sthe guide is wrong, and like i said, they are hard to kill when they are down (their regeneration rate is set higher and they lose aggro if you are in the area)

Doesn't get any bigger? You do realize that auto saves are their own file, and the save file holds all the info on EVERYTHING you have done and/or changed in the game world? I was 88 hours in, my save was pushing 15MB.

Yeah, I hate immortal npcs...I hate to see an Elder Dragon destroying a Stromcloaks accampment...except that stupid immortal npc that keeps reviving.
I hate to see a Dragon of any kind attacking a city and not killing anyone because npcs start to beg and the kindhearted dragon don't kill them...
I hate immortal npcs and stupid godlike guards that can essentially withstand an Elder Dragon attack without anyone dying...

the game manual is wrong
esbern killed lydia a dozen times with those fireballs of his
so did exploding attronarchs or even people trying to hit me

npc's stop attacking your follower when they yield but if they get any AOE damage or just get caught in the crossfire they will die

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but it really bugged me with fighting the enemy camps in the civil war. Why the hell is a copypasted Imperial Legate
an essential character? Maybe its for hearing about joining their side, but if you pick a side that tag should be removed.

Also, if its not in the main questline, it'd be better if it just said 'quest failed', like some other misc quests do.

I agree completely on my character who join the legion, i thought it would be fun to go on a stormcloak killing spree at the encampments, but this one guy wouldn't die. i ended up knocking him down and booking it.

I agree its dumb. Why cant they at least get knocked out for an hour or so.

There shouldn't be any immortal characters. If Bethesda doesn't want other characters killing them when the player is not present, don't allow them to be killed by anyone but the player. Problem solved.
If people complain that such a thing breaks immersion because dragons can't kill off groups of people without one of them surviving, Bethesda should force that "essential" character to flee and hide, and tell the dragon to ignore him or her. Problem solved.
If Bethesda wants to write quests that revolve around very-specific NPCs and do not wish for anyone to be able to kill them, implement messengers to go between them and the player (already have couriers). Problem solved.

Seriously. These problems have been around for years and they just seem to get worse with each game. Our freedom will always be limited, but Bethesda seems to like taking more and more of it away whenever they get the chance.

It ruins a lot for me that they won't die. I pretty much can't go into the city anymore with getting hammered and it svcks.

I completely agree with the OP. This is the one thing that I truly hate about Skyrim.

Seriously, HOW HARD IS IT TO ADD A BUTTON TO ENABLE/DISABLE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERS?

I mean, someone at Bethesda could probably program this into the game in a couple hours. If you disable essential characters then you get this warning saying that this could break some quests, etc. etc. Why would anyone complain about this? Essentials could be enabled by default and then it is up to the player to decide if they want to risk it or not.

As someone said, it is getting worse and worse. I mean, there are essential characters EVERYWHERE. I could live with NPCs from the main quest and maybe even the guild quests being essential, but there are a ton of NPCs from side quests that are essential. It breaks immersion and it can be a pain if the immortal character wants to attack you forever.

I am glad other people are complaining about this. PC players don't have a problem because they can fix this easily, but console players have to live with this.

These seem to be easy solutions for the problem. I really don't understand why Bethesda doesn't implement them. Maybe they are not aware that this bothers some players? Maybe we are just a minority and everyone else is ok with this?

Signed. I have no idea what complete moron at Bethesda decided to flag half the NPCs in the game as "essential" instead of putting in the Morrowind system. They should go down on one knee and a warning should say "If you continue you will not be able to continue a quest". Then they should recover. Killing them a second time should have autofail to any quests they were attached to for that PC. If anyone is STUPID enough to complain their game is broken because they killed an NPC then we will shout them out of the place.

Saying that they can't do that because of the uproar from casual players is silly. People would adjust if there was a warning.

And yes, NPCs like dragons could not kill essential NPCs, only he PC could so we have no accidental deaths. This would please eveyrone, why couldn't they code it in?They already did with Morrowind. Ugh. Makes me kind of sick. At least mods will fix this for the PC. LIke almost everything else.

Ya I found them to be a real pain.. If they made Main Civil War Characters, Guild quest characters, and Main quest characters un-killable that would be fine.. But when we have old granny who makes sweet roles un-killable.. Thats a little ridiculous..

They don't want to make "complicated" RPG's anymore, and it's much easier to streamline and simplify a game by setting limits to what a player can do than adding consequences to their actions or providing alternative paths.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Essential_NPCs

It seems like there are close to 200 essential NPCs.

One description of an essential character from the wiki:

Legate Fasendil is located a near straight run south from Ivarstead in an Imperial camp which serves no particular purpose other than to create fodder (or allies) depending upon what side of the civil war you take.

