So I'm out and about on "patrol" when I get a message I've never seen before - "Defend the Checkpoint". It's close by so I run over and it's some Minutemen fighting a couple of Deathclaws which we dealt with easily enough.

This took me pretty close to Quincy. I hear a firefight and it's one of my provisioners being attacked by the Raiders at Quincy Quarry. Curie and I run over and get into a major fight with the Raiders.

My provisioner then heads right up to Quincy. Uh oh! Next thing I know the Gunners are attacking her.

Instead of running away she charges straight into the Gunner camp, armed with a sniper rifle, and starts taking on the whole mess of them.

I can't call in artillery without hitting her so Curie and I have no other choice but to charge in after her. NOT exactly how I had planned to spend my day.

After the huge battle with the Gunners, Curie and I wander off to lick our wounds. There's my provisioner and her trusty brahmin, headed down the road to Warwick Homestead like nothing ever happened.

That's one tough provisioner! All she was equipped with was road leathers and a couple pieces of metal armor.

There should be a way for me to give her the Commonwealth Medal of Honor appoint her to Colonel of the Minutemen or something.

Your provisioners are set to essential, the same as your settlers unless the settlement it's based at is under a radiant quest attack.

from what i remember, they're "protected", which is the same as "essential" except YOU can kill them

(not entirely sure there myself though, never tried to kill one

Yep, thats about the way the script "usually" works, which is why I don't get directly involved in provisioner attacks unless i'm using a combat knife.

that's no script thing, just an actor flag. can be set via console too (actorbase.setessential 0 or 1, not sure for protected right now)

edit: that'd be setessential actorbase 1 at console, sry

If you set the essential flag, they can not be killed by anything, not even you.

There is a script at work that does some conditional checks to see where the damage came from.

They can definitely be killed by artillery. Did that by accident once. Had to reload a saved game because that caused Curie to hate me.