How can I fix a crash when adding custom follower mod with skeleton conflict?

[Jeffrey_S]

I’ve been trying to get a custom follower mod to work with my existing load order, but every time I try to add them, my game crashes on the character selection screen. I’m not sure if it’s a skeleton conflict or something else entirely.

[Noah32]

Yep I ran into that too. added a custom follower and the game would crash on the character select screen. turned out it was a load order conflict with another mod that touched actors. I moved the follower later in the load order and kept everything else the same, and it loaded—though I noticed some side effects I hadn’t expected.

[Jerry_R]

Could be a skeleton thing or an animation asset mismatch. I once had a crash when two mods tried to replace the same skeleton rig. I disabled one of them and the crash vanished, but I can't be sure that's your exact case.

[Jack_W]

Do you know if the follower mod is compatible with your current patch level? I’ve seen crashes happen when a mod expects a different game version or a missing patch.

[RobertS]

I once tried to run with just base game plus the follower and a minimal set of other mods, and the crash still happened. I checked a few error logs, they pointed at the character menu code, but I still wasn’t sure what to fix.