Oblivion:Followers

This is a list of NPCs and creatures that will at some point or another follow you and may fight at your side.  These actors follow you, rather than you following them.  Thus, you may be able to use them as allies outside of the quests they are supposed to be involved with.  Some of them are essential, some are not and their death may prevent you from successfully completing their related quest. By equipping them you can increase their usefulness. Some of these actors respawn, so you do not have to be careful about them getting killed while fighting at your side. However, respawning characters have their inventories reset and cannot be equipped reliably, as the equipment will disappear.

Characters marked with a yellow check mark are essential at some times but not others.

Standard Followers
These characters are usually named and do not respawn. Some NPCs can be commanded to wait or follow. This can be very important as some quests require you to solo or can be failed due to aggressive NPCs. The Command column will identify which NPCs can be commanded.


Generic Followers
These characters are usually generic respawning.


Other Followers
These are people who may follow you during the listed quests, but they can not be used to help you with other quests or tasks, for the reasons provided in the table.


Creature Followers


Equipping Followers
One limitation of NPC followers is that they generally have mediocre equipment.  And since NPCs never repair their equipment, it can become useless after a few fights.  Most followers will pick up the best quality weapon available in the area when they start attacking, so all you need to do is drop a good weapon in front of them at the start of a fight.

You can add other items to your followers' inventory by reverse pickpocketing, but only if the item is zero weight.  A few zero weight clothing items are available, and can be made more useful with enchantments.  The best way to acquire armor, however, is by taking advantage of the permanent bound items glitch; a zero-weight version of any Bound Armor or weapon can be created this way.  Enchant armor with effects like Fortify Attribute or Shield; add effects like Shock Damage or Absorb Health to a weapon.  Your ally should automatically switch to the best quality item in their inventory, and will therefore equip your enchanted item.  If not, fast travel or entering a new cell may be necessary.

Notes on Equipping Followers
100% Chameleon greatly increases the survival rate of NPCs. It is advisable to wear an item with Detect Life so you are able to locate your invisible follower.
If the ally you want to equip sleeps, when they wake up they will put on their armor based on its placement in their inventory list alphabetically.
PC users can use the additem and equipitem  console commands to give their followers any piece of equipment and make them equip it.
Respawning followers will lose their equipment under certain conditions.
Of all the bound equipment, the bound weapons and shield deplete the slowest. They require much less repairing than other bound items.
Two-handed NPCs still benefit from enchanted bound shields even though the shield is not visibly worn.
A hood, wrist irons, bound weapon and bound shield is an optimal "low-maintenance" loadout for NPCs.
NPCs will NOT choose zero-weight clothing over their own clothing or armor, even if the clothing is enchanted. If the NPC wears armor then the armor must be worn out (destroyed) before the NPC will select zero-weight clothing.
To trick the NPC into wearing zero-weight clothing (enchanted or not), give the NPC both bound armor and the zero-weight clothing. Go to a new cell/zone to force a re-equip. Remove the default armor/clothing from the NPC. Take the NPC into battle so that the bound armor gets worn out (destroyed). The NPC will then select the zero-weight clothing (which will never require repairing).
Here's a quicklist zero-weight clothing: Outfits - Black Robe (00064FE2), Child Overalls (000CAAA1), Shirts - Beggar's Shirt (00064F7E), Blue Collar Shirt (0000C59E), Dark Shirt (00064F7D), Ernest's Best Shirt (00064F76), Forester's Shirt (00064F79), Heinrich's Shirt (000CBD3F), Plaid Shirt (00064F78), Shirt with Suspenders (00064F77), Shop Keep's Shirt (000CBD33), Pants/Trousers - Black Wide Pants (00064F7B), Ernest's Fancy Pants (000CBD37), Rugged Pants (00064F7A), Short Britches (00064F7C), Hoods - Black Hood (00064FE3), Mage's Hood (00064FE1), Wrists - Wrist Irons (000BE335), Rings - Ring of Lordship/Dementia (000895D9)  

Notes
If you have eight followers and try to acquire a ninth, a message will pop up saying "You have too many followers." This will continue to appear every so often, but does not actually affect your game.
Maintaining a large entourage may cause problems in that followers can hit each other in combat and end up fighting one another.
Due to the nature of their attacks, followers with ranged, or area of effect attacks appear to be particularly vulnerable to this sort of behavior. Like the player however, melee-based followers must strike each other 3 times before turning hostile to one another.
100% Chameleon will prevent this behavior, as followers are incapable of retaliating against invisible attackers.
PC users may also use the Console to increase the Disposition between followers.
Some followers can be given commands like Follow, Wait, or Go Away.  These include most generic respawning followers.  Others always follow you around, regardless if you want them to or not.
Some followers will not follow if you are already being followed by someone in the same faction.  Others will replace the current follower from that faction.
Spells and effects like Command Creature, Command Humanoid, Reanimate and Summon spells technically make characters and creatures follow you for the duration of that effect.
For a list of  followers added by the Shivering Isles Expansion see .

Bugs