Quite simply, are there any mods out there that remove all the "essential" tags from NPCs?
I'm fine with protected tags, but the whole idea of making someone immortal just to make the game impossible to lose is silly.

Even if it only affects vanilla Skyrim NPCs and none of the DLC NPCs, any help would be marvelous.

I'd do it myself, but I don't quite know how to use the Creation Kit for anything other than making new weapons.

Secondly, I'm curious if there are any mods that are still being updated that drastically reduce the amount of jewelry and gems gained from random loot in Dwemer Ruins, on enemies, etc.
On Dragonborn, I've got more than I know what to do with thanks to Lurkers, and definitely far more than I can sell without investing too many perks in the "Speech" tree.

I'd like to see a system similar to Morrowind, where if you killed an "essential" NPC (or allowed them to die), a message popped up more or less telling you that the world was doomed, and you could continue, but you wouldn't be able to complete the MQ. So you did know when to reload, or not care if your char wasn't supposed to complete the MQ.
Of course, that's mostly out of nostalgia rather than a working knowledge of good gameplay.