Hey lostlamb, found a strange bug with your NPC mod.
It worked fine in my first game where my character was very high level. I recruited the gladiators and they were around level 12 or so. I only played for a few minutes and then I tried to start a new game and get all the npcs at the beginning.
Marnid and Borcha were normal (level wise) but the 3 gladiators were all level 39, 43 and maybe 42 and were basically gods with ALL weapon skills in the 350-370 range. I recruited them before fighting in the ring so im wondering if something didnt initialize correctly.
Kinda funny but.. Ill try it later with other combinations and see if I can figure out why this is happening.