This is especially true on Hard or Very Hard difficulty, of course. The AI is passable, but still does really stupid things that causes characters to die. Part of the problem in either case is lack of good AI. This makes them much more realistic in the gameworld, but they still die pretty easily at higher levels. Mods allow them to level with you if you choose to do so (and you really need to do so for them to be able to be of any use at all), but even then they have far, far less health because they only go up about 5 per level.Īs a comparison, my Shojo Companions start with about 100 more health and automatically level with the PC without being set to do so. They start with perhaps 25 health, so you know that one hit pretty much takes them out even from low levels enemies. Aside from my Shojo Companions who start with very elevated HP calculated from the PC's HP, the other companions (e.g., Maggie, Bittercup, Rachael, Mary, Flower, etc) all have VERY low HP and die very easily even on Normal mode. I don't care for the companions that Beth offered, but I use some mods so I can play with companions I actually care about.

In addition, all NPCs have really poor HP. As one response pointed out, assuming you load all your mods/DLC right from the start, Dogmeat won't have large HP. However, I disagree with people claiming Dogmeat or other followers don't die. Well, you can always just set as essential or not (former causes unconscious, latter allows death).

Fallout 3 companions die