So if my Comp/Thrall is a magic user can I give him a spell tome will he use it and thus use that spell..anyone ever thought of this or done it?

I don't think they will. I understand that their AI only implements potions. It is actually hard enough to them to don armor and weapons.

No you cannot teach them new spells. You can, however, equip both companions and dead thralls with magic staves that they will use. They are subject to the same rules of staff charge and magic school skill that your player character is under. You can somewhat modify the spells in their potential arsenal by creating various staves at the Atronach Forge. Various staff recipes can be found online.

Ok thanks for the feedback, Staves it is.

I rember reading somewhere that you can also give them scrolls to use, but they'd still be one-use items.

I personally think they should be able to learn spells..I think however in the "Game Jam" video with the updated companion abilities you can teach them to use different schools of magic if Im not mistaken. Hopefully they add that and make them learn new commands as well cause lets face it companions are like a bull in a china shop lol.

Staves, potions and lockpicks are all they can use.

One side note about staves, atronach staves are great for companions. With one companion and two Thralls all equipped with atronach staves you can have an army of 6 plus you.

Wow sounds great a force to be reckoned with..

I would like to note the staff you get from sanguine is amazing as for thralls and followers I recommend just using melee thralls/followers they nerfed mages horribly, also most mages uses aoe spells which aggro other thrall/ follower. so they are bad thralls i recommend a bandit cheif thrall and a archer/melee thrall for your other thrall

Mage Thralls are okay, I'm just careful about which ones I pick. Adept ice mages are good Thralls, they stick to throwing ice spikes and charging with wards and frost.

Nothing like seeing a dragon fall out the sky from being impaled by a hail of ice bolts.

Sanguine Rose is the best summoning staff in the game. Until the random disappearing thralls bug is dealt with, I'd seriously reconsider placing it on a thrall. Companions are OK. For thralls I'd stick with a forged summon staff or random drop.

if you're on a pc and you want your follower to cast atronachs or dremora lords every battle:

you need to change their AI - a warrior script will never cast, for example.

setclass e3a72
this is a conjurer class. other classes on uesp. this will not change their aggression or confidence - these attributes will ultimately decide how often they attack.

addspell 204c4
this puts frost atronach in their spell list. bear in mind that the class scales with level. so this class can't cast certain atronachs until certain levels. different classes will add to conjuration at different rates. there are tradeoffs to each. the example above has none in destruction - thus preventing them from using fireball and decimating their friends. if your minion doesn't know any AOEs, use any class that has high point investment in conjuration.