I recently had a character die to Captain Hargar in Broken Oar Grotto. He killed me as I was attempting to build some distance between myself and him by running away - suddenly, the screen switched to a cinematic of Hargar impaling my character with a finishing move. I'm wondering what determines when an enemy finishing move triggers, and how to avoid them? Is it based on my stats or is it random?

Obviously distance between enemy and myself isn't taken much into account. I had this happen on another character recently, only the enemy was a bounty hunter, and I had quite a few paces between us when the cinematic triggered; my character was bounced back a few feet in the cinematic and was killed by a finishing move, which was really cheap.

I've tried looking for information on enemy kill moves but I can only find mods to switch them off. No one explains how they work. Could you have, in theory, a tank with awesome enchantments in full daedric armour smithed to armour cap and still be victim to one of these finishing moves?