With my character I just use archery+sneak combo to kill giants from a distance. It's also a good idea to move out of the way if they don't detect you immediately. Poisons can also be applied to arrows. I was concerned about this before traveling with Lydia but when I gave her a trial run I sneaked a lot and didn't notice her attacking unless I did or we (probably just her) had been seen. You sure? For Lydia, picking the dismiss option (the last one) should send her back to the Jarl in Whiterun or straight to your home in Whiterun, Breezerun. I was hesitant when I picked that option because it sounded like I was firing her. I'm pretty sure all of the optional (post-quest) followers in the game will travel with you and return to their starting locations as needed like this. She starts out with steel right? Maybe you tried to give her light armor or the wrong kind of weapons? I tested this out just now and observed that she wasn't wearing the Elven Armor (strong light armor) I gave her but happily equipped the Dragonplate Shield. If the equipment you give her isn't better, she won't use it, apparently skill choice affects that as well. This brings up a question I have. Do followers get stronger in terms of skills and stats by fighting with you? This will always be a problem. Even with the increase from 6 -> 70 voice actors from Oblivion to Skyrim. Even TDM can't get enough vocal responses and sets. I still think the ultimate solution will end up being real time vocaloid style speech synthesis. At that point, maybe we'll decry that the vocal scripts are still tens of thousands of responses short, and we'll need to invent AI. After you play TES X for 24 hours you'll find that the real world completely changed! In Oblivion I remember followers kind of mimicking your movement paths, going where you go and jumping at around the same times. In Skyrim it looks like they decide their own path to where you are, but with predictably bad jumping logic. Obviously this becomes a problem if you like to "climb" up mountains in order to get a nice point of entry into some location. Your follower will eventually catch up with you though, and I didn't have much of a problem with it since I spent most of the game self-sufficient sans follower. If you want your follower behind you all the time, look for the easier slopes, take circular routes around mountains to find the actual paths, and mill around once in a while to pick up alchemy ingredients or something. Haven't heard about the Morrowind team but I guess it was a similar story to Oblivion.