Wow, thats totally stupid. I am getting chased around Riften by three hired thugs. The guards could care less. They actually RAN AWAY from the thugs. Yep one of them actually said "I'm getting out of here" and ran away like a biatch. I run into the palace, and by clever running and dodging I get one of the thugs to hit the Jarl. SHE RUNS AWAY! No one in the palace cares. WTF????

But let ME assault someone or even accidently pick up a worthless ink pot and it's world war 3 on me. Stupid, just stupid.

I know I am raging but this charachter is a Dead is Dead charachter, and I am only level 9 and not even able to dent the life of one of these thugs. How totally backwards and stupid this whole situation is.

It's also frustrating that their dialogue doesn't change, they're all happy smilaes after trying to kill you.

You should be able to take the contract to the guards, but seeing as they are only hired if you commit a crime against them you'd probably be arrested too

This is called karma. Karma is not very nice to people you see, she tends to bite back to achieve balance.

You should meet Karma's cousion, Capitalism.

But on topic, this makes sense. You got in trouble, and now your paying for it. You either killed one or stole from another, and will pay for it. Why should the guards give a hoot if you brought this upon your self?

It is called cause and effect.

Guards get paid to protect people in a city. They aren't doing their job. It's not karma, it's called incompetence.

And the guards magically know I am "in trouble" just like they use thier x-ray vision to look through full helmets and inspect your ears for fur right?

You kill another person who is just like you, a friend or family member of that person said hires a group when they can not use guards to go after you.

Seems perfectly reasonable that you are responciable for your actions.

It doesn't seem reasonable at all to me that guards magically know your life story and why three people are running around the city trying to kill you. The thugs waltzed right in the front gate and just starting wailing on me as I was standing there. So now the guards are also OK with thugs smashing the Jarl in the skull with a warhammer too because I did a Bad Thing?? Hmmm ok....

I'm always seeing guards chasing thugs in Riften. I usually trying to help the thugs since i'm in the thieve's guild and all, but then I get arrested for interfering.

The thieves you see the guards fighting in Riften are different than Hired Thugs.

For all you know the guards have been paid off & warned. After all, you have someone hiring thugs to go kill you.

I get where the OP is going with this; the guards should defend you, so long as they know you did not commit crime in THAT Hold. If the crime was committed in Falkreath, but you are now in Solitude, the guards should back you up, see if you are ok (to where you can lie or tell the truth about what happened), and then if you did not pick up the contract, they should check the bodies and retrieve it to find out what happened.

That being said, I think that would be realy hard to code into the game (I'm not familiar with coding, so it is simply a guess) and that it is not so much a problem if you know how to handle crowds.

Considering you can have hired thugs sent after you without ever doing anything illegal, and it only ever happens once, this argument fails. There is a particular quest in Riverton that no matter how you do basically guarantees Hired Thugs will be sent after you. You can also have Hired Thugs sent after you by characters you have never interacted with before.

Once I was coming out of the first dungeon, never stole anything from anyone. On my way back to return the item I went to get some Hired Thugs came after me, sent by Moira.... I had never been outside Riverton, yet Moira was mad at me? Because I "wronged her"? (I didn't even know who Moira was because I'd never gone to that location yet, on any character.)

Also most other NPCs that attack you guards will attack, like Thalmor or imperials (which makes way less sense than attacking hired thugs).

And once they go and smash the Jarl in the head? The guards are cool with that too huh? And the Jarl doesn't mind being hit in the head either? That must have taken some amazing amount of coin.

I just ran into them at level 2 with a "dead is dead" character.

I think they keep the guards out of it so those guys don't just show up and kill a bunch of NPC's.
Seems like it would be better just to have the show down out on the trail but whatever.

Just run for it if you have too man, those a holes can be tuff.

I drank an invisiblity potion and played hide and seek and slipped out the back door of Riften. It will be interesting to see if the thugs are still lurking about the city when I return.

Even worst.

I was just coming out of a stormcloaks camp. I haven't join them yet or the imperials. Then I meet three Thalmor justicar. I though it would be fun to lead them into the stormcloak camp so I confess to be a talos worshipper and lead three angry high elves into a camp of ten storm cloaks.

Let's just say the result is disappointing.

I agree it's stupid as well.

