There appears to be a chance for high powered creatures (Briarheart for example) to kill your character regardless of hit points (and armor?). What I am trying to do is to find out what can prevent this from happening.

Example:

Level 40, armor 520, hit points 470, Adept difficulty. Weapon bow, Mixture of light and heavy armor (2 of each)

A Briarheart hits the character and there is a death animation. Reload save and move close to Briarheart and save to be able to repeat battle over and over again.

Without getting insta-killed it takes Briarheart about 8 hits to take out my character. I see two more insta-kills over ~10 tests. I change to full heavy armor set (armor now 620) and run several more tests. No insta-kills at all and it now takes about 10 hits to kill me (as expected as I am at armor cap now).

My question to anyone else who has seen an insta-kill on a character that you know can survive multiple hits from that enemy. What was your armor level? What weapon did you have equipped? Is there a way to prevent insta-death? This information is important if someone plays in a hardcoe mod (restart if character dies).

NPC damage formulas are different from those used for the player. It happened to me also with archers. Draugr deathlords with an ebony bow and ebony arrow can insta-shot a well armored player with 300+ of health and similar stats in armor.

The only way of escaping death is to block, interrupt enemies while they're charging for a power blow, evade arrows or block them with a shield.

Or, you know, being sneaky and hitting them first with an arrow from across the room after spotting them using the Detect Aura Shout (or maybe Detect Life spell).

The actual damage of the Briarheart while high (probably around 150 for non-power attacks) is not what is causing the one shot kill. There appears to be some underlying mechanism that can cause the player to die regardless of armor and hit points. That is what I am trying to figure out. If anyone knows how to create damage logs that would also be of great help.

Yes sneaking works great but I am looking to see if you can play without being sneaky.

I've never been insta killed by a briarheart, but I have heard of that happening

I've never been insta-killed by a Briarheart, but I've had it happen numerous times vs boss level Bandits (Chiefs and the like, the ones that often wear Steel Plate Armor) and other general boss enemies. Since Briarhearts are boss enemies as well, it seems like it very well could happen with them too.

Like you said, if the kill animation triggers it doesn't really matter how much damage they normally do or how much health you have. Its an instant kill. It usually only happens once you get around / below 50% health, so its not a complete insta-kill, but its still extremely annoying. Especially since it seems pretty much unavoidable, the animation starts instantly giving you no time to dodge an actual blow, and once it starts thats it, game over.

There might be a mod out there that gets rid of the enemy death animations, which I believe is whats behind the "insta-kills". Other than that, I don't think there's a way to prevent it other than keeping your health very high at all times vs boss enemies, but thats easier said than done when they can drop you to half health in just 3 hits.

The NPC is performing an execution move just like you can. Once the animation starts, your dead regardless of AR or HP!

i got insta killed 6 or 7 times in a row the other night, by a companion ghost champion or something. it was pretty annoying. it was a 4 on 3 battle, but my companion and conjured creature were useless, and one ghost with a battle axe KO'd me 6 or 7 times in a row no matter if my health was full or not.

I've seen it happen to my husband's character. Instakill, when a Briarheart normally doesn't do nearly that much damage. I assume they have a perk or something.

Here's what I think occurs, the check for the instant kick animation doesn't count armor. Thus if the attack would have proved fatal had you been unarmored it will be fatal IF the animation is triggered.

I ran some more tests using the No Kill animations Mod. There were no one hit kills at all, the best the briarheart could do against the armor rating of 520 was one two hit kill out of 10 tests. The rest ranged from 4 to 12 hits needed to kill. With Better armor (572) rating it took around 14 to 17 hits to kill my character. It appears that there may be a bug with the animation system that kills you when its not supposed to.

As a side note I think that the Briarhearts have some sort of armor reduction with their attacks as the number of hits to kill the 520 (77% damage reduction) was a lot less than the 572 armor rating (80% damage reduction) differnce should have been.

