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[Putnam]

Companions are already set as protected, meaning they can only be killed by player intervention.

To be honest, I'm not sure why they didn't replace the essential system with that entirely.

[itisnotlogical]

Because railroading. Also, it'd suck if you failed a quest because Delphine or Esbern or any other plot NPC got killed in a dungeon. In Morrowind characters never really followed you or anything, so the only way for a plot character to die was to kill them yourself anyway.

[Putnam]

Also, it'd suck if you failed a quest because Delphine or Esbern or any other plot NPC got killed in a dungeon.

can only be killed by player intervention.

this is the operative part

[itisnotlogical]

I kill a knee'd Lydia with stray fus-es all the time. Or shoot her with arrows because she limps in front of the enemy I'm aiming at, or misjudge how far my flames are reaching. I might just be bad at Skyrim though.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Because railroading. Also, it'd suck if you failed a quest because Delphine or Esbern or any other plot NPC got killed in a dungeon.

They should plan alternate routes then, like they had in Morrowind's main quest where if you kill Vivec you can have a Dwemer fix the gauntlet.  As an example for the two you mentioned, there could be one in which Delphine dies before you come across Esbern that allows you to get to him so he could direct you to Sky Ruler Temple, and a second in case he dies so you can find someone to translate the Sky Ruler mural, removing the 'they must live' impetuous.  Former could go through having you search through her stuff to have you get a way to contact the guy to get you into the embassy and latter could be an alternate first contact with the College of Winterhold that will result in some mages spawning there serving as archaeologist-equivalents.  Don't have to do it all the time, but even a couple of these would have gone a long way.

[Sergius]

Pretty sure my companions normally die all the time from Damage-over-Time spells made by monsters or something. "Protected" status only works like half of the time.

[Putnam]

Because railroading. Also, it'd suck if you failed a quest because Delphine or Esbern or any other plot NPC got killed in a dungeon.

They should plan alternate routes then, like they had in Morrowind's main quest where if you kill Vivec you can have a Dwemer fix the gauntlet.

I mean, if you kill Yagrum Bagarn you're completely SOL.

[itisnotlogical]

Morrowind wasn't voice acted though, and the conversations weren't animated. You could probably bang an alternate path out in a day if it were your day job to add content to Morrowind, and Vivec is the only point of failure that they added a branching path to.

On the other hand Skyrim at least requires they pay the voice actor to voice the lines. Then you have to think of all the possible places where Delphine and Esbern might die, if you want this to be a viable gameplay option rather than just a cool hidden thing like killing Vivec to get Wraithguard was. Workload multiplied.

Don't take this wrong, it would be awesome if it were in the game. I like the idea of characters actually dying outside of scripted sequences, which rarely ever happens in Skyrim. But there's logistical reasons why not.

[Persus13]

Its also worth pointing out that the DLC makes things easier. One of the Black Books on Solsteim gives you the perk of being unable to damage followers, and Serena from Dawnguard is marked as essential.

[feelotraveller]

There's a console command to set an NPC as essential, right? That could work, too.

yeah, open console (probably ~ but keyboards vary) then type

setessential <baseid> 1

can find the baseid by going to a particular follower from here http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Followers

for example for Aela
setessential 0001A696 1

can reverse by specifying 0 rather than 1

much neater because it applies only to that follower (and only while you want it to) 

[Xantalos]

Completely random question, but d'you folks have any tips for getting followers to stop dying? I'm currently doing a main-quest only run since I've never actually completed it, light armor two-hander dude, and as a consequence of that I kinda keep getting all my companions I bring with me killed. All the time. There's been Lydia, at least two mercenary guys, that lady who accidentally killed someone while trying to join the Companions, and at least one other. I'm only like level 14 or 15 at most at this point, they just keep dying. Their corpses lie all over Skyrim. So many hopes and dreams snuffed out because the dumb loot holders keep dying.

So, uh. Any tips for getting them to not to the dumb?

Are you fighting some kind of explosive monster, or on top of a mountain or something? Once a follower gets on one knee, enemies will ignore them until they have all their health back, and they'll be totally fine barring accidents or you killing them yourself.

Hmm.
...
...
...
I've come to the conclusion that I'm an unrepentant murderer, seeing as all my companions so far have died in frenzied melees with either frost trolls (those are a fucking bitch to fight when you don't have any good fire weapons and you're level 9) or various bandit enemy people. I kinda lose track of what I'm doing and I'm very free with how I swing around my greatswords and warhammers.

Welp, guess I'll just have to pump stamina.

[Ultimuh]

Personally, I always went alone in Skyrim.
While I because of this, tend to die a lot.. But I do prefer to go by the "If you want something done right, do it yourself." rule.

[itisnotlogical]

Skyrim's coming to yet another console, the Nintendo Switch. I haven't looked around to see if there will be mod support, but with Nintendo I kinda doubt it.

[umiman]

Skyrim's coming to yet another console, the Nintendo Switch. I haven't looked around to see if there will be mod support, but with Nintendo I kinda doubt it.

Sure there will be.

Once it gets jailbroken.

Don't know if that'll be happening this time though. They're getting better at protecting their assets. The 3DS took quite awhile to break and it's still not really completely broken due to how they keep patching all the ways to bypass it.

[GirlscoutBob]

Personally, I always went alone in Skyrim.
While I because of this, tend to die a lot.. But I do prefer to go by the "If you want something done right, do it yourself." rule.

I'm way on the opposite side, 5 to 6 followers all equipped with a sword, bow and ranger cloak.  All set to non-essential though, with a Fallout 4 Survival-esque damage mod, so they die just as easily as I do. I do prefer sneaking up on each bandit camp and releasing a volley of arrows before they can figure out what hit them, and I also like how the fights are waaaaay more intents because I have to pre-plan ambushes and don't want any of my peeps to die (well, not all of them, the annoying ones I send in first. Alone. Without any backup. Just die already, Lydia... swoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorn to carry my burdens... )