As the followers clearly show us.

The game is able to distinguish between NPC and Player damage. AKA - Enemies can't kill your Lydia, but you can.

If thats possible, making those NPCs unable to die via Dragon, but still killable by the player is as simple as "copy/paste".

they didnt do that because people would be constantly complaining about quests being broken and dragons can attack basically anywhere so important NPCs can randomly die, just look at Oblivion if you wanted master archery training you had to do it before you were like 10 hours into the game because she would constantly die

I know it's just me, but I've never had any problem with unkillable NPCs.

But, then, I don't understand this burning desire some people have to kill random townsfolk. I gave up going on "town rampages" back in Ultima 1, circa 1980. And I've never been very good at playing "evil" characters (a good portion of the Daedric quests in Skyrim are ones I'm not going to do, since they're much more obviously Evil!? than they were in Oblivion.)


:shrug:

Justifying bad and lazy design by playing the self-righteous snob.
You're totally going to convince everyone here !

Probably because Skyrim has a lot more going on than new vegas did, like random dragon attacks, a civil war with traveling parties, bandits etc. There are a lot of ways essential NPC's could get killed and break quests so they probably left it out. But they could make actors essential except to the player to fix that easily enough.

I kind of like the new vegas style though, freedom is good. I blew that old lady Alice's head clean off point blank at her desk after too many smug remarks, lol and I helped Cass get her revenge the old fashioned way. Was quite liberating Meh... then I reloaded and found the non violent way to do it hehehe. But still it was nice to see things play out in several ways.

This is not about me being a psychopath and killing everyone in sight. Its about me not being able to roleplay, to have freedom, just because someone might [censored] up his thieves guild questline if he kills the leader of the thieves guild (duh).

certain NPCs not being killable by monsters but killable by players is entirely possible. Why I know that, you ask? Because its already in the game. Get a companion. Dont come with this 'but thats hard to code and so many bugs could appear' crap.



Im going to repost this here, and make it really bold in the OP because chumps dont like reading, but still feel the need to post.

u cant kill essential quest givers because u never know who's going to be essential for future DLC. what if some kid on a console thought it would be funny to kill off every npc in the major cities. what happens to his game? he is essentially useless as a customer for DLC unless he rerolls

point is, the world is simply too big to allow for it. there r too many quests and too many people would kill off essential people, making DLC terrible.

What does this have to do with 'some kid on a console'?
Why would it not be logical to break most if not all quests if someone kills every npc in the major city? Why would you cater to the people who dont realize that?
This has nothing to do with DLC. They could just add new NPCs

nm

That was a case of not paying attention when they selected her campsite, she should never have been put there in the first place.

I suppose they should have put all the trainers in Skyrim indoors, since Dragons can't reach them there, however the ones outdoors are still a lot better protected than the outdoor ones in Oblivion, and actually have a decent chance of not getting roasted.

The quest aspect is really a no-win scenario for Bethesda; the current setup pisses off a lot of people (myself included) because it makes us feel like we're being treated like children, rather than advlts, but unfortunately there's a large number of people who, for whatever reason(s), simply cannot grasp the concept of 'consequences' and get all steamed when a quest breaks after they killed a related NPC. Unfortunately for those who feel as I do, Bethesda chose to cater to the 'I can't handle failure!' section of the fan-base in this regard.

To show you how silly it gets, I'll borrow a previous poster's example of raiding an Imperial fort: when you do this quest you discover (as he mentioned) that the Imperial Generals are essential, which is just [censored] since the entire point of the quest is to drive them out so the Stormcloaks can take the stronghold for their own use. The only time these NPCs should be essential is if you're backing the Empire, since then you want them to live.

The things that erk me is the overzealousness of the essential setting. I can understand it on Esbern, Delphine, and the other main story characters; What I do not understand is the entire thieves guild being set essential... I think only one person in the entire bar is actually killable. They could have made it so that quest givers fall on to a knee and then you get a warning saying "the fate of this world will be changed" or something to that effect.

Dito. I hate the Blackbriars but the bastards are untouchable. :banghead:

This is what really pissed me off about Riften.

Half of the NPCs I talk to - merchants, guards - all say that someone should take a party of guys down into the Ratway and finish off the Thieves Guild. I know that Brynjolf is needed for the MQ, but if you never start on the TG line, then he doesn't go down in the Ratway - he stays in the market.

So there's NO REASON, except for Unusual Gem quest, why every other NPC down in the Ratway shouldn't be killable. And if you kill Vex for the Unusual Gems, it should supply a second person. Anyone else has NO USE outside of the TG line.

So WHY...WHY...would NPCs constantly tell me that it would be a simple matter to go kill off the Thieves Guild, and yet it isn't actually possible?

Funny thing also, Brynjolf is not only essential, but also invincible. You cant even make him kneel down because its impossible for him to lose any hp.

So because bethesda is to lazy adn you cant protect them, I must put up with them for no god damned reason.

Obsidian did it in FNV.

because.. IN NORDIC SKYRIM, QUESTS BREAK YOU! :brokencomputer:

The reason u cant kill every NPC u want to is because of the dynamic dragns that can attack cities. Since dragons can attack cities, u wouldn't want it to kill an important quest-giver. If u find u cant kill someone u want to it just means that they have somethin to contribute to the players world.

"u" should read the post.

Damn, that should be a bannable offense. Posting in topics when you didnt even read the OP. Why would you even do that.

This. So much this.

Dammnit is it so hard to type you.

Again they can be made immune to damage from anone other than the player.

Essential NPC's annoy me so much.

I wanted to kill Rolff Stone-Fist in Windhelm because he kept harassing the Dunmer.
I waited until night, I sneak attack him and he fall down and gets back up.
Why? What possible quest requires him to be alive to complete? The only interactions with him are: asking why he hates Dunmer, why he thinks they're spies, and that you don't like his attitude, which leads to a brawl for 200 gold.
I checked UESP, and it doesn't mention that he's involved in any quests, so why is he essential?


There's at least one month until the CS is released, then I'll be able to remove the essential tags from all the NPC's I don't like.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You can't break an already started quest, even if you decide that is exactly what you want to do.

You can however accidentally break a quest before you start it, without even knowing you broke it. (finding and selling an item before the quest is given)



I've never encountered either of these, but I have read about both. If it's true, that is messed up.

I vote for this. So much stupidity could be avoided in so many forums if this rule was instated.

SOLUTION:



Sorry if it doesn't work... haven't tested it all the way through.

BTW: Another annoying thing about this essential [CENSORED] is that the "setessential [ID] 0" required a different ID than the ID shown in the console, so I have to go onto UESP.net (which doesn't have all info yet), find my target, memorize his "base ID" just so I can kill him... seems beth wanted to make it extremely hard to kill off essentials, even by making it troublesome to do with the console :facepalm:

And the NPC I really needed dead was that old battleborn , who (along with a young battleborn, guess he is too scared to do it himself) intimidate that one old Graymane lady... And after he was dead hired thugs was sent after me by Battleborns (enjoyable), which eventually lead to an entire feud with me and the battleborn family, until one night, the woman who hired all the thugs, approach me and demand an apology for my actions, when I refuse she eventually starts combat which ends with her being shield-bashed to death. Really enjoyable and pleasant radiant story here, I really think it svcks that if beth had their way I'd never have tried it. :confused:

Yeah, many quests break if you dont start where they should start, like when you find an item before you have the quest, or if you finish a dungeon before someone tells you to clear it.

edit: Wow, that post above me. I never thought something like that COULD happen, because I rarely kill NPCs (most of the time because the NPCs I want to kill are essential)