I am doing with Dawnguard what I do with the MQ - I finish everything else first, that way, there's no real risk of dragons (or vampires) taking out important NPCs, moreover, when I get to the MQ, I am focused exclusively on dragons. When the DLC dropped, I was done with everything in Skyrim, so I attended exclusively to the DG stuff, and only lost 2 named NPCs (that I'm aware of) to vampire attacks: Ghorza (who had a broken invest option anyway (and was replaced by her assisstant, who let me invest)) and Umlaug (?). And when you're done with the DLC's MQ, the vampire spawns end anyway.
In my new, from-scratch game now, I'm holding off on the DLC (i.e., not even loading it) until after I've done everything (as is my preference). I might even load and complete the DLC before doing the MQ, but I don't know for sure.
I am doing with Dawnguard what I do with the MQ - I finish everything else first, that way, there's no real risk of dragons (or vampires) taking out important NPCs, moreover, when I get to the MQ, I am focused exclusively on dragons. When the DLC dropped, I was done with everything in Skyrim, so I attended exclusively to the DG stuff, and only lost 2 named NPCs (that I'm aware of) to vampire attacks: Ghorza (who had a broken invest option anyway (and was replaced by her assisstant, who let me invest)) and Umlaug (?). And when you're done with the DLC's MQ, the vampire spawns end anyway.
In my new, from-scratch game now, I'm holding off on the DLC (i.e., not even loading it) until after I've done everything (as is my preference). I might even load and complete the DLC before doing the MQ, but I don't know for sure.
thats for sure is one way to do it, but i think Bethesda should do something about it (its not that npc are getting killed but how they get killed when they should be running away from ancient dragon or vampire master they attack them with hands or iron daggers and get killed then they almost never get replaced that not too realistic) off course there are ways around it like you mentioned but that should not be how we should be playing the game. npcs should be programed differently and some new one should respawn in their place if they are killed