I've noticed that essential followers are a bit overpowered because they regenerate health so quickly and they recover from being hurt too quickly. It kind of makes up for their not being able to use potions, but I find it unbalancing.

I know that UFO lets you set followers to be non-essential and non-regenerating. Healing them is an absolute pain. And I don't want them non-essential anyway - they are too likely to die from stupidity.

I did some modding for Oblivion, but haven't looked at modding for Skyrim. How difficult would the following be?

1. Lower essentials' regeneration dramatically during combat
2. After they submit, they should remain out of play until combat is over.

Or perhaps there are some mods already out there that would meet my needs or come close to it.

Well it depends on how good you are at scripting.If you are very familiar with the papyrus scripting language you could a Event OnCombatStateChange script to possibly controll how fast their health regenerates. That's the only script type I can think of that might serve that purpose for now.

Thanks for the response. I'm not at all familiar with papyrus, but I can pick it up. I've done intermediate Java, C#, etc.

I can see it's going to take some work to even see if it's possible. I'm afraid I won't be able to control regen unless I set the NPC to non-essential, and though I could resurrect follower NPCs after battle ends, that could mess up scripts. I have a lot of research to do. I don't know if I'll ever do it. Maybe I'll feel up to it sometime.