kaelenmitharos

I hear UFO is a popular mod for this, although I use the Extensible Followers Framework myself. I intend to try out UFO along with SkyRe when I start my next character. Be warned, though; increasing the number of followers can quickly result in an unstoppable steamroller, regardless of vanilla difficulty setting, since difficulty settings don't change anything about NPC-NPC fighting. At Legendary, the Dovahkin can become a useless addendum to a party of 3-4 well-armed housecarls that have no trouble taking down otherwise impossible encounters.

I had thought there was a status between "essential" and "not essential", called "protected." Followers can still die when on their knees, although enemies will prioritize fighting other people instead (such as the Dovahkin). AoE attacks and player attacks can kill them in this state as well. Is this the status you refer to as "not essential"? Or does UFO not offer three statuses for follower importance?

I've posted about this too, and haven't gotten a reply yet--not even to say why it hasn't been done. For all the incredible effort people have spent modding this game, how has an apparently simple issue not been addressed? Does anyone have an answer for this?

I'm using one of the many mods (Extensible Follower Framework by Expired) that allows multiple followers, with the idea that I'm the classic "squishy" mage/healer who employs front-line bodyguards and alternates between healing them and killing enemies. Naturally, I turned the difficulty way up to make this more balanced, since steamrolling through dungeons isn't fun for long--no challenge, so little sense of achievement. However, since difficulty setting doesn't affect followers, just me, I found that increasing difficulty merely made me more fragile than cracked glass and made my followers look like Greek gods by comparison. I don't even need to heal them--they can take on Alduin and never go beneath 75% health, if that. Not acceptable. It's no fun for a support mage when his friends don't need the support. What I found surprising, however, is the lack of mods to deal with this issue. Given the relative popularity of UFO and others that allow the Dovahkin to assemble entire parties of adventurers, how has no one yet made a mod to apply the effects of difficulty setting (player does less damage, takes more damage) to the player's followers/friendly NPC's? I know I'm not the only one who wants difficulty-scaled followers, since I've seen people complain about the issue in several forums.