What could be causing crashes when my follower uses her conjuration spell?

[James72]

I finally got the custom follower mod I wanted working, but now my game crashes whenever she tries to use her unique conjuration spell in combat. I’ve checked that all the required assets are in the right folders and my load order seems correct for her master file.

[PaisleyPJ]

Yeah that sounds rough. I ran into something similar where a custom spell crashed the game as soon as combat started. It turned out the conjuration spell was referencing a MagicEffect that wasn’t included in the mod package, so the engine tried to load nothing and crashed. I rebuilt the spell so the effect and projectile all lived in the same mod file, and swapped in a simple placeholder effect to test. After that, the crash stopped when she cast and I could retarget the effect later.

[Jeffrey83]

I’d strip it down to basics and test in a clean install. Disable every mod except the follower and her master. Try casting the spell a few times in a row. If it still crashes, the issue is in the mod or its scripts; if not, it’s a conflict with another asset elsewhere.

[Layla_W]

I also keep a blunt habit of turning on Papyrus logging for a while. Then I check the crash time and see if it points to a script, and that usually tells me where to poke. If the log mentions a missing texture or mesh, that tells me there’s an asset path wrong somewhere.

[Chloe_H]

Are you seeing any error message in the Papyrus log when it crashes?