It's more having the option of doing it, rather than an itching to do it. Some people are going to want to kill certain NPCs, and it'd be bad to be prevented from doing so just because the game says they're important, even if you don't care. I don't know who my character(s) are going to like or dislike, and if one of them will want to take someone out, I don't want a little crown icon to tell me I can't take a specific NPC out.

I guess that is true. Would be nice if you had a rival serial killer out there, maybe trying to kill you as well. Would be good if had an arch-rival alla Holmes/Moriarty.

Found locked room circumstances where you had to kill just one person in a carefully guarded location without alerting suspicion to be more challenging and fulfilling to be honest.

Simple fix to this whole issue is to make important NPCs Essential, unless its the PC who kill them which you would then get a Morrowind notification. Done and done. The people who want to be able to kill Essentials arnt going to care if it mucks up a questline, and if they do then theyre fine with their own mistakes.

I dont know about everyone else but I dont go around randomly killing NPCs anyway, so its a non issue for me.

If your game's Lachance was dumb enough to go off a cliff, then he deserved to die lol. Easy solution as well, save frequently and load an earlier game.

Game makes auto save files when you rest, wait or change areas (provided you don't turn that option off). Honestly I could have cared less if Lachance wanted to earn himself a Darwin Award, I wasn't attempting to join the brotherhood in that play through. Was merely providing an example.

Oh I agree. Essential NPC status is necessary just because Radiant AI can be unpredictable. Now if only BGS could give the AI self awareness and self preservation... Radiant AI should be renamed to Skynet.

In Shivering Isles I got a message that said an NPC was dead and I couldn't do his quest. The sad thing is that I had never saw the man before so I had to reload. Hopefully this is fixed with Radiant story.

I can't help but think the problem would mostly be forgotten if Bethesda simply didn't indicate to you, the player, which NPCs were essential. No walking up and seeing a crown and knowing you could gut the guy and suffer no consequences. If nobody has crown icons, you'd never be able to tell unless you had previously figured it out for certain NPCs.

I hope at some point Bethesda and their Radiant scripts will reach the proficiency to program the npcs so they could stay alive (as long as the player needs them) without being essential.

If they make correctly the substitution of dead NPC by new ones, I see no need to essential NPCs. A NPC shelling a house fall to the river and drowns? a shame, the next owner could shell it though.

That point is important. Until they get Radiant AI to make the NPC's at least try to resemble intelligent beings essential status is a must. Otherwise we could end up in a scenario where we get a Morrowind-style warning even though we're miles away and had absolutely no input on that happening. Imagine having to reload your game many times over because of THAT.

I don't know how difficult it is to program, but I think important npcs should be essential only when we are not in the same place. Seeing essential npcs around being hit, unconscious and then safe and sound is demoralizing for me. I'd like npcs to be so smart as to know not to fight other npcs and not to venture in the wilderness until they've played their part in the quest.

I love the examples of the npcs dying by themselves. Needs more stupid npc examples!

I HATE essential NPCs

No essential npcs! There must be a solution so they are mortal to the player and immortal to other npcs or creatures.

Accidently starting a town riot in Oblivion and losing half the towns population to over-zealous guards isnt fun. Morrowind was a lot better at that side of things since most important NPC's were never in any real danger (other than from you). In oblivion they were in danger pretty much anytime they set foot outside the town walls, in SI the first time I wandered into one of the towns EVERYONE was already dead. Thats just plain annoying/game breaking.

If an important optional quest person dies, there should be an alternative way to get the reward even if its just morrowinds approach of "go rob the guy".

Defintely get rid of that silly "crown" thing though. I'd rather not know a guy is immortal until he gets up again. Still, you should have the option to slit their throat while they're unconcious and make that a player only ability. Infact you could give that to every friendly NPC so long as the main story always has an alternative (unless you kill everyone in the game world, but hey even morrowind allowed that and worked).

Essential NPCs need to stay to avoid breaking quests. I don't know how many times I had to make a new character because a quest NPC was killed, but it is very annoying to be told to go find this person and you are led to a spot in the middle of town where their body used to be.

I agree with what one person said... The NPCs will simply become unconsious when something else kills them, and the same with you attack them, but then you can kill them after they become unconsious.

Okay... guess I'll have to post this again... code it so that essentials can only die when your in the same cell as them... that way you can save them... and kill them... and fead them to the yard-wolves...
and yes, I may or may not listen to Knoxvile girl while playing my first skyrim character...

Seriously? Nobody bought up the Fallout 3 method of essentials?

In F3 there were essentials, but so few and far between you can count all of them on one hand, and there is no indication if said person is essential or not.
Most of the quests are made in a way that you can finish them even if the quest-giver, or other essential NPC dies.

Something tells me, this method will take a return.

have essential npcs be killable only by a player AND have a meassage come up when they are ATTACKED about how they are important. Not when they are killed.

One of the UI mods I've used (DaRN ui?) had the option to turn those off, I think. So it shouldn't be hard to do.


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Fallout:New Vegas had a great many overlapping quests. Which led to a good number of cases where you'd, for example, kill some named bandit leader for quest X, and a "You've failed quest Y" message would pop up. So you had at least a little warning.


But, yeah.... there needs to be some protection from Random Wandering Stupid Death that you literally don't have any control over.

It was good for a few laughs repeatedly knocking an essential NPC silly the first time I found one.

They could just make them considerably stronger then most enemies. If the person is a key figure they're probably pretty strong anyways.

I agree with the OP we need Essential NPC's when we are doing a quest for them whether it's the Main Quest, Faction Main Quest, or a Side Quest. Once you've gotten past that point then they should lose their essential status like for example Jaufree he was essential for the 1st part of the game in Oblivion but he lose his essential status after your business was done with him up to a certain point.

The main reason why we need them is I don't want them getting randomly killed like can you imagine if Esbern got killed before he told you what to do for the main quest or even fully explained how your a Dragonborn. That would be very gamebreaking Story wise although the Main Quest is still doable it would be a whole heck of a lot harder and any unique reaction with Esbern or his past history of his life would be lost.