There are indeed too many. It seems like there are even some that are never tied to quests to begin with. But I do like that the ones tied to important quests can't be killed by outside means.

This please.

This.
There is an autonomous, free roaming "big bad" that can whup any civilian in the game without blinking, so while the essential tag is annoying sometimes, it's a necessary evil.
Otherwise you'd see a lot more people bwaaing about how a dragon slaughtered every person in Whiterun and now it's a ghost town and they can't turn in X or Y quest or whatever.

Except where a quest has been removed, I'm not aware of any NPC who is essential, but not part of a quest, or offering a service. That annoying Nord in Windhelm? You can brawl with him. I assume that's why the flag. Those legates (and the stormcloak equivalent) are from the CW - but the quest line was altered and they were never unflagged (there were going to be more quests in that line). Do some of these people saying "they're not part of a quest" realise how many quests there are? Have you done every one? Really? There may be a couple of mistakes where someone was flagged, and then the flag left instead, but most really are part of a quest. In theory you could script them to lose the flag after a quest was done, but perhaps Beth had better things to do than pander to people who favour indiscriminate killing.

Especially when you consider that with all the radiant stuff, it seems like just about any minor NPC can be randomly selected for involvement in such a wide variety of quests. You might not think so-and-so is important enough to be essential until 50 levels into your game when you have to go beat them up, pickpocket something off them, or rescue them from kidnappers and can't because they died 20 levels ago and it seemed like no big deal at the time.

I think there are many mods that allow you to remove essential status from all characters. I think it's even possible to do it yourself through console commands and a bit of googling.

Anyway, I don't like the fact that many NPCs are essential but I can understand why. It's probably to stop people from doing something that they will regret a few hours later or even more simply to stop game-breaking bugs.

I meant remove the "essential" tag via console, not kill them. That would indeed remove all the fun.

This, Riverwood normally gets beat like a drum. Can't imagine one jumping into Solitude with all the NPC's being non-essential.

NPCs are not essential to prevent the player from killing them. NPCs are essential to keep the game from killing them.

Morrowind didn't need essential NPCs because NPCs didn't move. They could be placed in safe surroundings. The instant NPCs were granted the mobility to wander into trouble on their own there was a need for an essential flag of some kind. Now it's conceivable that it could have been handled better, in a less heavy-handed way. But essential NPCs will never go away entirely as long as NPCs are mobile and can walk into danger on their own.

Then the dragon attack scripting should've been handled better. No need to be so heavy-handed and make half the game immortal. Some of us LIKE the risk of having to deal with real consequences like someone who could've been really helpful dying. Some of us like to feel the rush of a dragon attack feeling like it matters since the lives of vulnerable NPCs are at stake.

I can't think of one essential NPC that I had a burning need to kill and couldn't. Who are y'all trying to kill, that you can't, and it's ruining your game? I get to kill everyone I want, I kill thousands of people, and I could kill hundreds more if the objective of my game was to clear out the towns and settlements. Who's on the hit list here? Derkeethus? And I'll withdraw my prior post's sarcastic comment about not being able to kill a bum (cuz' I know the OP was being facetious.. well, I think he was). Some NPCs have to be essential for those players who want to pursue their quests. If that's not for you, like it or not, you have to overlook it. Think of all the crap you have to overlook every day in the real world. There's a million things you can't do a damn thing about, millions of people you may find abhorrent but can't kill. So look - the game's more realistic than you thought, eh?

On the flip side, who's getting killed (by dragons, it seems, most often) that's ruining your game? I can only think of maybe a couple of occasions where a named NPC got killed by a dragon. Hold off on the MQ if you want to have a dragon-free game for a while. That's what i do. Just don't get or turn in the dragonstone, and do all the other stuff in Skyrim.

I kinda liked the suggestion that NPCs be immortal to other NPCs but not the PC, but the problem there is this: Let's say in the event of a dragon attack, any given single person (maybe a merchant like Lami or minor quest-giver like Roggi) will survive a dragon's attack, probably fighting back until, impossibly enough, they have slain the dragon. It kind of takes the imperative off the player, you see? There's no need for a hero if any given NPC in the game is immortal and can slay the most fearsome of foes.

In most RPG games you can't kill whomever you want, You can't run up and attack people they have to turn hostile before your allowed to draw weapons. The only game I can recall that gives you more freedom to kill non-hostile NPC's is Morrowind and the original two Fallout games. Most games don't even let you attack non-hostile NPCs unless they attack you first.

And even then there was always someone [censored]ing that they killed so and so but never saw a notifcation that it failed a quest they hadn't even started yet.

Im not trying to kill anyone.
I in fact go out of my way to ensure everyone survives.
But that is not the point. The point is that it breaks immersion to have half a world unkillable.
In Morrowind I could kill Vivec, if I was powerful enough. That is how it should be. I didnt, but the fact that I could made it a better RPG.

When NPC's get attacked by a random dragon, they shouldnt just keep on fighting.
They shouldnt die either. So have em 'fall to a knee' and remain like that for the duration of the fight.

New Vegas was excellent in that everyone really important either had a replacement or was in a place not easily gotten to and well defended.

Essential NPC's should have no place in a TES game.
If I break a quest, oh yes please let me be able to do that.
Im sick of games so simple a 5 year old can play them, because failure is impossible.

You've probably read this in the thread already, but im going to be a broken recorder : There are probably more people who would rant and rage because all of their quests are getting screwed up by dead NPCs. So its probably a majority issue

Anyway my gripe is that essential NPCs totally spoil assassination. Lets say there are two people in the room; you kill one and proceed to kill the other, thereby removing your bounty. But shock and horror, that NPC is essential! And the bounty's stuck. Made me pissed when i was on my "lets kill civilians" spree. Also, i have no ruddy idea why are the captains and leaders of the stormcloaks and imperials essential.