I've stole a lot stuff but was never seen by anyone once. My bounty has never been anything above zero.
And yet, this some guy knows I stole his stuff and sent some thugs after me.
Then in the centre of a hold capital these thugs started to attack me. And the guards are completely fine with it. I was really amazed when I found this.

But anyways, mods will fix it.

I had some hired thugs attack me in Winterhold and the guards stood and watched. When it was over, the guard walked over, looked at the corpses, and said something along the lines of "Uh oh, what happened here??" Well, why don't you tell me? You were watching!

You should be able to confront those who hire the thugs. This instance, it was Illdi from the Bard College. Apparently I stole a book from there? And she's just a student? Anyway, there's no dialogue option or anything even though I have the note in my hands. She's still all "I enjoy seeing new faces around! ^______^".

I am in the Reach when I come across upon a Vigilant of Stendarr fighting three skeletons. After defeating the skeletons, he turns his rage upon my dark elf character. He is yelling that Skyrim is for the Nords, and no one else. I defeat him Later, I travel to Markarth where I am attacked by Vigilant Tyranus with his shock spells. Everyone, including the guards, gets out of the way. After attempting to put him down - I think he is one of the eternal characters who can't be killed outside of a scripted event, I attempt to flee the city. He chases me to the stables where I abruptly put an end to the battle by loading an earlier save.

Don't make excuses for Bethesda's programming. The bartender in one of the inn's says "I can't believe you have the nerve to show up here" but when I talk to him he thanks me for some minor quest I did for him.

That was the first thing I did when I had hired thugs come after me on my first character. I marched straight to where the NPC was all pissed off and ready and play a friendly game of Staby-Stab. Then I get there and the NPC greets me warmly, says how wonderful it is to have "people like me" around and has no new dialogue.... I then try to stab her anyway only to find out this is an immortal NPC. I was... upset.

That was all in the first ~5 hours of playing and it really damaged my excitement for the game because I realized what "type" of game I was playing and it's not as deep and fulfilling as I had hoped. There's lots of other things like that in the game that some event/note leads to me to want to pursue a course of action, investigate further, ripe someone's lungs out through their belly button, etc... But Bethesda was too lazy to actually include it so it's just a dead end.

If I were a guard and I saw an adventurer getting chased by bandits, I'd figure the adventurer could handle them himself. Unless he gets an arrow in the knee. Then he'll become a coworker.

Yea its ridiculous that the guards don't go after hired thugs, but swarm around you like bees to a honey when you steal an apple.
Furthermore the hired thugs are not levelled, it seems, i had a hard time killing them. But still, they have good loot (for my level, think i was level 5 or something) and 100 gold each thats half a dragon.

It's yet another one of those ideas that are cool on paper and at first sight but don,t hold up any further. So yeah, some girl in Markath send thugs after me... But I never even went to Markath in that save! However, in my own save the guards actually came to my help. I was in Ivarstead when they attacked, and the whole damn town descended on the poor fools like a pack of angry dogs. Didn't have to life a finger.

Later on, during the Battle for Whiterun, a random NPC for whom I had done a Radiant quest or another gets killed. Immediately after, and I mean minutes, a guard comes up (mid-battle) and hands me a letter saying I get 300 gold in inheritance from him. I mean, I appreciate the thought, but wow, that guy is Forever Alone incarnate if random strangers are important enough to inherit from him, and wills are serious business indeed in Skyrim if the town guard enforces them even as the city is being besieged by rebels, going so far as to just hand them over to the crazy gal that's throwing around fire spells as if it was the 4th of July.

My Ranger encountered an NPC out in the woods. The NPC didn't have much to say, so I checked out the lair. Everything was tagged as stealing, so I didn't take anything. I did break into the basemant to have a look around. Apparently I looked at something I shouldn't have, because when I came out of the basemant, the NPC attacked me. I had to kill it, so I went back and looted everything in the place.

2-3 days later, I'm in the heat of a dragon fight with several guards, when three strangers come walking calmly up to me in the middle of all the mayhem, and politely informed me that this wasn't going to be my day. I had to reload several time before I finally decided to lead the thugs up to the guards first before triggering the dragon. The guards did attack the thugs and defeat them, but probably because they were tagged as companions.