MWSE Companions Template is a companion system that can be used as is, or to build your own companion. At this point (v. beta 0.9) the mod is tailored mostly for mercenaries NPCs, but the scripts are easy to customize and I'm planning to add common dialogs and template scripts also for other types of companions (normal people, friends that don't mind profit, slaves, cattle) in the future.

I've never played with companion mods before, and after testing some of them recently I came to the conclusion that some of the features in popular mods were unpolished or immersion breaking (things like "guarding" the place without helping player in combat, warping all over the place like a psycho, creating weird topic names instead of using vanilla ones that were made for such functionality, actively breaking the suspension of disbelief with dialogues like "my skills are: numbers" and so forth.). I'm usually tweaking all the mods I use, but after looking at scripts present in companion mods I came to the conclusion that fixing and polishing them (or even understand how they work when there are tens of variables without self expletory names, little to no comments etc.) would take similar time than creating the new companion system from scratch. Additionally I've been interested in implementing some MWSE functionality, so I decided that it is worth the effort. Here are the key features of this mod:

• AI choose spells and weapons usage (default behavior).
• Command companion to use ranged weapons, melee weapons, fight bare hands or mimic player's weapon usage.
• No spells usage, weapons only.
• Options to always flee when combat starts or flee when badly injured or out of magicka.
• Options to take the initiative in combat or don't attack unprovoked (vanilla behavior).

• Wait, follow, guard, move aside, auto move - all the standard stuff.
• Ask companion to always automatically remain (and wait) outside of any interior the PC may enter (automatically rejoins upon return).
• New warping implementation that won't be as noticeable as in other companion mods (companion won't warp if you look at their direction or use 3rd camera).
• Better door following (your companion will warp behind you when you face the door, just to be sure that all of them will travel with you on cell transition, also all the temporal move aside actions are reset when you face the door).
• Mimic player use of levitation, slowfall, water walking (if companion has potions or one of the vanilla spells with such effect).
• Mimic player sneaking.
• Choice of the meeting place (travel will take a day).
• There is an unique location automatically stored in the external file when you first talk to the companion. You can send the companion to that location. The companion will also travel there if he decide to leave you (contract ended, you took companion's clothes leaving him/her naked etc).
• Automatic AI fix where possible, reduces the chances of wandering off (as companions do occasionally).
• Full compatibility and dialogue implementation for Melian's Teleport Mod. Auto delisting when companion decides to leave you.
• Mark/recall functionality for companions (It DOES NOT mark player location. It marks companion's location that can be later used to recall the companion to that place.
• Dummy spells for PC that can be used to control companions behavior without talking to them (wait, follow, guard).

• Resurrection (if companion has dummy spell ability that is used as a flag for this effect, he won't die when the health drops to 0. Like in later TES games the companion will fall unconscious instead. Once the companion regenerates a sufficient amount of fatigue, he will stand up and rejoin you. It is a true resurrection, not fake effect when health is low, like in other companion mods).
• Skill training (you can offer training free of charge or you can ask trainers in game to train your companions and pay for it).
• Skill books and Spell Tomes (you can ask the companion to study the skill book or learn a new spell via Spell Tome. This mod adds a lot of new spell tomes to the game, creating new ones is very easy).
• You can choose exactly which cloth and armor item companion wears (in vanilla game NPC always choose the most valuable equipment that he is specialized in).
• You can automatically exchange groups of items with your companion. This functionality is pretty much the same as Inventory Helpers mod by cdcooley, but expanded and polished.
• You won't see dialogue choices that are already active or that can't be performed, so the dialog window won't be cluttered with choices, and this way you know what are the current settings without guessing.
• Companion's stats information presented via formatted messageboxes.
• You won't be able to strip companion from clothes and leave him naked (well, you can but they will accuse you of harassment and report this crime).
• You have a chance to pay the gold compensation or give the items back after the companion's profit drops below 0 (if you don't compensate the loss the companion will leave you and report a crime).
• All dialog topics (even training options) can be shared between many NPCs that use this system (no need for doubling dialog entries if you don't want to have unique response).
• Other stuff mentioned in uploaded readme file.

The starting place for this mod was a vanilla companion system created by Bethesda for http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:Calvus_Horatius. I took his companion topics and added new dialogue entries to them that can be used by other followers thanks to the local variable filtering.

For more details about each feature please download the readme file: https://www.sendspace.com/file/ol3i2j

Screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/kCa04

What I'm looking for:

- at least 1 beta tester,

- someone that can proofread the dialog that is already present in the template,

- someone that could write some additional dialog lines,

- community brainstorm what else could be added or what should I change before release.

All this sounds great. This part concerns me, though:

Some of us roleplay bathing and swimming. I think it is illogical for most player characters and companions to bathe or swim (or in some cases sleep) with clothes or armor. I do not want this to be a "crime." Is there a provision for players to tell companions to take clothes or armor off so that they can swim, bathe or sleep in a roleplaying manner?

Other than that, this looks great. I look forward to seeing the finished results.