My biggest gripe with companions is when they stand in the doorway of a side room in a dungeon where I'm checking for treasure and not short of Fus ro dah to the face will make them move. The "hey!" of surprise is usually pretty funny though.

Yeah - Lydia can be a PITA... I've offed her by accident a few times.... They need a command like "Watch my back" where your follower will actually stay behind you and - well watch your back! AND stay out of the way. She is a good mule though!!

I am finding my forced follower (or blade brother or w/e) from the campanions is more trouble than he's worth i much prefer going without a follwer, hell if i need some meat shield ill use a scroll of zombie or something.

Now that I got shadowmere and the extra pockets perk from pickpocketing, followers aren't needed. If I find myself over encumbered from a good dungeon raid, I can just get on the horse and still fast travel to my little home base to let the loot off. Followers deal additional damage yes and pose as an added distraction, but it doesn't make up for them lagging behind you or triggering traps or getting in your way. I'm a melee-heavy player so when I get tearing into a Draugr deathlord, my axe is unstoppable...which poses an issue when someone comes up to bash the death lord as well and insists on being right next to me.


Want a good follower? Spectral assassin. If he gets in your way and dies, just temporarily banished. Even after being summoned he'll stick around with you wherever you go, and he actually doesn't make a ton of noise because he's not wearing big clanky armor. Yeah he does have a creepy tone to him but that's a little baggage.

My character is level 38 and Marcurio is still stealthy and helps quite a bit. Since he's a magic user and I'm a bow user, it works out well.

I never had a follower in FO. In NV I used the little robot and the sniper guy because I was having trouble surviving against the Cazadores. In Oblivion no followers. In Skyrim I have been using Lydia but it's been as annoying as its been useful really. But so far it's a slight net plus.

Their usefulness seems to vary greatly depending on your character build. My Illusion-centered sneak mage doesn't benefit at all from followers while dungeon crawling. But out in the open I'm having a hard time taking down dragons without their help.

Trying/using sneak is useless when you got Marcurio on your team

Although, with a high level sneak, enemies will ONLY focus on your follower and totally ignore you. LOL

I'm not a sneaky character, but there are times I'm trying to see what's happening before committing myself and Lydia will run in giving the game away. They REALLY need to put in a FONV instruction to followers to be aggressive or passive. We need to bias those stupid follower algorithms toward aggression, passivity, offense, defense, melee, missile, magic, etc.

Ideally a dialog that allowed you to partially define their behavior would be helpful (equivalent to sitting them down and having a talk about tactics in dungeons). God knows I'm pretty inept when it comes to tactics in this game, but compared to the follower AI i'm the greatest tactical genius in the history of the world.

I haven't found a class that travels with any of the followers well. I find it's just easier to miss traps for me only, sneak when I need to and otherwise blast in when I'm going to without having to worry about npc's who aren't really that great at their given jobs.

Yea, but don't give Mercurio a Staff of Paralyzing... I can't count all the times he hit me with it... LOL

I do like to use followers for my Warriors, who usually rush in and fight face to face with their foes. I tried out pretty much all the main followers.

My Nord character dual wields and she usually teams up with her husband Vorstag, who uses sword and shield and heavy armor (good tank).

My Imperial also dual wields one H weapons and teams up with her husband, Mercurio, who uses staves, scrolls, magic and wears enchanted glass armor.

I also like to use Belrand at times, since he can dual wield staves, or uses sword and magic, or staff and magic.

My Breton however is an archer with high level sneak and so I don't use any followers. I have Shadowmere, who can tank a dragon for me in the Wilds.

On my Bosmer Ranger character I actually ended up marrying Aela; they're both werewolves and are fans of Hircine. She would follow me wherever I went, hunting and whatnot.

I have a rule though, when playing this character: If I ever decide to drink heavily while playing Skyrim, I have to play mainly as the werewolf transformation. I've done this a few times and had fun with it, getting through areas such as the Thalmor Embassy and others. Yesterday I did the same type of playing but was going through Blackreach. Wolved up halfway through and completed the area.

I woke up this morning to realize that, while as a werewolf, I had slaughtered Aela, and had no memory of doing so. My character was heartbroken over it (as was I. I mean, killing my wife? Ouch) and decided to cure himself of lycanthropy, along with joining the Imperials in the hopes that conflict would end.

What I'm trying to say is that followers could be fantastic if you're legitimately roleplaying, because they can definitely add more depth to your own character.

The biggest problem i have with followers is that they dont live up to their name and fail to actually follow.

-they cant jump
-stick in rocks
-do not teleport to player if distance > x

Especially the last point is annoying. In other games, follower would simply teleport to me if lost.

Ive never had a follower yet and don't plan on doing so either. From what i understand from reading peoples posts is that they just get in the way of things anyway.

Do any followers have there own quests related to that person ? Like they did in fallout 3 etc... That would be the only reason i would ask a follower to join me.

+1

I would like to see a simple "Cover my back" command at least! And have them actually stay behind you. Heck - it would make life with Lydia bearable. The wait command works a bit, but if they are in range and you're in a battle - forget it. But I can understand that.