The fight as Thancred in SHB lasts like 20 minutes lmao
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That's because most have the setting to replace hotbar 1 with the pet hotbar when the pet hotbar is available. It works similarly to when you need to use a beast tribe mount for one of their quests.
Because the NPCs are mapped to the pet hotbar, probably we'll never see them have more skills than said hotbar can contain.