Every time I fight one of those ubiquitous assassins that hang around in bars, the other bar patrons freak out and refuse to talk to me anymore. They just scream when I try to initiate dialogue. Like I'M the bad guy for defending myself against the guy who just tried to KILL ME. This doesn't seem to happen every time, though, and I can't figure out what's different. I've tried luring them outside the bar, but people still freak out, including town guards.

I'm getting really tired of constantly saving and reloading any time I go into a tavern. I'm guessing I could increase my persuasion skill to convince the assassins that I'm not the zeppelin crash survivor, but honestly, I'd rather just kill the punks. Is there any way to do this without immediately being ostracized? If I simply go away for a while and come back later, will people calm down? Or do I just have to suck it up and choose a non-violent approach?

People in bars will usually calm down after a couple of in game days away from the location. So then you can talk to them again. Sometimes though they do get stuck in: "oh god, oh god. People are being killed!" mode, which is annoying. But most people in bars are not actually critical to any missions anyway (and the ones that are might not actually be affected by the reaction to killing someone anyway, I don't remember).

That was an incredibly fast response. Many thanks.

Even if it's not critical to talk to people in bars, I like to make them my first stop upon entering any town so I can gather all the local rumors and make some quick gold off the gamblers. If I make people flip out and have to wait a few days before going back, it renders the whole thing fairly pointless. I guess I'll either skip the bars altogether, or continue to save/reload to avoid talking to assassins.

Hopefully I can stop grinding my teeth in the meantime. I love this game, but it is rife with frustration.

Yeah, there are definitely some annoying quirks of the game. I feel like I have gotten over this particular one because I have played the game so many times that I remember which people are possibly going to try and kill you in each bar, and so I talk to them last of everyone in the bar so that I can do all of the other things first.

But that definitely makes me forget what it was like playing for the first time/not knowing who exactly is going to possibly attack me.

This is still true for situations where people HATE you as a result of nonthreatening dialogue choices. So apparently people weren't around when I politely declined a commercial transaction and was attacked for that, but people were around to know I killed the annoying prick.