I don't mind essential companions, but I feel like if they turn hostile, we should be able to kill them. They should make companions to be like settlers. They can't be killed by regular enemies but if they turn hostile, you can kill them. Companions are not related to quests, so I feel like we should have been able to kill them if we so choose.

They're completely immortal? I thought that they couldn't die while following you, but you could kill them if they weren't. Haven't tried it though.

You can kill Hancock and the faction companions once you progress far enough, but you can't kill the rest of the companions like Piper, Codsworth, Curie, MacCready, etc. There are instances where I want to kill them just for RP purposes. I'm not even sure why we can't kill them if they turn hostile. I understand the game is easier to manage if you don't want to micromanage your companion, but if they turn hostile, there's no reason why we can't kill them.

If you are on PC, there are console commands to kill them, or change their essential settling, to help with your RP.

setessential

Clicking on the character should get their id, but I am not 100% sure if it is their base id or some kind of ref id.

They should have added that option to survival mode if they didn't want to piss off new players.

That's the ref ID.

Also, OP, I'm inclined to agree. But hey, more people would [censored] if they were killable so I guess Beth was just like w/e.

Should be an option. Thankfully I hate companions so I never use them.

Edit: Though, on a better note, almost no one (besides companions) is essential. That's a plus.

Nope, even unimportant NPCs are essential. Magnolia is essential because she's related to Travis' quest, and you can't kill her until then. All the faction enemies are killable, but most random NPCs are essential. We should be cut off from quests if we kill them off as opposed to just having them kneeling down. The Diamon City major can't be killed either. Basically, non-faction quest related NPCs are all essential until you finish their quests. it ruins a lot of immersion. I got caught stealing within my own settlement. I can't kill Piper and Codsworth who go hostile on me. I SHOULD be able to kill them if I so choose, and their quests should just be cut off if I decide to do so.

Yeah, NPCs suffer from Skyrim hand-holdey disease, where they make everyone and their brother and their pet dog essential because "they're related to quests", and make it impossible to fail a lot of quests (and of those that can be failed, the only way to fail them is to either not respond in time or to make a faction your enemy)

New Vegas had it right: You could count the number of essential people in the game at any one time on one hand (Except companions, and that was only when they were following you. And even then you could turn it off via hardcoe mode.) And if they died too bad so sad. People have this inane idea that if you don't make them essential then random stuff will kill them. Which is nonsense because 1st, 97% of all named non-hostile NPCs stay in their buildings or cities anyway, and 2ndly even the ones that don't such shenanigans are very rare.

Yeah and if they don't make them essential you get threads like these: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1574766-i-cant-hardly-find-any-quests/

I personally would prefer few to no characters were essential. I also would like to be ALLOWED to fail a quest if I want to (and/or refuse it and have it NOT show up in my quest list/move to finished/failed quests) (I HATED it in Skyrim when a gajillion quests got thrown into my journal that I didn't want and had no way of removing them; I remember I got the stupid lighthouse quest and tried to force fail it by killing the two Argonians who started it, but no, the jerks were marked essential, and even when I consoled their essential-ness away, it still wouldn't fail/remove the quest. SO ANNOYING.).

Obsidian proved it could be done right and well with New Vegas. Sometimes yes, your actions would prevent you from getting quests but it also almost always opened up storylines the way YOU wanted to play them, and I seldom felt railroaded. The many ways you could deal with Benny was but one example. If I wanted to kill him early and earn permanent hostility from the Chairmen I could. Awesome. I was fine with losing out on the star-search quest as a result. And the main quest was scripted well enough to adapt to that.

And indeed, I also want non-essential companions. I loved that Charon died protecting me from a Behemoth in Fallout 3, and I let his honorable and exciting heroic death stand. In Fallout 4, as I painstakingly tried to disable every single trap in Jamaica Plain and Deacon at the very end just decides to walk through the laser trip wires... you can BET if he hadn't been essential I would have let his sorry ass get turret-fired to death and have enjoyed that fact. (And indeed, it's annoying the real reason they made companions essential is because their AI makes them too stupid to live otherwise. Setting them to essential is the easy way out.) (And yes, if the companions turn hostile, their essentialness should shut off.)

BUT...

I also get that Bethesda is damned if they do and damned if they don't. Even if they do like they did in Morrowind, where they put up big obvious flags that say, "IF YOU DO THIS, THE STORY BREAKS," some total idiot who needs his hand held while he plays would complain AFTER getting that warning about how it's so unfair that he did this thing the game warned him not to do and then he broke his playthrough. For every person who's desperate to have real choices, consequences, and agency, there's two people who complain when they are forced to face the obvious results of their actions and complain nonstop about it. Bethesda has chosen to cater to the lowest common denominator--and honestly, given some of the feedback thrown their way, I can't really blame them. Shame it makes my playthroughs a little less fun, but I still do have fun, so I'll deal.

Most people don't just randomly kill people they see. Those who do can deal with the consequences. It's not like they'd kill everyone, maybe a particular they hate or have something against.