I'm finding Essential NPCs increasingly annoying.

I skulk upon this ritual site; obviously pure necro-evil. Some black hooded figure named "Carnella" up in the distance surrounded by what appear to be skeletors.

So I remain hidden and pop a dwarven arrow in her back. Takes her down to about 1/3 or 1/4 health, and I dive into hiding again. Repeat 3 or 4 times. Finally I decide that, ah maybe to kill this bad buy I gotta get two shots in quick. So I move in closer and manage to get a couple more shots off, but this time she spots me and we start to fight.

She smacks hard for a mage, and I have to resort to dipping into my food reserves . . . then she summons a freaking Dremora Lord *GRRRR!* So after I get her down kneeling (actually thought I'd killed her cause I noticed her health bar had NO red) I'm shocked that the Demon doesn't disappear . . . ah maybe that is a new thing in Skyrim where summons persist for a duration past when their summoner dies . . . ah well, better just not die! I dip a little deeper into the food/potions and duke it out with the Demon a bit and realize [censored]!; nope. He defintely out DPSes me. So I run, with so many stamina boosters I leave him in the dust, though he and his master keep following me a bit.

What!? I thought I killed her! Ah maybe I didn't strike the death blow . . .

So I repeat the scenario above, but this time with her out on the road and me from a much closer little cliff face. After peltering her with some arrows I hop down and power hit her with my glass sword. Okay that should be it she is dead now She down on her knees, me swacking away, now realizing just how stupid the concept of an Essential NPC is in a sand-box game . . . So I swack her a half-dozen times or so and get a level on 1h out of it in addition to the couple levels of archery and block . . . Then she miraculously goes to full health and resummons her demon buddy so I run off.

Maybe I just played Oblivion so much that I intuitively knew who not to try to kill? But in my memory I NEVER had this kinda experience in Oblivion: attacking what might otherwise seem to be legitimate evil or 'morally questionable' targets in the wilds only to find that they are unkillable, a rather immersion breaking experience to put it simply.

My questions:

1. Am I missing something? Is there some clue(s) that I should be attending to to alert me that "Don't even try to kill this NPC, he/she is immortal?" In a previous disaster, I noticed that, among the Khajiit caravan over by Whiterun, two of them are Essential, one isn't. They all have names. Thus, it would seem there is really no way to know based on the text you get when you hover over if they are or are not killable?

One thing that just occured to me: I could see Carnella's name even though I was quite far away, so maybe that is it? Essential NPCs display their name to you when you cursor over them with a range weapon even at quite far range maybe?

If that is the case, and that is a reliable system to ascertain who and who is not unkillable then, okay, fair enough problem solved. But if not . . .

2. Is there a really good mod that somehow rectifies these issues? Obviously there is always the console, but a mod that somehow changed the Essential NPC dynamic across the board might be nice.

3. Is there a console command to remove aggro from an Essential NPC once you've fought them? In my previous disastrous encounter with the Essential NPC dynamic (the Khajiit caravneers) what happened was, I built my Tundra Defense too close; bandits spawned near the Khajitt and fought them; I ran up to get into the fight; accidentally hit one or more of the Khajit causing them to go aggro on me. I know how to remove the bounty for these 'crimes' but I couldn't figure out the console command to turn them back to non-aggro.

Thanks.

Normally an essential NPC is someone with a quest that has not been yet completed.
If you played Oblivion, you'll know that when you got close to an NPC your cursor would change according to if he was essential or not.

As for a mod, lucky you there is one.
Just look for ''No Essential NPC'' in the steam workshop if of course you are playing PC version.
But be careful with it you can easilly break the game if you are not careful by killing main quest characters.

And the game can break itself by killing off its own NPCs, too.

Thats why some are Essential.
Its to protect them so the player can complete the quest related to them

It's a safety mechanism to keep quests intact.

Granted there is a caste of player who actually want the game to be able to break itself, by the players whim or otherwise, because it's more real for them, immersion, blah blah blah, etc etc.

Never even heard of this NPC.

With the mod I was talking about. It is made as such that only the player can kill the Essential NPC's

''

Most essential NPC's have a protection flag, which basically means they can only be killed by you.

I decided to do this because many accidents can happen, such as a dragon killing an NPC without your awareness,etc.''

There's a 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVhfFlGD1hI' in the Interesting NPCs mod.

Yeah, Skyrim is foolproof, you can never fail anything. Even if you wanted to.

Well, apart from getting killed on combat.

So modders don't want you to kill their NPCs either.

When most quests are "Kill this", "retrieve that", "Go place, put thing in slot A" or otherwise...Personal death is the only real failure there is.

Thanks for the replie guys.

Ah, so Carmella is from the Interesting NPCs mod! How ironic

Apart form installing the mod to be able to kill them (and thanks for that link) is there any way to discern which ones with names are and are not essential?

Besides trying to kill them, AFIAK nope.

Great . . . so does anyone know what the console command to remove aggro from them is?

As a sneaky archer I tend to shoot first and ask questions later; esp. when it comes to suspicious looking NPCs out at necromantic ritual sites in the wilderness.

Well, typing "tai" (toggle AI) in the console makes an NPC immobile and unresponsive. That's all I got.

stopcombat followed by setav aggression 0

That Interesting NPCs mod looks amazing, how did I miss it? *downloading*

Thanks bro. That will pretty much fix my problems with Essential NPCs and allow me to shoot first and ask questions later

It'd be something to defeat anyone the player wanted. All we'd need is a caption popping up, saying "You've severed the thread of prophecy!" --- for the MQ, at least. Wonder if the player is at fault if he messes up the NPCs of a nonMQ? That foreboding sense of consequences.
This too. The games have gotten ... more intelligent/interactive with NPC behavior. They could mess themselves up on their own, as is