Going to jail, being shunned by people, being barred from carrying arms in the said city (or otherwise barred from entering the said city if you did something truly reprehensible) and that sort of stuff. IRL if you shot up a stadium full of people you just end up in jail for life (if you don't off yourself) that does not mean you permanently depopulated that part of the world. Once shock wears off people carry on business as usual.

Sure, but in game terms, you'd never know it, because nobody would ever allow a mass murderer to walk around in their town.

People should do what's fun for them. Personally, I live with the consequences of character actions but not with the consequences of glitches or similar player mistakes (what I like to call "player glitches"), like accidentally clicking on an owned item when trying to talk with someone. There is no way a character would accidentally steal something when trying to talk with someone, so this is a 100% reload when it happens due to my fumbling fingers.

Living with the consequences of character actions makes the world feel more alive and real, but I don't go so far as to invoke DiD rules (outside the competitions). That's too extreme for my tastes. Maybe if I was retired and had unlimited playtime, I would be more likely to play DiD, but with my limited playtime, I find DiD unworkable, especially with my load order that makes unavoidable death much more likely than vanilla.


If my character makes a conscious choice to kill a blacksmith, I am not going to reload that, but I agree the promised system where new NPCs would step in and fill the role of a vendor that dies was not delivered on in any meaningful way. Makes no sense that in a large town, no one would eventually open a new shop when one closes.

For this reason, I will reload if an important vendor dies because of environmental circumstances if I feel that those circumstances were in any way unfair. I would rather have a system where vendors were replaced by others as Todd Howard apparently originally envisioned, but absent such a system, the world sometimes feels more real to me by reloading when a vendor is accidentally killed than having a town permanently loose an important vendor whose role is never replaced by another. The real world is not that static.

I am with Sah at post #40. Otherwise she does the head lock thing which really hurts


We are both a couple of those DiD players (on Legendary).....we are no strangers to losing everything on a whim of the game mechanics. I once lost Lydia by accidentally shooting her in a fight. I could not live with that guilt. There was no choice but to restart the game from scratch and lose a huge number of play hours. That's the closest we are permitted to "reload" for mistake......we pay the ultimate price.


Why? Because anything easier is not worthy of our sincerity

I really hate to do "The Only Cure" because I don't think any of those Afflicted deserve to die. They are already living in pain; However that Spellbreaker shield is so good; it's almost mandatory for my unarmed khajit so I just do the quest said think at the back of my head "He wouldn't really do this. The place respawns anyway so this never happened."

If it makes you feel any better, at least you put them out of their pain. I personally don't care about killing them. They're aggressive and try to puke on you. That pretty much seals their fate with me. Not the aggressive part. The puking part.

Ditto. I don't have any use for a shield though - it just gets hung on a wall....

From what Periyite says about "spreading his blessing" I assumed they were preparing to unleash this affliction on Tamriel like some biological weapon, so killing them would potentially save the world.

Like many have said, I only reload if there is some "gamey" reason that what has happened should not have happened. Like I was in Falkreath yesterday and left the tavern and all of a sudden there was a raging battle going on along the main road. Turns out that the OBIS mod had decided to spawn 3 high level bandits in the middle of the town, bypassing any of the town guards that would have dealt with them at the gates. 4 dead named townspeople later and it was reload time, that's a flaw from a mod either technical or design but I wasn't going to live with it. Console killed all the bandits and left them there without looting them and went on about my business, no one died and it was like it never happened.

Overall, isn't the fact that you can save and reload a major factor in favor of single player games? I laugh when I log into an MMO and before going someplace dangerous, I'm hitting F5

Well, I tried playing on with some major consequences recently in one of my playthroughs. Vampire attack happened as I entered Riften. Thought I stemmed the battle enough to keep the important NPCs. Unfortunately, the recovering skooma addict was a casualty to which I later found out, if she dies, you don't get Honeyside. One of my favourite buyable homes.


I kept playing on. I thought I'd try learning all shouts by the Way of the Voice (Greybeards) through the Words of Power quests (whichever its called). Well, that got cut short too with the Arcwind Point glitch where you can't complete that portion of the Words of Power quest. So, off I go to restart, but with USLEEPatch this time. First on the itinerary, complete Dawguard, then work towards thwarting the TG at every turn and not join them

See, this is what I would not consider "your actions." These are "game glitches" and I'd have no qualms about reloading

I half disagree with you. The first example is not a "glitch." NPCs can die in this game. That is by design and, therefore, is not a "glitch." And the fact is, some of these NPCs may be connected to quests. Now we might not like the fact that quest-giving NPCs can die but our dislike alone does not make it a "glitch."

But is this not what so many people have wanted since Oblivion? Have we not heard howls of protest over essential NPCs for a decade? Are we now going to turn around and start calling killable NPCs a "glitch?" It seems to me we ought to be consistent. Do we want killable NPCs or do we not? If we do, it seems to me that we are going to have to accept the consequences of having mortal NPCs in the game.

