This seems rather ridiculous to me, I just attempted to give Mjoll glass armor with a rating of 110 to replace her steel plate armor which has a rating of 55, she did not equip it, obviously this is because she is set as heavy armor user, it's silly, in all ways the glass armor is better, it's lighter and stronger, a distinct advantage over heavy steel plate, you would have to be completely brainless not to take advantage.

you can change it with the console command setav. i dont mess with armor ratings but i have mess with modifying two-hander companions because they are pretty useless.

OP is incorrect. The follower will switch to the armor if the armor rating is higher. The reason she did not switch to the glass armor is because she has enough skills and perks in heavy armor, including the +% perks , that actually make her steel the better armor.

Upgrade the glass with some malachite and she'll wear it.

The steel plate is one I gave her, I removed it before giving her the glass armor, she will not equip over her base armor.

The followers that are skilled in light armor tend to have higher sneak skills as well, meaning they get more benefit from light armor that is less detrimental to their sneaking. And the tanks are better with heavy armor that's better for soaking up damage. Their skills fit their character, for the most part.

Hell, we should be complimenting the Devs for putting enough thought into the sidekick to give them a class, but instead we bash them for it.

Ok, then just substitute the word "steel" in my post for "default" and there ya go. For whatever reason, unless her base armor is light armor, she has enough skills and perks in heavy that whatever she is currently wearing is better than the Glass.

Remember, some of the perks are insane, +50% and more. It's easy for them to get high enough skill and perks in a skill tree so that their basic armor is better than a very fancy armor type in the other tree.

Just checked with glass gauntlets upgraded to superior, she does not equip it.

Might not be enough. I had to upgrade some armor to Legendary before Lydia was better with it than her default steel. Your best option would be to give her some heavy armor, so that her skills and perks will work on that.

Are you a heavy or light armor user? The armor value you see depends on YOUR skill, which means you might think the glass armor is better because you have multiple bonuses with it and none with the iron armor, while your folower might have bonuses in heavy armor and none in light armor.

Anyway, my current folower, which is a college mage, wears heavy armor as much as light armor and even use 2 handed weapons and bows. No boundaries there, and she still summons and use healing magic while doing it.

I just got a new follower, and she switched to an "inferior" enchanted sword that I gave her to carry. I fussed but finally thought, well, this is how she rolls...let's try it. And I made her a brand-new shield. So I'm going to see about upgrading her sword rather than forcing her into something else. In hindsight, maybe this is why my last follower kept dying.

Glass base armor: 38
Steel base armor: 31

Depending on her level, Mjoll will have a Heavy Armor skill between 40 and 100.
Her Light Armor skill will probably never be more than 15.

Oh well, will have to send Mjoll home to do the cooking, looks like it's back to Annekka, I was hoping to get a little more sneak out of Mjoll by giving her light armor.

Thanks for the replies, been reallly helpful.

i like the default settings, if push came to shove. we should atleast get a console code. right?

I have a somewhat related issue. My companion (Lydia at the time) was wearing legendary ebony armor I had repaired. I found another suit of ebony in a cave and gave it to her to hold, only to find she had equipped the non-enhanced armor over the legendary repaired with like twice the armor rating. /shrug

Also, even spec'd for both dragon and glass light armors, legendary glass armor I repair has a higher armor rating than legendary dragon scale. Like by a LOT. I hit 100 smithing (obviously to make dragon), and repaired the glass before that point, so maybe it is some sort of bug?

I thought legendary was legendary. Didn't know you could have like "way beefier legendary" even if you fortify with potions and gear and whatnot. But even still, glass is way stronger than dragon. /shrug