At high levels, my steward's and housecarl's armor doesn't cut it. I gave them new ones, but when they leave my service, they revert to their original gear. Please allow us the option to keep armor and weapons permanently equipped on our followrs/housecarls/stewards.

...Why? They're not following you and so you cannot use their combat prowess; they will not be in combat and so do not need new armors.

Weapons that surpass the quality of their originals will always be equipped regardless of whether they follow or not.

Why? because its annoying and the current vanilla method svcks.

Dragon age was superior when it came to managing followers and followers equipment. Thankfully there are a couple pretty solid mods out there for PC that allows you to manage their equipment a little better. Lets not forget the mighty hunting bow bug!

I accidentally posted this in the wrong forum, but here is the reason:

I want my steward and housecarl to be ready when a high level dragon attacks my house. If they will keep the buffed gear I made them on, they will be fine. If not, Lydia is toast against an Elder Dragon.

Yeah with hearthfire your steward always hangs around outside during the day.

They still have to make it home safely, do they not?

Not if you dismiss them at home. Many are already protected even when not following you. And they can't get into trouble if you're not in the same area as them.

I'm playing on the xbox360 and have yet to get any follower to remain equipped. Some will just not allow it at all. I did manage to equip a mage follower with Dragonbone armor though.

I dont understand why Beth went for followers reverting back to original gear, in the last two fallout games your followers keep wearing the new gear you give them when dismissed so it's not like this is something outta the blue. Beth wanted your followers to wear their crap when not with your character and I for one can't see any advantage to that, also how about an option to change our spouse's gear please......

I completely agree. I've crafted some superior armor for certain followers, only to have them un-equip it coming out of a load screen. It's bothersome to have to constantly enter into their dialog and force them to re-equip your obviously superior gear. I also think that once they become followers you should be able to access all of their gear. As it is I can't access their base armor . If Aela wants to keep wearing her base armor then fine by me, but at least allow me to improve and then enchant the damn thing.

Also, if I may add one more thing, sometimes its just fun to play 'dress up'.

Which is great and all, but the addition of Hearthfire makes your wife stand outside during the day. When you fast travel back, a Legendary Dragon might decide to make your wife into a snack. But even then, it would be nice if my wife wore clothing around the house, and something protective outside. But that's just me.

It makes for a more polished game is why, doesn't matter that they wont actually be doing anything when you are not in the area, but none the less, they should keep on the armor. When I come home, I want to see them dressed the same as when I left.. sure it pops on once you get outside a city, but.. with the random Vampire attacks on the citys, they need to be prepared for combat at all times.

Just as I want to see Mjoll strutting around riften in her new expensive Daedric armor after we go out adventuring and I dismiss her. No real purpose to it other then the whole immersion factor.. that and Riften of all the holds is the only one I've seen regular attacks on. She of all needs to be prepared at all times. The house-carls have it easy.. especially Lydia.. siting 24/7 up in my room eating.. w/e Lydia.. I'll take Spunky Jordis over your underwhelming butt anyday.

The bow bug needs fixed too... unless of course if you happened to change out their magical unlimited arrow basic hunters bow to something else, then they would actually consume arrows, then i say leave it as it is lol. I would prefer to have an arrow dispenser right there running along with me over one that uses them.

The system for followers gear is deeply flawed, like in fallout 3 follower has a set of default gear they use if they don't have anything better. However as you say they revert to default gear then not follows even if they have better gear again in Fallout 3 they returned to their own place so it makes some sense, wearing clothes not power armor in an bar, however housecarls live in your house and is already in armor.
Worse they prefer the default hunting bow over the daeric you give them, same issue with shields.

I agree I hate how Sven walks around naked now every time I release him...Where did I put his original cloths where!

this is so stupid that followers dont keep better armor they do it with weapons it just dose on make scene to me, but i dont thing bethesda will ever fix this its already been almost a year since game came out

On pc it's mods who solves it, however it took some time before they worked well so it's not straight forward.

Like most issues, I have with this game, I can find mods to remedy these oversights. UFO, which you can find on nexus, is one such mod that fixes the follower equipment issues. Honestly if not for the PC mods out there I would not have played this TES installment past 2011. The bugs fixes alone gave this game another 6 months of replayability, stamping out hours of frustration that would have otherwise turned me away from this and on to another game. Not to mention all the content mods, house mods, quest mods etc that extend the life of this game. I've put 500 hrs now into Skyrim (according to steam) since it was released 11/11/11. Can't thank the modding community enough, but I also can't help but feel bad for anyone who has to endure this bug-fest on a console.

Don't just do this, the whole follower thing needs sorting IMO.

Remove all hidden items, stop respawning the hidden items to followers. Who the hell cares if someone in a single player game strips their follower naked? All I want it for is to choose specifically which weapon and armor they wear.

Currently followers have some messed up AI where they often favor their regular hunting bow and iron arrows to any bow/arrow you give them. Their bow and arrows are hidden and can't be removed, don't understand why they've done this. All it does is create bugs like the carry capacity bug where they lose their hidden armor in weight every time you hire them.

I'd also like to restrict my followers to using ranged attacks only, it's such a simple fix, an option for close or ranged attacks. Just like fallout.

I doubt the game considers this something that's broken, and it seems like a deliberate feature of the game to me. Followers keep what you give them, but unequip it when they are not following, just as anybody takes off their combat gear when they are off duty. I've seen followers under attack instantly equip what they needed from their inventory, so for some people it may be this that's broken, not that they take their gear off in the first place.

I guess they used the fallout 3 code without thinking of the two hand setup in Skyrim, crossbows shows another fallout related bug, switch from crossbow to bow and you auto equip the worst arrows falmer or forsworn arrows then iron. For ammo in fallout you had standard and special ammo so you wanted to use the standard as default, you does not want to use some random falmer arrows then you have lots of better.

Just another reason I may make the jump to PC, specifically for mods that fix issues like this.

A bit off topic, but if you equip them with stat enhancing gear, such as Health Regen, Health point increase, do those increases and enhancements actually get applied to the follower wearing them?

Some enchantments work on followers, and others do not. Fortifying any magicka school, any melee skill or Carry Capacity all do not work on followers. Fortifying their Health, Magicka and Stamina works, and also all the Resists and Light or Heavy Armor. An absolute must I find for a follower is a self enchanted Muffle effect, which is the only way to apply a permanent 100% Muffle to your follower for sneaking. You can also give them Waterbreathing which i do as well, to stop your follower going MIA when they run out of breath (they won't die, but swim for the surface to get air).

Good to know! I haven't really messed around with followers, since they stay at a static level, based on the level you were when they were available as a follower. This gives me more incentive to try it out again.

This has been fixed as of the 1.6 patch, but if you have an earlier patch you can also level them up with the Wabberjack, although you need to save first in case the Wabberjack kills them.

The one issue i have with the follower system is that you cant tell them what to use. For Example I like Aela with her default armor and Bow (for RP reasons), so I make her Nord hero armor like she has just legendary level and i enchant it also i do this to a hunting bow. BUT guess what? she doesnt equip it cause the BASE protection/damage for the items i give her is equal to the one she has, this makes no sense why Beth decided to do it like this. It will make more sense that your followers use whatever has more protection or damage regardless of the original base stats. AND allow us to favorite items for them lets say if i want my wife to wear clothes i should have the option to tell her too.