I'd really like to upgrade my Blade followers gear with tempered and enchanted versions, but they wont equip anything that's inherently less or equal to their default Blade gear's value.

I've tried looking for mods and console commands to either remove their armor (making them naked) then putting it back on when I'm done, or alternatively have the issue fixed where they can wear what ever you want them to, or at least based on current value and not base.

Anyone know of any?

Give them inherently better armor?

There is no permanent workaround to this issue without mods. With the console, you can use

removeallitems

, which will leave them unarmed and in their skivvies but their default loadout will return when you enter a new cell. I can't say for sure but I believe followers equip the item with the highest monetary value. Except for bows, that is. They seem to love their default bows.

For the Fallout games I used - OpenTeammateContainer 1

The way that would work is that you get next to the NPC who's inventory you want to see and then go into the console mode. Once the console is open you click on that NPC and type in the command. It would open their inventory as if they were your companion and you could take or give anything you wanted. Not sure if that works on this newer game engine but maybe it's worth a try.

Ok after looking it seems they changed the command to - openactorcontainer 1 where the 1 could also be a 2, 3, or 4 dependant on how the NPC is related to you in some fashion that didn't really make sense.

yeah, I get what you are trying to say. openactocontainer does work as if they were your follower, but like your follower, any hidden gear is still hidden. I wish there was a command that would let you access even the hidden stuff.

I just had an idea though. If I make a custom blades gear set in the Creation Kit, and manually set the value to just 1 gold higher than the original blades gear, any followers should equip that over the invisible gear. Not a true fix, but it'll do in a pinch

On pc you have the http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8530
this solves the problem pretty well, also the bow bug.

Zaria, you my dear are made of win.

thank you