I know if someone is a follower you can give them equipment (and if it's better than their own, they'll use it.)

Is there a mod that lets you give standard NPC's equipment. I tried reverse pickpocketing but it doesn't seem to work on a lot of NPCs.

Example - I wanted to give some of the residents of Big Town some better guns and armor (I play as a good character), but they don't use it when Super Mutants come around, and I don't like getting bad karma for doing a good deed.

Oh, just hit ` and use the pointer on the person you want to have inventory access to and then type this command:

openteammatecontainer 1

Or you can download the Groovatron from nexus and access their inventory that way.

There's also http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12106 or http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2399. Despite the names you can befriend almost anyone in the wasteland with a Speech check and then be able to give them items.

Thank you, Ghostnull, that was exactly what I was looking for.