Invisible friend concerns

IFs are kind of a love 'em or hate 'em kind of thing. I belong in the second category. The only problems I personally have had with them is how to get rid of them without causing other game problems. Other than that, I've heard people complain about them getting in the way, following their sim to the bathroom, that kind of thing. Toddlers start playing with them, which is kind of cute initially, but then, the IFs start to grow and develop, so they're moving around and stuff, and the bigger they get, the creepier they become IMO. One cool thing about them is they can be turned real with a potion your sim child can make with the chemistry table.

The Carl's guide to IFs: https://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/generations/imaginaryfriend.php

I only just starting letting my toddlers grow up with their Imaginary Friends. I have a bunch of kids now that have IF's that I am not planning on turning real. They are kind of creepy but different. I haven't gotten any past the child stage yet, I usually play with aging off. Haven't noticed any problems with them.

Thanks for the link @suzses. I read through it and didn't see any major problems mentioned.

* Do IF's count in the household limit?
* Can they go away eventually (such as a RL child's imaginary friend usually goes away)?

Side note: I thought it was a tad bit creepy that it showed up in the infants crib. However I do love being surprised by things while playing.

Good question about household limit, and I don't know the answer.

As for going away, I know they don't go away if they haven't "grown up." They'll stay in a sim's inventory forever, but the sim stops taking them out to play with them by the time they're teens. The only ones I ever allowed to develop, I also turned real, and I only ever did that in one household years ago, so those obviously didn't go away. I moved them out of the house eventually.

I know @Charlottesmom has some experience with them. Maybe she'll come by with some helpful info.

IFs do not add to the household size while they are still in doll form and only the child can interact with them. They do if an attempt is made to convert them to real, then they would become a real sim like any other except with an interesting history and an unusual occult state. So there would have to be room in the household to withstand the conversion; mods of course can help that if the built-in cap of 8 sims per household is too limiting.

By the way, the "I" in IF stands for Imaginary, not Invisible. ;)

"igazor;c-16627369" wrote:
IFs do not add to the household size while they are still in doll form and only the child can interact with them. They do if an attempt is made to convert them to real, then they would become a real sim like any other except with an interesting history and an unusual occult state. So there would have to be room in the household to withstand the conversion; mods of course can help that if the built-in cap of 8 sims per household is too limiting.

By the way, the "I" in IF stands for Imaginary, not Invisible. ;)

My bad! I know they are "imaginary", slip of the fingers!

@igazor I have mods that allow me to have more than 8 sims in a household and I tried to turn an IF real in a household with more than 8 sims in it and it failed each time. Then I took her and her owner to a different house with no others in the household and it worked first attempt.

After each failure the sim got the potion back again so she didn't have to keep making or obtaining new potions. This was a couple of years ago though so if the mod has changed since then it might work now.

@Karritz - The mod that is supposed to unlock IF conversions on full households is NRaas Mover. Not everyone has that one. Many years ago it was switched to Mover from a mod we can't mention, which was intended to help prevent confusion rather than add to it.

But regardless, splitting the household apart before the conversion and then putting it back together again works too.

Thanks @igazor. I have that mod and several others that all work together to made the process work. Such as Portrait Panel - not sure of the whole list and what each one does. I still couldn't transform the IF into a real sim until I moved her out to a smaller household.

Note: I see that this conversation got moved to the Expansion Pack section of the forums. I got the entire set with all EPs all at the same time. I have absolutely no idea where I should post issues as i don't know what EP they belong to. So thanks to the mod that moved it for me!