Followers vs Followers
A fighting pit for your own followers. - BETA
You've spent a hundred hours with your followers. Now find out who's the best of them.A fighting pit for your own followers. - BETA
Followers vs Followers is a fighting pit in the spirit of Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War. You sign your followers into your pit, pick your line, and watch them fight from the royal box of your own Coliseum. Copies of them fight on the sand, so the real ones are never touched. Every fighter starts at level 1 and gets built up one fight at a time. When a fighter dies in the pit, they're gone.
Why you'll want it
- Your own people fight. Sign your followers, and with Warband or Estates of Skyrim installed, your band and your estate people too. A copy of them fights. The real one stays exactly as they were.
- Fights of every size. From 1 v 1 up to 30 v 30, with a clock on every fight so every match ends.
- They grow. Pit levels, gear in five tiers, vanilla spells, 9 pit perks, strengths and weaknesses, training, rarity on win streaks, blood brothers and scars.
- A world of owners. Six rival houses run fights of their own, book matches against you, make offers on your fighters and fold when you beat them too often.
- Fights That Matter. Six written fights up a ladder, each with a line you can scout and a counter to find, gold and a unique strength for whoever lives.
- Fight your friends. Export your pit to a file and fight a friend's pit in your own Coliseum.
- The Blood Oath. Swear a follower and their fight pays more. If their fighter dies, the real follower dies too. Only if you choose it.
Getting started
- Open THE PITS from the Tab menu, or use the lesser power The Pits. Nothing to unlock, no quest to find.
- Sign a follower into your pit. The list shows who's with you, where each person is and what they cost.
- Pick a fight from the Board, choose your line and pay the entry fee. Or press Send the strongest to fill the line.
- Go to the arena from the menu. You land in the royal box in front of the throne, with the sand below you. When you're done, Take me back returns you to where you were.
- Both lines are set out on the sand facing each other and woken together. You watch from the royal box, out of harm's way.
- Health bars for both lines show the whole time. Your line on the left, theirs on the right.
- Any real follower who walks into the arena with you is sent up to the box beside you, so only the fighters fight.
- The clock runs 3 minutes, a little longer for big fights. Set it in the MCM, from 1 to 10 minutes.
- The winners take the purse. A big fight pays more, a crowd adds to it, and you can bet on your own fight or on the houses' matches.
- A fighter who falls is dead. Their name stays on your record. Reload if you want: that's your call, and the game never says a word about it.
- An announcer calls the big moments: the opening, first blood, the last one standing, the win and the loss. Turn him off in the MCM if you'd rather watch in quiet.
- Every fighter starts at pit level 1, whoever they are outside.
- Strengths and weaknesses that really do something: Finds the Gap, Frost-touched, Shock-touched, Weak to Fire, Glass Jaw and more.
- Buy gear in five tiers, give them vanilla spells, and spend a perk point every two levels on our own pit perks.
- Train them: drill out a weakness or train a new strength. It costs gold and two days' rest, and it can fail.
- Win streaks make them Blooded, then Legendary, with more strength slots. Five fights won side by side make two fighters blood brothers: stronger together, enraged if one falls.
- Survive a lost fight and they may come out with a scar: a wound, a lasting weakness, or a grudge against the rival who did it.
- Sell them, let them go, or rent them out for 3 days.
- Six houses, each with its own style that runs through their whole line. They fight among themselves every day, grow rich, and level their fighters.
- A rival who kills one of yours becomes a named champion, stronger for it, and comes back until you beat them. A grudge puts a challenge on the Board until you win it.
- Beat a house too often and it folds. A new house takes its seat, its bookings, and its fighters go to auction in the market.
- Once your fighters reach level 3, houses make offers for them.
- Every few wins, a Fight That Matters lights up on the Board. It waits until you're ready.
- Scout it to see their whole line. What you paid to learn stays, even if you lose and it comes back.
- Each one pays gold and a unique strength to the fighters who live. Past the sixth, the last one comes back harder.
- Export your pit to My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\FollowersVsFollowers\Pits and send it to a friend. Drop a friend's file in Challengers and fight their best one on one, or their whole pit. No fee and no purse, but your fighters can still die.
- Every challenge gives you a result card you can copy and post in the Discord.
- The Pits menu: the Board, your fighters, the market and its chests, the Fights That Matter ladder, files and the leaderboard.
- The Coliseum, our own arena, with the royal box, lit braziers and its own walking room on the sand.
- Everything above: signing, fights from 1 v 1 to 30 v 30, the houses, the Oath, betting, pit files and the announcer.
- Settings in the MCM (Pit Settings): fight length, the announcer on or off, and a button that gives The Pits power back.
Installation
Built and played in a Nolvus Awakening load order. Nolvus users: install it like any other mod.
Install with your mod manager. The plugin is ESL-flagged, so it doesn't use a load order slot. Safe to install mid-game: load your save and open THE PITS from the Tab menu or the power. Needs SKSE, Address Library, powerofthree's Papyrus Extender, MCM Helper and Prisma UI. Tween Menu Overhaul is optional, for THE PITS in the Tab menu.
Compatibility
- Built for Skyrim SE and AE. The beta has been played on 1.5.97. Not for VR.
- Works on its own. With Warband, a win in the pits adds to your band's renown, and your band can be signed. With Estates of Skyrim, a share of every purse can go to an estate's treasury, and your estate people can be signed. Neither is needed.
- Follower frameworks are fine: the copies aren't followers, and your real followers are never changed.
- The Coliseum is its own place, so it doesn't touch any city or worldspace.
Nothing runs while you're out of the pits. The fight's work is done in the mod's own SKSE plugin, only during a fight, and every fighter is cleared from the sand when it ends.
Uninstalling
This is a scripted mod with an SKSE plugin. Leave the Coliseum and finish any fight before you remove it. Don't remove it mid-playthrough.
Known limits
- This is a beta. Tell me in the posts if anything's off and I'll fix it fast. Screenshots and Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\SKSE\FollowersVsFollowers.log help the most.
- Very big fights take a little while to set out, and how they run depends on your PC.
- Warband members can be signed, but can't swear the Blood Oath yet. Essential and quest followers can't swear it either.
- Nobody speaks for the pits yet: the menu is your steward for now.
- Warband - a follower framework and party manager in one.
- Estates of Skyrim - every home you own becomes a living estate.
- Octavia - a fully voiced shield-sister follower.
- Nadira - a voiced mercenary captain who commands your band.
- Cassia - a voiced huntress follower with her own quest.
- Oskar - a voiced blacksmith follower who works at his forge.
- Hjertesten Hall - Extra Jobs and Features - 20+ jobs, a farm economy, raids and wars.
Credits
The Pits menu runs on Prisma UI by StarkMP: please endorse it. Thanks to the SKSE team, meh321 for Address Library, powerofthree for Papyrus Extender, Parapets for MCM Helper, JPSteel2 for Tween Menu Overhaul, and CommonLibSSE-NG (CharmedBaryon), spdlog and nlohmann json, used in the mod's SKSE plugin. Built with houseCARL and DevBench.
About AI use
This mod was built with the help of an AI coding assistant (the SKSE plugin, the scripts and the menu), and the announcer's voice is AI-made. I play it in my own game and fix reports fast, so tell me in the posts if anything's off.