Morrowind talk:Reynel Uvirith

Attacking on sight

Well, of course she does. That's kind of the point. If you are a member of either Hlaalu or Redoran, and you journey to Tel Uvirith once you have progressed sufficiently far along the relevant 'build a stronghold' questline for Reynel to appear, she will attack you. Her appearance may even be tied to you getting the relevant 'kill Reynel Uvirith' quest. You certainly can't encounter her if you are not a member of one of the other two Great Houses, at least not without any mods. Ditto for Raynasa Rethan and Banden Indarys. --Gaebrial 05:58, 26 January 2009 (EST)

I appreciate that, but I've certainly encountered Raynasa Rethan without her attacking me immediately. I can't remember about the other two. So the question remains: does Reynel Uvirith always attack on sight? Is it disposition related?

All three of the stronghold people have a Fight value of 90. This means, that yes, they will attack on sight. If you're a member of their House, of course, they won't appear. As for disposition, I believe it only works if Disposition > Fight, and they all start at 50, which is < 90. The only way you could increase their disposition would involve talking to them, which is not easy, since they will, as we have established, attack you on sight. You could cast Calm on them, then talk to them and Bribe or otherwise persuade your way into their good favors, but there'd be no point, because then you couldn't complete the related quests and move onto the next ones. It's possible that Raynasa Rethan didn't attack at first because she didn't see you - were you using Chameleon or Invisibility of some sort? Another possibility is that you used the trick to join both House Hlaalu and one of the other Houses - and your reputation with the Hlaalu was high enough that it superceded her instinct to attack on sight - but this is a bit of a loophole that shouldn't happen under normal circumstances. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 11:07, 26 January 2009 (EST)

Thanks Lurlock (you beat me to it ;-) ). Another possibility is that Rpeh had a high enough reputation that Raynasa's disposition was adjusted upwards to higher than 90 - I don't know the full details, but after completing the Main Quest and a number of guild/faction questlines, most people tend to have a disposition towards you approaching 100. --Gaebrial 12:13, 26 January 2009 (EST)

Yes I saw the Fight values, which is why I was a bit surprised that at least two people have not been attacked on sight. I don't believe I'd finished the main quest when I had my encounter, but certainly wasn't invisible or chameleoned. In any case, back to the article. If the only reason Reynel attacks is due to the usual Fight/Disposition formula, the comment should come off after all. I had been wondering if there was any special scripting that caused her to attack. If that's not the case it's not worth mentioning - especially since it isn't always true. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 12:28, 26 January 2009 (EST)

All three of them have a nearly-identical script that does nothing but make them disappear if you're in their House. I also did a text-search for each of the names, and no dialogue or script related to any of them does anything to make them fight or not fight. So I'd say it must be some combination of reputation and disposition that causes it. Or perhaps the stealth thing again - maybe it's not just Chameleon and Invisibility, but your Sneak skill might have something to do with it, though I think that only applies if you're actually sneaking, but I'm not sure. However, if it is indeed the rep/disp effect, then it would apply to almost every hostile NPC in the game. The vast majority of hostile NPCs and creatures have their Fight set to 90. There's a much smaller number with a Fight of 100. One other thing that might explain it is their Flee and Hello values - 20 and 30 respectively for these three. I think the usual values for most hostiles is 0. Of course, those would cause them to either run away or greet you instead. At any rate, I don't think anything is going on with these three people that isn't also true of almost all hostile NPCs everywhere. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:06, 26 January 2009 (EST)

Actually, just checked my charts, and I'm wrong - the most common Flee and Hello values for hostiles is 30 each. So these guys at 20 Flee are actually lower than average, which doesn't really make a lot of sense. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:14, 26 January 2009 (EST)

I suppose the lower flee setting is to make sure they fight you rather than fleeing (but why not set it to 0 in that case?).

On a related subject, the "Morrowind Scripting for Dummies" document by GhanBuriGhan et al (I have the 8th edition) contains a few details on the calculation of whether an NPC will attack you. Do you think it's worth adding this info to somewhere like the Disposition page? --Gaebrial 02:53, 27 January 2009 (EST)