I've got a follower all made and ready to go except for the fact he has that hunting bow. I wouldn't care normally but he's a mage and he's got it equipped on his back, detracting from his magely appearance. I'd like to share this follower so relying on using the console to remove it isn't really practical. Is there a way I can prevent him from spawning with it altogether?

You either find the DialogueFollower Quest dialogue responsible for this mess in CK and do it your own, or you use http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=14037 or http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8118.

There is a mod for that. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8118

Thanks, I'll take a look at all those options.

Hot damn, that's why! I've been messing around with follower gear and inventories lately. One time after restoring gear to my actor he suddenly drew a bow when he went into combat stance. I was like... where the hell did that come from?!

Probably going to have to rewrite all of the vanilla quests to get some of the quality and interaction I want. *sigh*

The sad truth is, it's not only a complete new follower quest and dialogue you'll have to set up. If you're planing on voice acting, there's more work going to be put in it.

I think it's easier to just copy the DialogueFollower and DefaultFavorFollower(or how was it named?) Quests and delete anything you don't need and modifie anything you will need. Make sure to redo every script inside thoose quests and you're good to strat from there. Doing everything from the scratch will cause hours of headache.

I am terribly lazy so re-inventing the wheel doesn't sound too appealing. But after poking around the follower framework and reading a number of horror stories I am pretty sure I'll have to. I'd like to do something really detailed like http://www.gamesas.com/user/579533-dreamking/ did with http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1336512-relzwipz-enhanced-skyrim-followers-aela-the-huntress-of-the-companions/. On top of that there's a custom voice along with extra quests/resources.

It will take a lot of time but ... isn't they why we mod?