It was claimed in this comment that companions' weapons don't degrade in Fallout: New Vegas. Is that true? What about companions' armor? Does the difficulty of the game influence this? What about hardcore mode?
This question is not about companions' default items that can't be taken away. It's about items that you add to your companions' inventory manually.
This was changed several patches ago and I never updated my answer.
As of a patch some time ago, companions' weapons degrade per attack at the same rate as the Courier's.
Armor degrades based on damage taken.
As I said in the post the comment was made on, I suspected that this was possible, but couldn't prove it. However, I think I found evidence that it happens just now, at least on Hardcore mode/Very Hard difficulty.
I gave my companion a Super Sledge and got into a fight with several Legionaries, who typically carry machetes and magnums. I didn't see any with Super Sledges, though it was nighttime in-game and I could have just missed it. Sometime during the battle, I heard my companion yell "I'm gonna need a new weapon!" When the fight was over, I went back to the spot where my companion had been. She was back to carrying her default weapon, and I found a Super Sledge on the ground with an empty CND gauge. Oddly, its hover text was red, but I didn't suffer a karma penalty for picking it up.
I was able to put the broken weapon back in her inventory, proving my assumption in the previous post wrong. She wasn't able to equip it, but I was able to take it back out of her inventory later to transfer it to a container.
I gave chainsaw to Veronica and when we fought some ghouls she broke it.
Yes. I gave the Plasma Caster to Cass, and she rendered it useless within a few hours of gameplay. Costed a bomb to repair it.