Am I just super lucky that I never ran into this problem? Level 45, ~600 armor and ~400hps, I mostly just laughed at archers. With 90% fire resist, fire was also a joke. Pretty much only had to watch out for cold, poison, and electricity (oh, and falling).

yea briarhearts, giants and deathlords are the only 3 mobs that can instant kill. Nvr experienced other mobs being able to chop my head off before i steal its sweetroll.
You can always use ur fren to help
*hint: fus ro dah + paralyse staff/spell = gg*
and dont forget your sanguine rose!

My mage got one-hit impaled by a Bandit Chief. 150 health, 230 armor (flesh spell + mage armor). He just walked up to me and picked me up. With his sword.

A group of us discussed this issue in a previous thread, and we discovered that the problem is that the calculation that determines if there is a kill-move procs before the one that determines the actual damage delivered, so your armor is never accounted for. This means that you get killed by an attack that can't actually kill you; this, combined with the fact that the trigger locks out your controls, thus preventing any reactionary moves, is what has a number of people pissed about the NPCs getting these moves.

Note that NPCs having them at all is not the problem, as some of these same folks like that it can happen, but rather that the mechanics are such that they act like a cheap shot since there's no way to stop them short of spamming either heals or spells/attacks that incapacitate in some way.

Even spells cast by Briarhearts seem to do a lot more damage than they should.
I've been one shot by Briarhearts, Bandit Chiefs, and Deathlords.

I don't mind the fact that the enemy can do kill moves. With that said I won't play with them on until they are fixed (i.e. they only happen if you would have really died due to zero hit points). This is really a major bug that shouldn't be there. The power that made you dead (i.e. hit points at zero) should have notified the animation system, not the animation system taking over because it thought you are dead and then notifying the power system that you should die..

No, because I've been instakilled by regular bandits and Summerset Shadow thieves in Uttering Hills Cave, and I think every time it was one of the ones by the campfire in the cave just before you reach the ruin area. I would instakill one of them, and then the other use a finisher on me.

Is he scoring a "critical hit" when it happens? If he hits for 150 with a normal swing then if he gets a crit on a power swing it would be massive damage.
I svck at math so I'm not even gonna figure it.

There are a few different levels of damage from the Briarheart during my testing. They are (against 520 armor): A normal hits (~35 damage), A Power blow (better damage 2x of normal or ~70 damage), A critical power blow (lots of damage, ~250 damage). I am fairly sure the critical power blows with animations on are what cause the instant kills. As you can see they have quite a bit of error as they instant kill a 492 hit point character when they should just take the character to 1/2 health. If I had damage logs I could do far better anolysis.

As a player of any game I prefer more feedback not less. Damage logs and or damage floaters would be a really nice addtion to the game (with an option to turn them off or those who don't like them).

That is unfortunate, but is not too suprising.


This may be more likely- also lets remember that briarhearts are notorious for being leveled equally with the characters, thus making them extremely dangerous. Also they hit way harder than their weapons should. I know I have seen death animations trigger more when the enemy is "slated" to hit you with a power attack. The game seems to calculate that damage real quick- regardless of your ability to dodge it, and apply the animation. That is the "stuck" feeling many players experience.

edit: addon- most briars I have seen are dual-weilding as well. It could be this is happening if the NPC has access to the perk that increases that power attack by 50%. If the computer is assuming you would get hit and calculating the damage with that modifier, that would make more sense as to why the animations trigger.

This may sound dumb, but are you really dead....? or do hit reload right after you see your body flying? I have been the victim of what look like death animations, only to find myself getting up. The first time it happened I was like WTF??? I got killed by that?!?

Just askin' - but I did get whooped by a Briarheart recently. Hubris on my part, I wasn't thinking he'd do much damage, and didn't think I needed a health potion! Won't happen again.

I think they are triggered by critical hits.

If you're capable of dying to a critical hit power attack, you're vulnerable to the death animation.

I have a theory that the death animations don't check your armor before triggering. So if the attack would have been enough to kill you unarmored, and the animation happens to trigger... your dead.

that sounds plausable, I mean, lets say I'm fighting a dragon, and one attack does around 10% damage, I will notice a death animation when I am around 25%, so I have to be careful of something like that happening when I get below 40%