About the second example, I agree. There a re a few possible ways to glitch at Arcwind Point. These are legitimate bugs. If one of these has affected a game then I fully agree with you that it's appropriate to reload. Although, in all honesty, I truly think anybody who is playing on PC should really be using the Unofficial Patches.

This is assuming that the same people who asked for killable NPC's in Oblivion are the same people now saying otherwise. But it's not likely. Most of the people who don't like the idea of NPC deaths either didn't have an opinion of essential NPC's in Oblivion or didn't even play Oblivion. Either way, this is more about preference than anything else and there's no right or wrong way to address it. If an NPC's I like or find useful dies, I reload, if I don't mind that NPC dying, then I wont. That's how I play my game and I'm ok with that. I agree that it's not a 'glitch', but certainly not desirable when you have a town where all your merchants are dead.

I personally never wanted killable NPCs when it came to them dying for stupid reasons like random town attacks. Those same people were always crying out that it should be like Morrowind where every NPC can randomly die, but in Morrowind, the only town attack that ever randomly happened was from a stray cliff racer that couldn't hurt a baby in the time it took the guards to take it down, and quest NPCs were mysteriously put in safe spots where no enemies roamed, and the NPCs never roamed into unsafe places unless they were escorted into them. So yes, the *player* could kill the NPCs if desired, but they didn't just randomly drop dead all over the place.

In Skyrim, I'm having to play my vanilla console game without Dawnguard or Dragonborn installed, and hold off on starting the main quest, until I am able to get all the main game quests done or else I'd end up having empty towns due to all the random attacks from higher and higher level enemies. It's not like the towns are all that full to begin with, and random attacks wiping out towns (and all the quests and merchants therein) are far less fun for me than having thriving towns full of unique people and things to do.

While it might not be a "glitch" in the strictest sense of the word, I do consider it to be gamebreaking in many ways. I've had no qualms whatsoever in using the console in my PC games to resurrect NPCs, make them essential, and/or use mods to make them behave rationally, in the sense of running away from combat rather than trying to beat on powerful enemies with their puny fists and iron daggers while wearing nothing more than a fancy dress.

I've heard the whining start up on the Fallout 4 forums about essential NPCs in that game, but I'm grateful for them, especially considering there are even less quests and unique NPCs than in Skyrim. I can actually *use* companions in that game for once.

It also doesn't help that the NPC's are grossly under equipped and like to rush into the fray with no thought to personal safety. An NPC with no armor and a pickaxe will attack a legendary dragon. I know there's a mod out there somewhere that made it to where NPC's would run for shelter, but that should've been a mechanic included in the vanilla game. If the AI was better on nonessential NPC's, and they actually stayed away from dangerous encounters rather than ran toward them, then this would be much more balanced and acceptable when one should die. But also it would've been nice if Bethesda had made it to where when a merchant died, they got replaced by a new merchant, or if a quest giving NPC died, that quest could obtained by another NPC. That's game breaking right there.

There is a Mod called "Run For Your Lives"

And it's good, too. It doesn't make the NPCs unkillable, it just makes the ill-equipped non-guard NPCs run for cover rather than fighting, exactly as the townspeople should be doing.

That's the problem with the vanilla game. It's not that quest NPCs should be unkillable; they just need to have a bit of self-preservation. As it stands, vanilla NPCs are not believable.

Also, When Vampires Attack.

Thanks! I knew there was a mod for this, but couldn't think of the name of it.

See that actually makes sense, in my opinion. Because in real life if a dragon were attacking (I realize the irony of that statement...), most people would run for cover while the guards and inherent hero tried to deal with it. They wouldn't go rushing off to fight it. But in Skyrim, even kids join the fray! lol!

Lol indeed. But, I guess, what Bethesda game doesn't have immersion breaking features?

Yeah....I just did a quest called the book of love......I won't spoil it......but just after I helped get two people together I got a letter by courier saying one of them was dead a bear from a certain nearby cave had lolloped over and invaded the village. The person concerned was in villager clothes and had a dagger.....just like the rest of the family who also waded in and met the same fate. I helped the guards dispatch the bear.....but it was all too late......thank goodness the quest was fulfilled first!


I think the best option should have been essential quest givers....who then lose that status when the quest has been completed.

I love the book of love!

In practice, I think Beth listened to those who wanted all NPC to be non-essential in Oblivion. But they didn't get it right at the first attempt. The substitute traders aren't any more essential than the original, so two vampire attacks can close a store permanently.

If there was a system for spawning named and AI-ready NPC's to replace dead ones, it might have worked, but you need an inexhaustible supply if you let everyone die.

So without that in place, I reload when it would mess up my game. And since I'm prepared to do that, also whenever I feel like it.

I agree with you Ghastley on all points. Especially "whenever I feel like it" I'll reload a previous save and start over.

Typically it's done when I'm working to craft something special of specific, like enchanting and naming a weapon, and mess it up; or when a favored npc dies for whatever reason. Other than this I try to let things fall as they may, which often means being mindful of my surroundings and thoughtful in my actions.

Occasionally it is fun though to blow off stress and just push a combat situation to extremes , then reload after you've either died or defeated everyone. I don't do that often though as it tends to fracture my immersion later on.