Do followers die on Master difficulty?

[Fried Noodles]

I am playing Skyrim again for the first time in a few years. Trying to do a Master difficulty run.

I do understand that taking a follower as a meat shield will kind of simplify things for me.
I am trying to lean heavily into Illusion and Conjuration, but having someone else whacking enemies and drawing attention is helpful too.

Anyway... I had that Nord lady from the Whiterun bar. The one you have to challenge to a fist fight in order to recruit.

She was following me around and helped me clear some troll caves near Whiterun, on my way to Ivarstead.

I happened to pass by a giant camp and wanted to see if I could get a mammoth tusk for Ysolde.

I snuck in and grabbed one from the chest, but ended up aggroing the giant.

So I turned around and ran. I jumped off a shallow cliff and darted across the river.

Once I was safely across, I looked back at the giant still at the top of the cliff. My follower decided to engage the giant there rather than follow me.

And then she was launched into space.

I thought she might eventually make her way back to me, but it's been a little while now and there has been no sight of her. Even after entering and leaving interior cells.

Is she dead?
Or is she just in a low orbit?

[shoo]

followers die regardless of the difficulty except ones who are deemed essential(ie. mjoll, cicero, serana, etc.)

[Fried Noodles]

Oh, I thought they just do that thing where they fall down to their knee and take some time to recover and couldn't actually be killed except by the player.

[Surmene]

Normally that would be the case unless a mod removes their essential/protected status.

[Willow Rivers]

Originally posted by Fried Noodles:

Oh, I thought they just do that thing where they fall down to their knee and take some time to recover and couldn't actually be killed except by the player.

That is correct they drop to a knee and if you damage them they die. They can also die if they get poisoned, the poison will keep ticking when they go down on a knee and can kill them.

[Uncle64]

That lady is protected if I dont remember wrong so she can be killed by you, and in some rare times by enemies. So.
If she is dead you have killed her since she will survive the drop from sky, or are stuck some where.
The only time I have lost one of the base followers is when I have MY self killed them.

Do your self one favor. LOAD old save.

[The Grand Mugwump]

Originally posted by ctenophora:

followers die regardless of the difficulty except ones who are deemed essential(ie. mjoll, cicero, serana, etc.)

Most followers are given a flag which makes them able to only be killed by the player. HOWEVER, this doesn't completely protect them from non-friendly fire induced deaths. If they take enough damage to deal 2x their health before they can stand back up, then they will die as well. So yeah, giants can easily do that against a low level follower on master difficulty.

Basically if Follower has 100 health and gets hit for 100 damage, they will fall to their knees with a sliver of health left. If they take another 100 damage (200 damage total which is 2x their health) from a NPC before standing up, they will die. If a giant comes along and hits Follower for 300 damage, they will die instantly without falling to their knees because it is more than 2x their health. This also means if Follower has 10 health left and gets hit for 120 damage, they will die instantly.

[smr1957]

A protected follower being killed by taking excessive damage from enemies is a bug which was fixed by the Unofficial Patch

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Protected_NPCs Bugs section:

"A protected NPC may still be killed by other NPCs if they are attacked during bleedout, commonly by area of effect magic, poison or delayed power attacks.
- This bug is fixed by version Beta 1.9.26.0.8 of the Official Skyrim Patch.

[The Grand Mugwump]

Originally posted by smr1957:

A protected follower being killed by taking excessive damage from enemies is a bug which was fixed by the Unofficial Patch

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Protected_NPCs Bugs section:

"A protected NPC may still be killed by other NPCs if they are attacked during bleedout, commonly by area of effect magic, poison or delayed power attacks.
- This bug is fixed by version Beta 1.9.26.0.8 of the Official Skyrim Patch.

Bethesda says it was fixed, but I've still had plenty of followers die of mysterious and not me causes during the last couple months.

[SpeedFreak1972]

well lets be honest Bethesda says a lot of things .....

[isomorphic_projection]

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

Originally posted by smr1957:

A protected follower being killed by taking excessive damage from enemies is a bug which was fixed by the Unofficial Patch

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Protected_NPCs Bugs section:

"A protected NPC may still be killed by other NPCs if they are attacked during bleedout, commonly by area of effect magic, poison or delayed power attacks.
- This bug is fixed by version Beta 1.9.26.0.8 of the Official Skyrim Patch.

Bethesda says it was fixed, but I've still had plenty of followers die of mysterious and not me causes during the last couple months.

Those followers might not be important for the continuity of the quest line.

[smr1957]

Except that is not Bethesda saying that. If you have the Unofficial Patch it should not happen - unless a mod is overwriting that change - which considering mod authors, is a definite probability.

[The Grand Mugwump]

Originally posted by smr1957:

Except that is not Bethesda saying that. If you have the Unofficial Patch it should not happen - unless a mod is overwriting that change - which considering mod authors, is a definite probability.

Are you even reading your own quote? It literally says official patch for the standard game. And I also use the unofficial patch and it still happens.

[SpeedFreak1972]

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

Originally posted by smr1957:

Except that is not Bethesda saying that. If you have the Unofficial Patch it should not happen - unless a mod is overwriting that change - which considering mod authors, is a definite probability.

Are you even reading your own quote? It literally says official patch for the standard game. And I also use the unofficial patch and it still happens.

Well you clearly didn't read he said unless some OTHER MOD overwrite those changes ....

[The Grand Mugwump]

Originally posted by SpeedFreak1972:

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

Are you even reading your own quote? It literally says official patch for the standard game. And I also use the unofficial patch and it still happens.

Well you clearly didn't read he said unless some OTHER MOD overwrite those changes ....

None of us are reading correctly apparently. I was disagreeing with smr saying it wasn't bethesda when smr's link was to a list of official patches for the standard game. smr claims the unofficial patch makes protected followers only killable by the player, which I disagree with because I still have followers die to mysterious circumstances. I'll grant it's less often with the unofficial patch vs vanilla. And you're obviously not reading what smr wrote since he claims the unofficial patch fixes the problem and you're saying the problem still exists because we're using the mod he says fixes it. I've explained what I wanted to. This is all just adding to the fire at this point and for some reason I felt a burning need to spell out our inability to read.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

Originally posted by smr1957:

Except that is not Bethesda saying that. If you have the Unofficial Patch it should not happen - unless a mod is overwriting that change - which considering mod authors, is a definite probability.

Are you even reading your own quote? It literally says official patch for the standard game. And I also use the unofficial patch and it still happens.

It's still unofficial, that's just a typo.
Bethesda have no input on the unofficial patch, which is one of the reasons it works as well as it does.

As a side note, even with the unofficial patch the game engine does glitch and it is possible for protected followers to die even if all you have is the unofficial patch and the engine fixes mod. A patch can only do so much, and basically Bethesda need to rework their engine at a deeper level than they have...