Protected/Essential NPC's

[LordDay]

Is it just me, or does anyone else find protected and Essential NPC's immersion, lore, and gameplay breaking?

It is completely unrealistic and downright annoying that its impossible to kill an essential npc, and that enemies can't kill your portected NPC's.

I think we should have the freedom to kill who we want, such as in Morrowind, you could kill anyone you want, but if its an essential character it shows a message telling you that you have doomed the world and advising you to reload your game or "continue living in this doomed world you have created."

I found that system perfectly acceptable and sufficient. If I feel like playing a character and killing essential NPC's, why can't I do that? And I bring a permanent follower or my spouse into a firefight with a couple of Dragons, they should die if they are killed. Not go into a cheap immortal state of invisibilty to all enemies.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game, my most favorite game and game series ever, this part has just been my pet peeve of the game since it was implemented in TES IV: Oblivion

[sedanta]

At any other time I'd say yes to your question...but I found that many important NPC end up dead (master vampire attack) before I had a chance to get a quest from them or to turn one in. This seems to be the case for the House Purchasing questlines in some of the more open holds (namely Morthal, Falkreath and Dawnstar). I did want to slice open Maven Black Briar's neck at the end of the Civil War and Thieves Guild quest line...she really annoys me!

[juristruedge]

with the console commands you can make any essential npc non-essential. But as Sedanta said, youll end up with a ton of broken questlines and I am sure that will add to your frustrations.

[Wingress]

Immersion breaking?yeah
lore, and gameplay breaking?nope, instead its the opposite, if you kill someone that supposed to be killed later, you break the lore, and sometimes even the gameplay since you're stuck and can't continue

[voehringer_nitron]

Автор сообщения: Herobrian

Immersion breaking?yeah
lore, and gameplay breaking?nope, instead its the opposite, if you kill someone that supposed to be killed later, you break the lore, and sometimes even the gameplay since you're stuck and can't continue

Six and a half years old.

[358789553872]

Автор сообщения: juristruedge

with the console commands you can make any essential npc non-essential. But as Sedanta said, youll end up with a ton of broken questlines and I am sure that will add to your frustrations.

This won't affect an npc that's already spawned into the game, so its not much of a solution.

The reason they did this was because it was possible in Morrowind for 'essential' npcs to get killed due to no fault of the player. In fact, I hear in some quests it was difficult to keep an npc alive. That's why Oblivion and Skyrim just make it so they can't die ever. Skyrim is actually somewhat liberal about this than Oblivion though because it has 'protected' npcs that are treated as essential unless the player kills them (all the housecarls are protected, for example). Though this isn't too perfect either. Being protected doesn't render an npc immune to fatal damage from another npc, it just stops their AI from deliberating targetting them. However, they CAN still be hit by another npc if they happen to get in the way of something like an arrow or an aoe spell. So yes, even protected NPCs can be accidentally killed off due to no fault of the player. That's why no quest npcs are protected, only followers that aren't individually important in any quests. Also, in Skyrim there's quite a few essential npcs whose flag is completely removed once you've done the quest they're required for. I think most essential npcs work like this, as long as they don't serve any kind of function after their quest is done (this is why all the Jarls are eternally essential). I know this is pretty common with quest givers. They can't die before you do their quest, but after that they can. Though oddly enough, not all quest givers are essential, and some are forever essential even though there's no apparent need for it.

If all this really bothers you, there ARE mods out there that remove the essential status, though I don't know if any of them have been ported to SE. The only one I know of is heartbreaker, but that requires you to use a highly unrealistic animation to kill essentials (using it will also forever stop an npc from respawning, so you can use it to permanently clear dungeons). I don't know if you can disable the animation or not though. Personally, I only turn the mod on when I'm mad at the game and wanna wreck havoc on it.