I dont know why you cannot you destroy the dark brotherhood after finishing "With Friends Like These" and not killing astrid. Astrid becomes like invulnerable. I'm try to play a good character my first playthrough.

Bbethesda could please come up with a patch so you can still " destroy the dark-brother" after finishing "With Friends Like These" and leaving astrid alive?

This needs to be moved to the spoiler section.

My current game is too far away form that save. i cannot go back to that quest.

anyone else think this is a good idea?

Can't you just turn down the difficulty if you can't kill her?

She turns Essential.... ie Unkillable.

She didn't for me.

That's weird... maybe a bug which gives you an actual choice. Testing myself: As soon as I have started the main quest-line.. Every member becomes essential except for the spider.. (which is why I needed to try and kill 'em.. A Rat as a Pet and a skeleton defender I can live with, but to keep one of thos freakin' spiders as a pet, that's just wrong..)

On a side note: I felt the DB was more straight out evil in this one. In TES IV your targets were for the most part people with a little bad streak.

You cannot kill astrid once you leave the shack. I just wish the game still gave you the choice to backstab the brotherhood anytime you wanted to.

If you are good then why did you join them? I killed her in the shack and then got the mission to destroy the DB. I thought that was pretty good of myself.

By the time I knew you could kill her, I've explored several ruins and quest, going back to my old save would have been a waste of time.

Basically, I just want to role-play a good character. Maybe on my next play thourgh, I would become dark brotherhood.

I wish they remove the invulnerability for the dark brotherhood and allow "dark brotherhood" quest.

You end up killing her in the end, anyway...