I'm new to the creation kit and need some basic help. I want to make my followers a little less svcky, so I started experimenting things on Faendal:

-I tried setting him to Essential and saved and uploaded the mod, and it worked halfway: I can't kill him so long as he's following me, but when he's not set as my follower, I can easily kill him. What am I doing wrong?

-How do I properly edit their levels and stats?

-How do I get them to use the Shouts and spells I've given them?

Some of that is quite complex. Followers are odd and things like their stats and levelling are odder still.

Given this is your first post, and you're new to the CK, the best help I can be is - I think - to offer you the tutorial as a way in: http://www.creationkit.com/Bethesda_Tutorial_Layout_Part_1

Yes it takes a good while to fully complete. No, it is not directly related to what you want to do. Yes, the CK is a very complex toy!

(Or, you wait to see if someone will go through all of the necessary scripting/changes to do what you want ... which will be a long post for them!)

I second this. You're trying to bake a cake without knowing what ingrediants you're using.

The tutorials are the place to learn all you need to get you started. Then searches and posts will help further

I'm going through many different tutorials right now and learning a lot, but I haven't found what I'm really interested in right now: why aren't these followers becoming completely essential? I can always use the setessential command in game, but it doesn't stay put, so that's out. Anyone know why the CK is doing this? Or, rather, isn't doing this?

Just check Essential on his main tab:

http://www.creationkit.com/Actor

This should do it, but unless I'm mistaken, it CAN be overridden by other aliases or scripting.

Yes it can. Scenes trump everything, Aliases trump everything else ...

So you may need to alter scripts in one or more quests to finally kill off any reset type commands.