This was being discussed a bit in another thread a few days ago but for the life of me I can't find it now. Anyway I was messing around for the first time last night just to try some things. I've only role played up to this point but was considering a pure evil character who's only goal in Skyrim would be to cause chaos everywhere he travels. To experiment on the effectiveness of such a character I took my high level warrior and went into a couple of towns to see who all could actually be killed. Now up to this point I've only known that the kids and a few leaders on the civil war quest line couldn't be killed but I assumed certain quest givers would also be essential because of this. However what I've found is that there are so many essential NPC characters in towns that making my planned character would just not be any fun.

There are so many people in Skyrim that can't be killed that half the town would still be alive when I was done. Yes you get endless guards but it's crazy how many NPC's are marked essential even after the quests they are involved with are completed. Brynjolf in Riften couldn't even be damaged. I couldn't do anything to him at all, not even drop him to one knee. WTF? I didn't think it would be this bad. They just made the game world way too safe. It's stupid. You PC guys are so lucky that you have the ability to turn all that crap off. Hopefully one of these days I'll be back on board with a decent PC but for now I'm stuck with this. It's just frustrating. I don't understand why they made so many people unkillable especially once you've completed their quests. It's just no fun at all making a really evil character in this game.

evil characters dont kill everybody they just do bad stuff and kill some of the people not everyone ,and by the way if you are that bad why Brynjolf i mean is in the thieves guild i know its not bad at all but a evil character will not kill someone that do also bad stuff

THe problem is not the fact that people are essential, my issue is that people remain essential even after their uses are done and over with.

I miss the Morrowind days. I think that they probably decided to make important followers essential because of all of the random dragon encounters. Much better to have a few people complain about too many essential characters than have a huge amount of people complain because dragons killed all of the NPCs that give quests, lol..

I'm almost certain a serial killer don't give two [censored]s about who they kill,

An evil person can kill other evil people. Part if being evil is having no remorse for killing others.

So you're saying that criminals should never kill other criminals? Man somebody better pass that on to the drug cartels.

I think you nailed it. In Morrowind you didn't have to worry about a cliff racer killing Vivec on accident. And considering how ADD the dragons are, that's a real concern. It does svck that they don't stop being essential after they have finished being useful. I think there's an entire contingent of people just waiting to kill Delphine.

How about making essential NPC's essential to everyone except the player?

Most likey this, I've had three dragons attack whiterun and RIfften with all qeust people running off to attack the dragons (with three minor chrs being killed off.)

Although it's not the case for some don't most essential chrs become UNessential once you have finished there quest line? the companions atleast become non-essentail after doing there qeusts.

This mechanic is already in the game. No reason why it shouldn't be in place for all essentials.

i really wish they would get rid of the whole "essential npc" crap, if i wanna kill the blade losers and screw up the whole main quest then i should be able too, ive tryed the same char as you stated op and i also was left with way to meny npcs still alive even after i ravedged whiterun for 30 mins there was still 4 or 5 npcs, i love the extreme evil chars have made them for all beth games ive played, in fallout 3 the entire wasteland was a ghost town with no one left alive once i was done. why cant skyrim be like that.

That... could be a really simple and effective solution.

Win

New Vegas has no essential NPCs. Kill an important person? You're fault. It was even designed so that even if you murdered everyone, the game still continues.

"You know what's wrong with Skyrim these days? Everyone is obsessed with death!"

Seriously.. I agree with this guy.. Are you truly that obsessed with death that you are upset that you can't kill everybody?

Yes! I never go around and kill everyone on a "normal" playthrough, but sometimes it's just fun to load up a game and kill everyone.

One of the many things I love about New Vegas. Not to mention that the Important NPC's aren't going to get killed by a random Deathclaw.

Newsflash: Skyrim is an RPG. Role playing game. Therefore, if I want to murder people, I can. All this useless essential stuff is annoying. Ever do the civil war and complete it? It's annoying going to the camps and the Legates/Stormcloak Generals being invincible.

I've made a thread before about how a generic guard out in the overworld was essential. Essential NPCs are worse than the psychic guards in Cyrodiil. Once you've pissed someone off, there are times when you literally have no choice but to reload the game.

The percentage of essential actors relative to the rest of the populace is quite low. The trouble is that there tends to be a correlation between who is essential and who the player wants to kill, which leads to the impression that there are an abundance of essential actors when in fact there are not.

I never understood what was so bad about the way Morrowind dealt with this: you kill an important NPC, and the game tells you that you might want to reload an earlier game if you want to finish major quest-lines.

With frequent autosave, there's a guarantee that you'll have an earlier save that won't undo too much of your hard work.

I used to go in Tenpenny tower and put piles of mines outside everyone's doors while they were asleep. Then I would speed up time to the next morning. The simultaneous explosions with people flying everywhere was great. It's just fun to have a character that causes havoc like that. Just the total opposite extreme of my good character.

Go to Riften and give it a go. You'll be surprised how many people in that town are essential. I swear it seemed like half the town was chasing me around. Whiterun was quite a bit better but there were still too many. But even if it was just 3 or 4 it would still tick me off. I didn't like it when I simply couldn't kill the Imperial commanders when I did the Stormcloak side of the civil war in my first playthrough. I'm supposed to be stopping them but I go to clear out their camp only to find the commander is unkillable. I had already sided with the Stormcloaks and progressed well into the campaign. It was clear I wasn't going to help the Empire at that point so why not remove the essential marker from their commanders? It just made no sense at all. This game is about freedom but in this point we are restricted.

Please make Alvor essential. That guy dies everytime when a dragon attacks riverwood.
As for riften, it is the hardest city to murder, because like garrison said, 1/2 of the city is essential. Maven, jarl laila....=.=