable.

A follower is never offered a spell above their skill in its school: their own AI would never cast it, so a rule or a pin on it would leave them doing nothing.

These switches apply to all followers and are saved with the game.

The player always needs the corresponding perks for Dual Cast and Power Bash, regardless of these switches, and can cast any spell they know at any skill.

Multiple Actions

More than one action is allowed for a rule.

Actions are taken in order, one per tick. A rule with 4 actions will occupy the next 4 ticks, unless an action is skipped because it cannot be executed, in which case the next action is tried in the same tick.

Cooldowns

An action that fires goes on cooldown for its target: about 3s for potions, food, poisons, and soul gems; 2s for casts, shouts, and attacks; 1s for equips. The same action on the same target is blocked meanwhile, whichever rule asks. Cooldowns reset when combat starts.

Enabling / Disabling

Whole party

Enable tactics for party in Settings controls both lists for the player and all followers.

Per character

The Enabled switch controls the current list for that character. Combat and idle tactics can be enabled independently.

Clicking the On header toggles all rules in the current list.

This is useful for testing a particular rule, for example.

Per tactic

A rule can be also be individually toggled on / off. Disabled rules are not considered during evaluation.

Unavailable

A rule whose condition or action is invalid is unavailable. For example, a condition set for a follower who has been dismissed, or an action to drink a potion that’s no longer in the inventory.

If there are multiple actions for a rule, the rule is unavailable if all actions are invalid. If only some actions are invalid, the invalid ones are skipped.

An action that cannot be done at the moment is also greyed, and its hover says why: not enough magicka for the spell, a shout still recovering, a greater power already used today, an action used too recently. This is read when the page is built, so it shows the state at the moment the panel was opened. An action that is simply already in effect, a buff still running or nothing to unequip, is not greyed: that is what the rule waits on.

Temporarily unavailable rules remain editable. You can change their conditions and actions without waiting for magicka or cooldowns to recover. Powers have their own availability checks and do not wait for shout recovery.

Reordering rules

Rules run from top to bottom, so put higher-priority rules first. Drag a rule by its number and drop it at the insertion line, or use the arrows in the Order column to move it one place.