Would you guys like to have essential NPC's once killed become unconscious or to simply die and the note from Morrowind: With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed.
Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate,
or persist in the doomed world you have created.

I would prefer the latter due to the absurdity of me whacking away at a NPC and not dying... REALLY killed the realism for me.

What do you all think?

It all depends on whether they can be killed by other things. I do not want quest NPCs to be wandering around and getting killed and breaking my game... unless I decide to do it myself.

Morrowind style also adds a little more tension to the game. If you have a quest with an essential NPC in Oblivion, you know that character is not going to die, so it's not nearly as exciting. It's also open to abuse if you have an unkillable ally. I'm thinking mainly of Martin Septim until later in the main questline.

[Edit: Duderino has a good point--I didn't think about that, but he's right. It would svck quite badly if essential NPCs just got killed at random. Perhaps they could be unkillable when out of sight/range of the PC? Or only killable when the PC is directly interacting with them?]

You hit the nail on the head. Couldn't agree more

It's tricky. Morrowind's system worked in that game because NPCs didn't wander very far and so didn't get themselves killed without your input. I think if we're going to get decent NPC schedules that involve hunting and visiting areas beyond guard patrols then we're going to have to put up with unkillable essentials.

Exactly. With Radiant AI -they do stuff even if you're not around- and dragons roaming about attacking villages I want important NPC's to be "essential" to the environment. However, if I want to kill them myself I should be able too.

Morrowind style hands down. I want to be able to decide if I wanna kill quest npc's even if that breaks a quest (or an entire quest chain, just let me know by a message) and having immortal companions is a big fat cheat.

Well, there are some better ways to go about it imo. They could for example have essential NPC's not die right away when they lose all HP, but rather get knocked out, and you'd then have to option of using a finishing move on them to take them out. That way they wouldn't die accidentally and you could still kill them if you really wanted to. They could possibly also give enemies the ability to use said finishing moves on them as well, although with a very visible and interruptable effect for it so you have time to stop them, thus adding a bit more risk of them dying during quests.

Why not just make those essential NPCs not go into that 'danger' zone? If the Radiant AI does indeed expand the NPC's range outside of the city it should create a lot of problems if random deaths happened out of your control... All of a sudden you favorite shop smith died to a random wolf...

i think it should be morrowind style except mixed with oblivions style in the fact that some npcs arnt always essential also a warning that they are essential when you strike them initially also they shouldnt fight back or if they do be staggeringly powerful and provide no experience and creatures or followers cant damage them only you

I think there shouldn't be any damn "essential" NPCs to begin with. That's just a sloppy way to get out of having to tweak behavior to keep NPCs alive. :thumbsdown:

I guess, but that places a lot of restriction on what story NPCs can do with their routine, which might make those NPCs - the most important in the game to be interesting - less realised than they might have been.

Besides, with dragons attacking towns nowhere is going to be safe :shrug:

This is the real question. I think the only reason it was changed was probably due to Oblivion adding NPC routines and them reacting to the environment more. It would be very frustrating to be playing through and get the journal entry : 'Esbern has died due to misadventures with mud crabs!' Just as I've finally managed to get through that really tough dungeon! So in short the Morrowind way if there is away to protect essential NPC's from there own random encounters. (Maybe you could add 'other please explain' to the poll)

Morrowind style.

If the main quest will have essential characters as companions or join you in big battles, then the problem can easily be solved by: saving.
And that goes for your own death as well.

So I don't really see it an issue. Of course, it would help if the essential characters are really strong as well.

Really strong + you can always save = no problem in my opinion to have killable essential characters.

i dont save all to often and i have a habbit of killing people who dont seem right.. which i discovered in morrowind many time.. were essential people

If the Radiant AI does indeed expand the NPC's range outside of the city it should create a lot of problems if random deaths happened out of your control... All of a sudden you favorite shop smith died to a random wolf... We don't see these problems in Oblivions common NPCs, so it should'nt be a problem.

This thread is a pretty good example of Morrowind nostalgia, the essential npcs would be able to go out and die on there own and i'd rather not be missing parts of my game just because i wasn't there or because a dragon attacked a town and i didn't feel like fighting it.

In the last level it was possible for Martin to die and you needed to reload the game. Of course Cancellor Ocato was essential the whole time >.>

A lot of the random dying could also be stopped with less creatures than are mindlessly hostile to anything that moves. Also, the most dangerous creatures should not be near the main roads.

For me it depends on how good the AI is.

If the AI is dumb then i don't really want them to be able to die. If they at least try to heal them-self and run when they don't stand a chance then i could see "Morrowind Style" working better.

The alternative (which i see happening) is Fallout NV style, in hardcoe there are no essentials, in non hardcoe there are essentials.

What about autosave?

I definitely want to be able to kill NPCs. It added tension and realism when in the presence of someone important. That's IMMERSION for me.

We didn't have this problem in Oblivion because 1. Cities were not open. And 2. Dragons did not randomly attack cities in Oblivion.

NPC's that are essential to a story line could easily, i would imagine, be scripted to not ever die except by the player's hand. Then you could not have to worry about them dying during their daily activities and also keep the superior Morrowind style system.

I again don't see how this is a problem... If these dragon attacks killed 'random' NPCs Skyrim simply wouldn't work.

A. We don't know how the 'attacks' work. I'm assuming a scripted number of guards will die and simply re-spawn later.

B. If the idea that any NPC can die should be shown quite clearly in Oblivion by randomly missing NPCs... I would also say that if this is a problem, Skyrim would run out of NPCs from 'random' deaths over time... I highly doubt that the essential NPC's would be able to die without your character having an active involvement in the process.

Once again going back to a provious comment,

Morrowind style also adds a little more tension to the game. If you have a quest with an essential NPC in Oblivion, you know that character is not going to die, so it's not nearly as exciting. It's also open to abuse if you have an unkillable ally. I'm thinking mainly of Martin Septim until later in the main questline.


This is one of the main reasons I see to return to Morrowinds style.