You can talk NPCs into teaching you skills - why can’t you offer to teach an NPC your own skills?
I mean, even as crappy as NPCs are now, this could still pay dividends; you could make your randos into skilled workers who can help you craft, you can improve their weapons skills to help you in a fight, and it would raise their trust in you.
Or just teach them like they teach you. Seriously, it takes them a very short amount of time to teach you their skills, but you have to resort to highly tedious book reading to teach them anything. It is rather frustrating, especially if they have low INT.
One thing that annoys me is that random NPCs, when they give you a mission like “Kill Jabberwock”, won’t stick around. I had to chase my second in command to another city just to tell her I was done with the mission. Worth it though.
I’ve got a completed mission saying that I should go to an empty field next, presumably to collect my reward. No one there, though.
I wish we could increase the number of static NPCs rather than turn on wandering ones. Additional tiny groups to collect or do missions for would be great.
Giving a book to the NPCs I shoved into my basement would be great! And if you are wondering why I shoved them in there, it’s because they are idiots. Now they are trapped in there, forced to give me quests (if possible) and to do slave work in helping me build things! Muhaha!