This is a game setting and the default is 10. Anyone know what happens if you set this to ZERO or set it to 100?

I am experimenting now but the KillMoves are almost a random event and was wondering if someone already invented this wheel.

I THINK (but not sure on this) that this multiplier is what your damage gets multiplied by when the game's already decided to use a kill move, in order to ensure the hit will actually kill.

Now all killmoves already have some condition like ShouldAttackKill() or something like that, which checks if an attack would deal enough damage to kill, but there might be rare cases where when the player presses the attack button the enemy might have exactly the amount of health which can still be taken a way in one hit (so the condition will be true and a killmove might start) but if the enemy then also has a healing over time effect active, at the time the killmove hits it might no longer kill. And bethesda wants killmoves to always kill, so I think they just multiply damage by 10 then in case something like this happens.

All my testing did not show any differences in game with 100 nor ZERO so I think you are absolutely right about how it is used.

Hmm actually if my theory is right a multiplier of zero would have to mean kill moves don't deal any damage... so maybe my theory isn't right after all But it really wasn't based on anything, just a guess.

well, no not if the kills I made had enough attack damage without the mult...right?

Need to do 100 to kill.

I do 120 + (120 * mult) = 120

Still enough to to get the kill move...right?

I guess if it was I do 120 * mult = 0 that would be bad but that is not typically how I thought the mult work.

Kill Moves themselves deal no damage they do kill outright no matter what the starting state of the victim.

For Instance -> if you get the health of an actor before a Kill Move then do it again after they are dead their health will be identical, including doing Kill Moves naturally victims almost never have health below 0 because the game catches IF the attack would have killed then triggers the KM and the Behavior File transitions the victim into the dead State... Health Remains at whatever value it was before the KM was triggered.

If you force a Kill Move on any actor be it from Magic Effect Script, Quest Script or just triggering normally (I use all 3 to Kill Certain Actors through my Quests) the secondary actor is ALWAYS killed no matter what, the Behavior Files calls this transition onto the victims.

How do you force the kill move? Right now in my mod I turn off and on the global for kill moves depending on the conditions of combat. But I would rather keep it off all the time and then trigger them if my condition's are met. But how do you know which kill move to trigger for which actor? Is there a way to call a "kill move function" and the right kill move will be played for the right actor?

You have most likely figured this out by now being a month since I was last here but -> You just call the anim to play on the killer with the victim I use http://www.creationkit.com/PlayIdleWithTarget_-_Actor the other options have a tendency to break the NPC's who are left living, especially when used out of "State".

so it would be: KillerRef.PlayIdleWithTarget(CuttOffHead, VictumRef)

And if this is called on say a chicken as the killer or as the victim or both the game will not blow up? But called on a pair of NPC it will work?

Paired Animations called on an invalid Actor are just ignored by the invalid actor -> usually any valid actors will still go through the motions so if you try to tell a chicken to kill an npc using an npc to npc Paired the chicken will do nothing but the second npc will usually do its motions and then die as expected.

The only real problem is making sure your calling the correct Paired for your situation (Meaning calling the proper Paired for your killers Race/Weapon vs the victims Race), other then that I have yet to run into any issues that could not be fixed with a few conditionals and forced states, also the killer actor needs to be in combat stance calling one of these from Idle Stance has a habit of locking the primary character into an invalid Transition State and from that point on that actor will have issues with all of its animations.

This scares me...is there a condition or trick to check to see if the actor is in the Idle Stance? Normally I only do such things in combat but I have discovered actors can drop out of combat unexpectedly sometimes, such as when a companion distracts your opponents, they will drop you from combat and focus on the companion.

Guess I answered my own question, a simple "is in combat" should work.

GetRace()
GetEquippedItemType()
IsInCombat()

All should be fairly useful to you.