Talos knows how many times i've wanted to totally annihilate a camp, only to find that the leader of the camp is yet again, essential.
Its infuriating. And about the possiblity of those leaders being quest guys; i would rather they be replaced with a generic "captain", rather than named npcs (at least i think they're named, memory fails me.)

From what I've read there were plans at one point to extend the CW storyline by adding radiant quests that would be given out by the commanders of the various camps. They were tagged as essential because they were intended to be quest-givers. The extra quests for the two CW factions ended up not making it into the game but the essential flags on the commanders never got removed.

Sounds good in theory but pretty soon you would have empty cities. And not all of the NPC's are essential. I have had a number of them killed on me. In one event, Sven was eaten right in front of his new girlfriend. I had to laugh at that one, especially when the townsfolk stood around his body and made comments about leaving trash laying around.

There's one last Silverblood who hasn't met justice yet. Someday I'm going to remove his essential flag. The corrupt people of Markarth will wake up one morning and find his corpse floating in their drinking water.

I'm fine with people tied to quests being essential, at least until the quest is finished. But the weird thing is, there are questgivers who aren't essential, but people with absolutely nothing to do or say except generic comments who are. It makes no sense whatsoever.

But that is still a problem with the current system. There are several times I am told to beat up an NPC that is already dead, so unless I can reload a previous save, I have a broken quest. If NPCs were immortal against everyone but the player, it would work much better. Sure, it's not perfect. There still are some problems, such as players killing important NPCs. A simple warning could be that all important NPCs drop to a knee before you finish them off, which would bring their importance to your attention and possibly make you reconsider your actions. This system would prevent quests being broken due to random events. If I get a broken quest, I want it to be because of ME, because of MY actions, not because some dragon on its period felt like wiping out the whole city.

If NPCs involved in IMPORTANT questlines, like the main quest and guild questlines, are invincible, fine. But most essential NPCs have such small roles that they could very easily be replaced by a generic, unnamed NPC and no one would know the difference. There's no need to make those small characters invincible. Making all NPCs immortal against other NPCs, but killable by the player seems like a good, albeit flawed, solution. That seems to be a better way to handle it than to have the dozens of immortal, small characters we have now.

That's fine as long as your followers and allies can still kill other NPCs, if not then it's not a good solution at all. Even if you never use a follower by choice, there are still plenty of situations in the game where you are fighting alongside a temporary follower or group of allies, and... what? A whole bunch of soldiers attack a fort or city, a whole other bunch of soldiers are defending the fort or city, but the ONLY person involved who can actually inflict casualties on either side is me? And even if my followers and allies can kill other NPCs, the enemy NPCs can't, so there's really no point in fighting the battle, the enemies are gonna be dropping like flies and my guys will just take a knee and get back up. Yeah, sign me up for that.

Well the soldiers that are fighting are generic, so they should be able to die. I was talking about named NPCs, they shouldn't be able to die by other NPCs. But the player and any follower of the player should be allowed to kill everyone. But like I said, that system still has its flaws. I still think it would work better than the system currently in place. Though I will admit, it would be quite funny to see immortal guards fight each other. Especially if they were the trash-talking Oblivion guards.

There are still some enemies who are named NPCs and will have to be killed if you encounter them. They should not be immortal to your followers or allies either. I'm thinking of some dungeon bosses, and NPCs like Ulfric, Tullius, Galmar and Rikke at the end of the CW quests... obviously those are special cases. Nevertheless, making ALL named NPCs unkillable by default by everyone except the player isn't a satisfactory workaround IMO.

I said that your followers should be able to kill named NPCs, and I consider allies in quests to be the equivalent of followers so the same rules would apply to them. Named dungeon bosses wouldn't be a problem because I said that followers could kill them. And I didn't even bother to mention Ulfric, Tullius, Galmar, and Rikke because most players already agree they should be kill-able, along with the remaining soldiers, before and/or after the civil war questline is completed. I don't really see any problem with this system unless it would be difficult to code. NPCs (named or random) could still kill random NPCs, soldiers in the civil war quests would be able to kill each other because they are unnamed, followers/allies could kill named NPCs, so what's the problem? Perhaps I worded my position poorly, and there may be small flaws with this system, but it seems to me it has far fewer drawbacks than the current system in place.

Edit: And to add even more to this, certain quests involving potential combat between two or more named NPCs could disable their immortal status, so that during the select-few quests, named NPCs could kill other named NPCs. This could however make it trickier to code properly. Other than that problem, I don't see a problem worth mentioning. If there's a problem with it still, I'm all ears.

Doesn't the scenario you just described break immersion as well?

Have your cake and eat it too.
Essential NPC's are an annoyance.

In my 2nd game the Blacksmith and his wife in Riverwood were killed. It was only a minor annoyance to me because there are other Blacksmiths, but I've seen reports of certain NPCs being killed and ruining people's games, but I can't recall any right now. I wonder how the game would handle It's why I like the idea of essential versus NPCs, but non-essential versus PCs with a warning pop-up or, like OneironautMike mentioned knee drop.


I'm not sure the dragons are mammals.

This irritates me a bit. If a merchant dies or we kill them no one takes over their shop/business? Really? In a place like Skyrim where few are "rich" no one in a town is gonna' take over a shop or business? I know some NPCs take over for others, but this should be the case for all of the businesses even if a new person is generated - it wouldn't be difficult for the game to generate a new, non-sensical sounding name like Flergia Knot-Gut.