Barracks idea is a good one. Will incorporate it.
I gave up on a repeater. It was giving me a brain spasm. Just swapped characters, have the companion I swapped to pull the lever, with a macro. And the adventurer trains up enormously. Having nothing in his hands trains up armor user, and dodge(dodge is slow going in xp). Place a weapon and a shield in their grasp, they get good xp in those skills.
Next experiment is to see if I can train them up in miscellaneous use, and train up endurance and toughness by encumbering them while dodging in the danger room.
The technique to change characters is pretty straightfoward. In adventure mode, center the cursor using l or k on who you want to swap too. Open DFusion, chose adventure tool(1), then change character(1). DO NOT TYPE ANYTHING. Go back to the DF screen, have the person you swapped to equip himself, perform any other action(Throw rocks, target practice, pull lever) besides fast travel. When you are satisfied, return to the DFusion screen, and hit ENTER. Will swap back to the adventurer.
There are three dangers, trying to fast travel when swapped, not moving the cursor over the intended target with l or k before changing characters,or trying to add several stacks of bolts to a companion archer. They seem to only be able to carry bolts in their hands. Any of these three will cause the game to crash