Yeah, this guy is really essential to the story! <_<

It totally svcks. Its worse than oblivion; in oblivion after they revive they were almost guaranteed not to be hostile to you. but in skyrim, nooooooo they have super memories :spotted owl:

I don't like how so many people are essential either, and one of my mods is going to be converting all of them to Follower-style 'immortality', to include those involved in the main quest. If that means that killing some dude who pissed me off breaks a quest or three, so be it.

The way I see it, anyone who can't handle the consequences of killing off quest givers shouldn't be playing RPGs in the first place, nor should the games themselves be watered-down to the point where such people find them acceptable. If you kill off a quest-giver and got yourself stuck as a result, too fracking bad; you knew what was going to happen but did it anyway, so deal with it.

I'm gonna copypaste from my thread on the issue:

Essential Characters have to be the worst idea ever introduced into the Elder Scrolls series. I still can't fathom why Bethesda ever thought invincible characters would be a good idea. It was an awful mechanic in Oblivion, yet here we see it again, in Skyrim. Nothing breaks immersion worse than trying to assassinate someone and seeing them drop to their knees, unscathed by the dagger you just shoved into their back.

Why exactly did Bethesda implement this completely idiotic idea? If players want to go around killing NPCs, the game should let us. We shouldn't be unable to kill a character just because they are involved in a quest. Even characters involved in minor quests are invulnerable. A heroic character can't barge into the Thieves Guild and kill off the members, because half of them are invincible. Evil characters looking to assassinate someone have no way of knowing if the person will actually die when they hit them. It's a stupid idea in a game that advertises the ability to do anything you want.

I know some people might say that they like essential characters because it breaks quests, but really, if you're gonna go around killing random NPCs, you should be ready to face the consequences. While it's possible wildlife and dragons could kill off quest characters, why couldn't Bethesda just make quest NPCs unable to be killed by wildlife? This is the easiest compromise and ensures that quest characters will survive as long as the player doesn't deliberately kill them.

I remember in Morrowind, killing main quest characters would show a message something like "this character's death severs the thread of prophecy". I'd really like to see this type of system implemented again, because essential characters has to be the worst type of hand holding mechanic ever put into the game.

I've just being attacked by an Ancient Dragon in Dawnstar...being on master, it was a very hard fight. The beast killed all the imperial guards and the fight was EPIC, till the Immortal Jarl of Dawnstar and the Immortal Imperial Legate joined the battle, then all the epicness was ruined by these 2 immortal people attacking the dragon over and over again.
Another thing I noticed is that if a dragon breaths on you and a random npc is near you, the breath doesn't hit them even if they're BATHING in the flame/frost torrent...another stupid way to keep npcs alive...

I bet you voice acting is what caused this to be cut. Having to say "Go see X" would be too expensive to list if you were calling out each character's name.

I think the best solution is to simply revert to the character's title or race. "Go see a Brenton at this tavern in whiterun, she will know what to do". If the NPC has been killed simply spawn a new Brenton female chracter at that tavern.

Easy. I would much prefer this than saying each character's name....

new vegas is stupid, killing everyone in the game world is dumb, nothing respawned in new vegas pretty much and the map gets more desolate as you play the game and not even half way through the game world is pretty lifeless and boring. bethesda did it right, its not even reallistic to kill everyone, thats just plain stupid and acting like its fun to go kill everyone in a town is lame. i don't want half the inhabitants getting killed by dragons or whatever else, so its fine how it is.

Yeah, I was highly disappointed that I couldn't get a "Shut down the Theives' guild" type quest along the lines of destroying the brotherhood.

I agree, essential is incredibly dumb. You can get completely zoned into your character, and then when you hit another character with a giant fireball and he falls to his knees, you immediately go "Yeah, this is a video game, meh".

Do what you want as long as you do it within our defined parameters, be who you want as long as you're one of our designated character types.

Skyrim is no doubt a good game, but stuff like this prevents it from being a game that I'd go back and play 5 or 10 years from now.

Yeah but in Morrowind there was no intelligent AI. NPCs just stood there in the same spot or moved in their little cell. Now NPCs jump into fights can kill other NPCs and can be killed by dragons etc. People would be pissed if there were just minding their own business and up poped a message saying an essential NPC died when you had nothing to do with it. Especially if you haven't saved in a while.

Edit: Essential NPCs who are beaten should yeild afterwards, I know that some that I have encountered do.

Because immortal commoners is realistic?
And if you go around killing things, yes, it will be lifeless. That's generally what happens when things die.