Forget how many times Oblivion does this in quests, but NPCs that meet an untimely death at the beginning of a seemingly large quest is supposed to install some "Oh gosh, I'm all alone on this one!" feeling into the player. However there are several genuine stupid NPC moments, like NPCs that seem to retardedly walk into traps, fields of fire, take on other NPCs that would wreck their s**t in less that 5 seconds (yes I'm looking at you WOW!) and others that think it's OK to walk into your field of fire and blame you for carving/shooting them up like they had been engaged without provocation (Oblivion all over). I wish NPCs would seriously get programmed to stay out of the way and be helpful at the same time, a sword fight against one NPC boss is hard enough without 16 pairs of limbs blocking the 2 pairs your trying to score a hit on.
And what's this? Recaptcha?