I'm currently sitting stunned. I have never seen any follower do this before. We encountered the two mages blowing each other away. We landed in the crossfire, and she killed the first one with bow and arrow. After this she just ignored the other mage, who was shooting fireballs at us, even hitting me, but once it hit her, instead of pulling out her bow she ran over to the dead mage - and suddenly she had a staff of ice storms (which I have never given her). She started shooting away and her final shot lifted our enemy above the ground in what would have been one heck of an epic kill cam. I was simply in awe. Is this a new implementation?

No. I have no patches and my followers do this all the time.

Damn, now I'm jealous, though I guess in the long run it would be rather inconvenient. Odd how it had never happened to me before, been playing for about half a year. I'm on PS3 though, maybe it was just screwed up for us.

I've never seen this either, but I have heard people talk about it. I have just recently seen Lydia perform kill moves.

I haven't seen that but I finally did see Lydia using the soul-trap bow I gave her today instead of her default bow. Along the same lines as what you saw, today I saw my http://i1181.photobucket.com/albums/x438/Kicenna/Skyrim/wmplayer2012-05-KynvalStaff.jpg shooting a staff of shock and I have never seen that before either. I thought they only used the Daedric sword they have. I don't know where he got it and Lydia had all the ones I gave her...maybe he borrowed it? She has the staff of Jyrik Gauldurson. I was very surprised. I do have patch 1.6 beta. Has anyone ever seen this before or have I just been missing it too.

Ah yes, this has happened to me before with Jenassa, i even had a Dremora Lord do this once as well.

happens to me with lydia , she get her first staff at Ustengrav and i will take it away
but anytime the are mage bodys around she get another.......

Lydia secretly wants to be a mage. Clearly.

Yeah it happened to me. The guy from Markarth: Argis the Bulwark pulled one of those moves while we were fighting a bunch of slippery mages in a cave. One of the mages went down and Argis leaped on the staff and started blasting away all the while screaming. With his AI accuracy those svckers were dead before they kissed the gravel! I sat there for 30 seconds slack jawed staring at the screen. Without a doubt a freakin GENIUS move! Best AI moment in a game ever.

Awwwwwwww, poor Lydia!

Let her follow her dream, Enclave ShockTrooper13, surely even a housecarl deserves some free time, and you don't have her following you all the time, right? Surely her time will be at better use at the college of Winterhold, rather than sitting all alone in Breezehome. While struggling to hold back her tears she has only one comfort - bread - and I mean, there's only that much bread you can stuff in your body before you become quite useless at battling anything, even the stairs.

Derkeethus surprised me once by summoning a Storm Atronach. I was like "when did you learn to do that?", but I had him carrying my scroll hoard for awhile and forgot about it.

He also picked up the Staff of Magnus and started blasting away with it after a Draugr shouted it out of my hands, which was nice since it landed in a pool of water and it would've been a real pain to find it again myself.

Followers can and will pick up weapons that are just lying around if its better than what they have equipped. Always have. True story, bro.

I've only noticed this recently and I've had a lot of followers. With my last character I found that Lydia suddenly had a Staff of Paralysis on her as well as an Ice Spike Staff. And I know I never gave her either. Oh well. She got to keep the Ice Spike staff but the paralysis one is ridiculously OP so it went up as a decoration.

Paralysis is really good for laughs. I never fail to think it's funny when a bandit trying to kill me bounces down some stairs or a hill. heh.

I think all warriors do. I had to take all staves away from Vilkas, eventually. You know that oily red gore on the floor in some dungeons that catch fire so easily? No imagine my character (Breton woman in Nightingale armor wielding a greatsword) advancing towards some draugr. Behind her, a trigger-happy Vilkas with a staff or firebolt.

No good combination, there.

Since I'm using an axe and shield, you can't see it if I accidentally hit Lydia when we melee with bandits but you can always tell when she gets me with that Staff of Ice Bolts.

I know it happened in FO:NV so i guess it would make sense to implement it in skyrim... but i cant say i've ever noticed it happen

One of the strangest follower happeneings I've seen was when I was using Mjol and used onr of those flame cloak scrolls that a member of the mages college gave me to test. Cant remeber his name. It blew up like a bomb and Mjol attacked me yelling, "What are you doing?". When I sheathed my sword she stopped attacking but then started walking away. I had to chase her down and ask her to follow me again.

From that point on whenever I tried to acces her meny she would only say, "You shouldnt be here." I couldnt even tell her to leave. What was great was that at random moments she would just straight up attack someone...anyone...and I'd get the blame. I had to take her up to the throat of the world and Fus Ro Dah'd her butt off it to get rid of her, but I still spent about 5 hours with her doing this laughing my butt off.

It happens on PS3 too. I've seen Jenassa and Arenea loot better weapons off of the dead. That's when I started giving both better potions and scrolls too. I especially like giving followers staves of paralysis.

All these warriors man.. Getting their mage degrees when you're not looking.

I've seen that happen too, but only once with Jenassa (maybe Lydia, but I'm pretty sure it was Jenassa) I think, in Treva's Watch I think.

It really surprised me since she never used magic before and all of a sudden she started shooting magic. Then I noticed that she had a staff, I didn't see her pick it up.

I guess if the staff deals more damage than her bow and if the enemy is out of melee range, then she'd use the staff.

That only happened once as I recall.

Oh, those scrolls... Yeah, you have to be very careful to time the moment WHEN you give your follower a scroll, otherwise you'll end up with them wasted on mudcrabs.

Lydia was doing this to me a lot earlier. I was trying to keep her with a bow only so she would stay back out of my melee fighters way. Next thing I know I would turn around and she's holding a ancient nordic ax she picked up off a dead druagr. I kept having to go into her inventory and take out things she would pick up. I finally just gave up.

Nope, this is part of the radiant AI, and it happens in Oblivion as well. In fact, one deadric quest in Oblivion was all about showing that off.
Any NPC in combat, when given the chance, will search for the strongest unowned or personally owned weapon that they prefer to use.

I have had Farkas do this on one of the early missions joining the Companions. I've even had a Draugr who was unarmed run over to a fallen Draugr and grab an ancient nord battleaxe before attacking me. Was pretty cool.