I would characters important to the plot remain essential (Tullius, Ulfric, Greybeards, Elenwen, etc.) until they are no longer necessary after which they could be killed.

I don't mind them, if they plan on making use of them later. A writer can create a more epic setting for the death of an essential NPC than the player can.

That is, if they do it at all. But if they don't, then it svcks.

Like followers, yes that one should work well.

Agreed!

It's all very nice when it is only the character who can kill them off...but currently I have at least a couple of shops in my main game where I can't trade because the shopkeepers are dead due to dragons.

This guy knows what's up.

Essential NPCs need to be in the game, otherwise we'd be back to the old Oblivion problem of dead Trainers and messed up quests. One way it could be done is to set the essential flag on NPCs which are important, but only the player has the ability to kill an essential npc. That way, accidental essential npc deaths would be avoided, but players would have the option to break a quest on moral grounds while roleplaying.

lol yeah, imagine all the people whining because of broken quests...they already do now...

The 'essential' tag is there so that major quests can be completed without breaking a quest chain. In say, Fallout: New Vegas, all major quest NPCs tended to be located inside, away from wildlife that could kill them, leaving the only way for a quest to fail was for the player to deliberately kill the quest givers. In Skyrim, it could be possible for an important quest NPC to get killed by wildlife, so the essensital status is there for a reason.

Some kind of "hardcoe mode" could have a feature that all NPC's are killable. Then the players who ruin important quests by killing certain characters and whine about it had only themselves to blame. However, NPC's should run inside during dragon attacks...

I have never had the desire or inclination to kill any of the essential NPC's...my characters don't have the motivation for it...so it wouldn't make any difference to me.

It's really only dragons that are a significant threat though - unless you lead a bear into Ivarstead or something, the general wildlife seems not to wander into town. At any rate, it's simple to make sure nothing spawns too close to town. If just dragons were prevented from killing certain NPCs it could work.

Once in New Vegas I imagined the shot in the head had brain damaged my character. I gave them 1 intelligence and 10 strength and endurance and they attacked every single person they met, starting with doc Mitchell. It was fun to go totally berzerk and break the game. Quest fail alerts were popping up all over the place. It was a lot of fun to do that just for a change. You can't go berzerk like that in Skyrim because of the sheer volume of people it's just impossible to kill.

I can see why making the major story npc's essential; General Tulius, Ulric Stormcloak, Esbern, etc, but the sheer amount of BS npc's in this game with essential tags is staggering. It's almost random. The worst offenders(imo) being the captains at Stormcloak/Imperial camps. Why? Once you sign up for one side or the other, those tags need to be removed. Really hard to fight a war against unkillable, generic unnamed foes.

I understand the need for some of them, but sometimes it feels like over half the population of Skyrim is "essential." I'm all in favor of the above mentioned "killable by PC only" option.

Yes, and killing an essential npc could even spawn a whole new hidden questline.

I agree.

Or at least give the option to choose an "hardcoe mode" like FNV where everyone is killable and you have to sleep,drink etc. and the essentials Npcs are killable even by the wildlife when they're nearly useless to the player.

But most of all to avoid merchants that fight a dragon like they were the dragonborn 'cause my Riften market is almost empty at this point due to this "strange vocation"

Whatever happened to the pre-release stuff about if a merchant/quest giver gets killed Radiant Story will put in a family member or someone else in that role so you can still finish the quests.

Also, I don't understand why towns folk just come running with bare fists to take on a dragon. Isn't that what town guards are for? Wouldn't the sight of a dragon scare the out of them? I mean, most of the time I don't even realize a dragon is about to attack a town until I see the guards draw their bows or someone yells, "a dragon!!". Couldn't these people be scripted to run into the nearest building during an attack and let the guards do the work?

And I like the semi-essential idea so only the player can kill them and not monsters/NPC's.

That's why i love the CK, it lets me go on a killing spree! ^^

I agree with OP. It robs the player of some consequences of their actions, and takes away a bit of randomness.

The killable after quest is given is in the game. Just maybe not for all NPC's. My Nord fighter was on a personal "kill all Thalmo"r quest and couldn't figure out how to kill the agents in Markarth. He took the quest and proceeded to destroy the Thalmor agents. Not killable prior to taking quest, now dead after.

The killable by player only may be doable but might present a coding issue. I am not a coder by any means but thi seems to be something that would take extra code and may present extra bugs.

Surely It's just a simple check if alive and respawn if dead?

In Oblivion I think it only took a simle change to the ini file to make everyone killable. As noted the problem with Skyrim is dragons. So if there was a way to make "Semi-essential" NPCs that can only die to the player that would be great.

It would actually also be fun to play trough with everyone killable just to see how desolate it could get from dragon attacks lol.

I've done the Civil war for the Stormcloacks, but the Imperial leader of each Imperial Camp can't be killed...i hate that.

But i think that the other ones must stay this way, 'Cause if not, a lot of quests would be broken.

The amount of essential NPCs is directly related to the poor planning and lack of RPG design experience from Bethesda's current staff.

If there had been some basic storyline planning done, there would be contingencies for an NPC death. If a player wants to, they should be able to walk up to Ulfric and Fus Ro Dah him into the wall. When that happens, there should be a plan in place. Who takes over? Does the civil war fail? Do the opposing questlines change?

This is the first basic step in designing an RPG campaign. It would even be moddable if the game wasn't voice acted, but it would take someone with an army of voice actors to revoice the existing dialogue to make new adaptive dialogue fit.

clearly you have no idea how complicated would that be, considering that every single player could do things differently from another.
and that's why unkillable NPCs has been invented on the first place.

Totally agree.