I haven't got that far into it, I'm only now fighting the drunkard mini-boss, but I was worried about dragonrot. I've learned that dragonrot cannot kill NPC's (although it still needs to be confirmed; so far people say it's highly unlikely, perhaps impossible for NPC's to die), but I'm curious if the biggest consequence is that it locks you out from doing certain side quests. Say you get a quest from them and they get sick, will it just end until you go through the game again or will it resume once you cure them? I think that would suck because I get the feeling I won't want to go through this game again no matter how much I like it, but I'd like to see everything there is to see.

Quests just continue people only have a cough it seems edit: (not true quest seem to stop until you heal them), and if you ever find a death npc the most important items you find back at the shrine where the meatbag/skill trainer is at the main shrine (hope this makes sense).

@soulcake: It might make sense? So what you're saying is that you can still do all quests just as long as everyone is healed? I know that (or at least have read that) the questline will stop if they get sick, but it wasn't clear as to whether it'll continue once they're healed. If the quests do continue after they're healed, the consequences of dying feel slim (which, is not an issue to me).

So, to reiterate I guess, let's say I go get a quest from an NPC, I die enough for that or those specific characters to get sick, will this lock the quest for the remainder of the playthrough no matter what, or do I just have to simply cure everyone and I'm good to go again?

If you cure them then it's fine, everything just resets back to how it was.

@efesell: Alright, thanks. Good to know.