When you have a follower accompany you, I think it would be cool to have an option for your follower to essentially switch roles with you. How about your follower being the leader? He/She leads you through a dungeon or cave (perhaps even certain entire quests) and you follow behind, helping take out enemies, etc.

I think this could turn out to be a really cool idea. Of course the npcs would have different styles of combat, depending on what you want. Or there could be an option for you to set the follower/leader to be more stealthy, rather than running into enemies hacking and slashing, and you can change it whenever u want.

There could also be a "mercenary for hire/follower for hire" profession, where npcs ask you to accompany them on their own quests, they lead, you follow/assist, and you get paid for your service. It would be more fun for you to RP a mercenary character.

I think this would be an awesome idea. Anyone agree?

The idea sounds good, but if you have ever followed an NPC in the game, you will quickly see why it would not be elegantly implemented. The pathing for one would be cumbersome to get right. Also, if the NPC were to move off the path, there is some time spent while the NPC tries to find the pick up point again.

That being said, if there was a way to set aggression on the Follower and tell them that they can initiate combat, but still have to follow you, you will get much closer to your goal. I know these were options in the Fallout Games, not sure with Skyrim, I never dealt with followers in that game.

I'd be up for this. Although I'm not sure how loot distribution would work in this scenario. Would you still have control over what loot you get?

I think early on, it would be cool to encounter an adventurer who is a bit higher leveled compared to you and would sort of "show you the ropes" if you joined their team. Or perhaps the ability to join a bandit faction, even if it didn't have a fleshed out questline. You'd just be one of the worker bees in a bandit faction, working for a bandit leader. As you mentioned, same thing could apply with mercenaries, perhaps. It could function as an "easy money" option early on, if you're not strong enough to explore some dungeons on your own.

As CCNA mentioned, the AI would definitely pose a problem. Hopefully they'll fix some of the pathing issues by the next game. Everyone knows it was attrocious in Skyrim.

Yeah as far as loot goes, I think that would be part of the deal, if you have an npc lead you through a dungeon, he takes a good portion of loot, and you grab what you can. If he takes something you want, there could be an option for you to trade or buy it from him.

There might be some glitches (such as the npc going the wrong way, or getting stuck, etc), but that's an easy fix, just have a respawning option for him to re-appear in front of you again, or switching back to him following you, temporarily.

If you abandon the npc while he is leading, there should be some kind of consrquence. Or maybe he yells "where are you going?" and just switches back to following you.

As far as the bandit idea goes, that is an entirely different idea, but I like it. I always thought it would be cool to join or form a bandit gang, even assisting in the process of clearing out a cave, and furnishing it into your bandit lair, setting traps, etc. Waiting for adventurers to enter your hideout, to their possible demise.

Emma's Vilja mod for Oblivion and Skyrim has this feature, and I absolutely adore it. You can tell Vilja to be the "leader" and you can follow her. I often do this after a long dungeon or a long series of quests when I feel a bit mentally exhausted. It is a completely different gaming experience. I would love it if Bethesda did something like this.

I think the Sofia MOD has an option for you to follow her. But Bethesda should have it as an option for followers in the vanilla game (possibly the next one), they could do a lot of awesome stuff with this idea.

I doubt it would be well-implemented, given how "intelligent" the AI tends to be. It would be like one massive escort quest. But I would certainly welcome a reduction in the scale of the stakes and the conflict. Anyone else tired of saving the world and preventing the apocalypse? I know I am.

See, I had the opposite experience, which to me shows that the AI systems used just aren't able to handle this sort of thing. Every time I left Vilja tale the lead, she would snag on some piece of terrain, run in circles, or sometimes just stand there staring off into space. I have never once gotten any sort of adventure out of it, beyond considering whether or not I should have Vilja committed.

Though, thinking about it... That must be how my companions feel when i'm trying to figure out what piece of garbage to throw away so i can walk again...

Maybe in another game in the future, but right now I don't think the technology is up to it. I've tried it with npcs from Nexus and I was not impressed.