Sometimes you are accompanied by a few NPCs during combats. The essential ones, of course, never die. But the non-essential ones sometimes can't last a couple of fights. So what are the strategies for keeping them alive? Making them last more than a couple of fights, let alone the entire raid of a dungeon or Oblivion gate just seems improbably hard. I don't have the "restore health on target" spell because my restoration skill is not high enough. I try to attract the enemy's attention but my NPCs always get in the way and the enemy would turn on them. Once they start fighting, there is no way to get between them, it seems. And if I force my way in, I end up hurting my NPC. Not to mention, there is no way for me to take care of multiple NPCs at the same time. So what to do? Sometimes there are rewards for keeping certain NPCs alive (another thing is sometimes the quests don't tell me that). I just finished a huge fight at Kvatch and those non-essential guards all died before they even walked past 10 ft from the Chapel door. The essential character kept getting unconcious, getting up, getting unconscious, etc. It was ridiculous. I basically had to kill everything on my own. Any advice to help me svck less in this aspect?

The only way I have found to keep them alive is with Restore Health spells. I always make them on touch, rather than on target, since it is easy to miss in a melee with the ranged version. You can even miss with it on touch! It is also cheaper.

My usual tactic is to stop at the end of every fight, and go around and heal every npc with me up to full. This often means a lot of waiting around while my magicka rebuilds between casts.

When it comes to the actual fighting, avoid using weapons with a long reach like longswords. They always hit your allies. Instead touch destruction/absorb health spells work best.

But basically, I try to avoid having companions at all. They only get in the way, and make the game harder.

Are ranged attackers easier to protect? So far, all my NPC companions in fights have been melee fighters. I would much prefer my NPCs shooting arrows from a distance and me fighting up close with the enemies.

I hope Skyrim would add some kind of coordinated attack when there are NPCs fighting with me. It's just not realistic to see Imperial fighters so disorganized during these group fights. I would like to see realistic group fights in a single player game like in "Call of Duty".

The only effective ways for me personally is restore health spells like Subrosa suggested, or with many convascelance scrolls. (Prefferably superior but those are hard to find.)

Alteration is an easy skill to level and has some shield spells that can be used for companions.
The Knights of the Nine DLC gives you an on touch shield spell and an on touch healing spell that work great for any companion, but you need to practically complete the Knights questline to actually use them.This will be a problem if you are using an evil character and plan on doing things that require infamy.
Frostcrag Spire has an Enchanting and Spellmaking Altar included if you do not want to join the Mages Guild.
You ccan always adjust the difficulty slider while you play to make it easier to keep forced companions alive.
If you are on a PC try and make your companions used Ranged attacks, and stick to Melee yourself, or try playing as a healer using touch spells from Restoration and Alteration.

I think the best method hasn't been mentioned yet: Waiting.

Just wait for one hour and you and every one of your companions will immediately get full health, magicka, and fatigue. Good to go.

I'm on a PC and how do I "make" them use ranged attacks?

The ability to make a companion use a ranged attack depends on the companion mod that you are using. Some downloadable companions can be made to use a ranged attack in dialogue. I think the mod Talkie Toaster's Companion Share and Recruit allows you to recruit most NPC's in the game and equip them as you see fit.

Waiting works well but you can not have enemies in the area.
Restore health on touch is nice and it's easy to get restoration up to level 25, always try to do this and buy the spell before Kvatch.
A mod where you can recruit and command companions work best just tell them to wait.

I would like one mod where you can tell followers how to fight as in: stay far back and only defend your self or stand back and help with ranged attacks.

My character is a mystic archer and does ok with a melee companion if there is only one foe around. She sticks her bow on her back and has a couple things that work fairly well. One is that she will stand safely behind her companion and cast touch healing spells on him. The other thing she'll do is when the baddie is fighting her companion, she will circle behind their foe and open up with on touch absorb health.

The most common circumstance where she finds herself doing this is when traveling with a Legion rider or coming across a Legion rider who is already fighting an enemy.

Agreed, it would be fun to cooperate with NPC:s but since they are too dumb I prefer to fight alone

i don't like having to use followers, or escorts. Most of my charcters are mages, most of my highlevel spells have an area effect on them that make npcs die when they run up to the explosion. So i mostly just let them duke it out with who ever is fighting us and stand back with a few heal on touch spells. Resting after each fight brings their hp back to 100%

Heal and Shield them. And take out the opposition from afar via Bow Craft.

I don't like companions. That said, when one is thrust upon me, I have them wait while I clear a path ahead. I put a marker on them so I can find them easily. Come back and get them. Rinse and repeat. I also have a custom spell that buffs companions, if a melee fight is unavoidable.

I love the game. But companions/allies are horribly implemented.

The AI is terrible - they always seem to want to run in front of your attack just after it can't be stopped - and because of level scaling they are way underpowered compared with enemies, particularly with mods like OOO or MMM.

The best way to deal with companions is to avoid them entirely.

If that can't be done, then on the PC you can open the console, click on the companion and type "setav health " to give them a huge amount of health (like 4000) to compensate for the poor design of allies.

Otherwise, if you can't avoid them, and can't or don't want to use the console, heal and shield spells are maybe the best course of action.

Fortunately allies seems to be much better implemented in Fallout 3. So there is hope that allies and companions will be more of a help than annoyance in TES V: Skyrim.

Trust me, in OB you don't want ranged companions unless you want to be a pin-cushion after the battle.

Best companion is one that stands back and fires spells that your character is immune to (particularly good for the 100% absorb Atronach, of course). Chances of finding one like that are pretty slim, though.