If being the key word. It completely ignores if you are or were going to block or dodge as the damage is determined when the enemy wants to attack, as opposed to when the attack connects. I can't count the number of times I, as a mage, purposely kept my distance from melee enemies, only to have a finisher execute and kill me when I'm at or near full health on the edge of their attack range. The only attack that could possibly take me down in one hit like that would be a power attack, and they take a good couple of seconds to actually execute... and since I stay back and am constantly moving, there'd have been no way he could hit me in a fair fight.

The animation firing off clearly meant that you would not have been able to dodge it anyway.

You ever seen how big a claymore is? How heavy those damned things are? And those are just swords...

Should feel lucky you can even get hit once by those things in a game.

I agree. The complete package of Skyrim is pretty awesome, but little problems like this really damage the experiance.

Exactly.

I agree,

No enemy that you fight should ever be able to hit you before you get your shield up. Especially if you decided in advance you were going to get your shield up. That's just outrageous.

I also hate when enemies block my sword. How dare they? I clearly intended to decapitate them. They have no right to put their shield or weapon in the way.

/sarcasm

Sure, it's frustrating. But you know what? It happens. People do things you dont expect, or do what you expect quicker than you thought they could/would.

Genius.

Then that's a problem with hit detection and when damage is mitigated.

Pre-mitgating the damage, in my opinion, is fairly dumb, I will agree to that.

I also think it's a bad mechanic. Fortunately, I'm sure those playing on the PC will soon be able to turn it off, if they can't already.

Its pretty hilarious when you're standing on top of a wall and you teleport down in front of them so they can perform the execution animation on you

As others have said, it's not that NPCs get finishing moves, it's how they trigger. Say I fight a high-level NPC, and his two-hander hits me with a power attack, taking off more than half my health. To deliver a killing blow, he has to rear up his sword again, and I have plenty of time to dodge, bash him, chug a potion, ect. But, because I am below the health treshold, the execute animation plays out as soon as his first power attack connects, and I get to watch my agile thief sit around like an idiot for 3 seconds while the other guy jumps and kills him. It's not game-breaking, but it's one of many, many minor annoyances that weight down Skyrim if you ask me.

This must be the wimps thread....nasy bandit killed me...how dare Bethesda let that nasty bandit kill me.
Set difficulty to novice and max out smithing and enchanting...and learn how to play the game instead of whining.

LOL. You just don`t like getting back what you do to them. reminds me of the guy who does Deadly reflexes and he had executions like chopping off of heads, etc. I asked him several times to make it so it can happen to the Player, but he refused, saying it was not `fun` for the Player.

Well Bethesda seem to think the Player should get it too, and I`m absolutely fine with it.

I'm fine with it too, but since I started out so sarcastically dismissing the OP at the beginning of the thread before I grasped his exact point, let me play devil's advocate for a minute and argue his side of the question.

It's correct that an execution, whether by the player or by an NPC, only triggers when the attack will do enough damage to kill the person outright anyway. That much is correct. But the idea is that it's only supposed to be an animation triggered by that fact, and not for it to actually have an effect on anything besides displaying that animation under the right conditions. However, if the execution has the ability to disable blocking that would have stopped that killing blow then the execution has changed from merely being a visual effect triggered under certain conditions to something that actually alters the outcome of fights. I doubt that was the original intention when they came up with the idea for the execution animations.

Now, as somebody else said, blocking doesn't completely mitigate 100% of damage, but it does do quite a bit. If the incoming blow was going to do enough damage to kill the player even while blocking, then I can consider the execution perfectly justified. And even if the block would have stopped the blow short of killing the player, allowing him to get in his own final shot at a weakened enemy, I can still accept it as a bit of bad luck, and not a bad game mechanic. But I certainly do have to admit I'd find it quite frustrating if I were in a close fight, had judged the rhythym of the fight well, was waiting to block a blow, and was prevented from blocking because of bad luck triggering the execution animation. Sure, there's logic in that bad luck - but I certainly can't dismiss the complaint as trivial like I did initially.

I love how everyone jumps on him for this.

When you're in a position where you'd normally come out of it unharmed..the game freezes you and you get 1-hit killed, instead of blocking with your shield like you would have.

But let's all attack him and flaunt our egos, shall we?

Well, he isn't talking about being one-shotted, he's talking about a close battle where he has one hit's worth of HP after being whittled down. I and others, I think, initially mis-interpreted this as simply wanting to execute people and him being (unjustly) annoyed that he could get killed as well - there are quite a few people that whine about anything difficult. Only after re-thinking his point have I had to concede that I'd find it frustrating under those circumstances as well.

And now for the obligatory:

I used to be an adventurer like you until I got executed.

lol

That's not the complaint at all. The complaint is that the finishers are rendering Blocking and Maneuvering completely useless. It doesn't matter if you have a fully-perked, Fully-leveled Block skill with a Legendary Daedric Shield raised while wearing Legendary Daedric Armor on Novice Difficulty - You still have a chance of being outright executed because of two flaws in the way Executions are calculated. In order for an Execution to trigger, you need:
1. Less health than the damage of the attack - Damage mitigation effects such as Armor are not taken into consideration.
2. You're within range at the start of the attack - even if you'd be out of range by the end, or there's no way for them to actually hit you (Standing on or behind a wall, moving out of the way, or even raising a shield)

Not related, but you feel entitled to tell modders what to do with their creative visions, and act butthurt when your (repeated) requests are not met?

I bet you're really popular.

So what is the "proper" way to play, to prevent pushover enemies from killing you when you're at or near full health and at the very edge of their melee range and moving away?

Allowing enemies to do finishers on you essentially gives them a free, faster-than-light power attack, that if it "hits" will play a special cutscene before loading your last save. There's no defense against it except by never going an inch into melee range (a nearly impossible feat for almost all character types), or by pumping up your health and armor like a tank.

It adds no depth to combat or gameplay as it's entirely based on random chance. It does not properly reflect you or your character's capability in fights as it causes you to randomly lose when you could easily win otherwise. There's no skill to avoiding it and no way to "do better next time" because you can't avoid them or stop them from happening (you can only pray that luck is on your side)... and when it does happen, the only thing you can do is reload and hope your last save wasn't too far back. It doesn't teach you anything as a player, and it's more like the game's mocking you (think you're so nimble, lead foot? what, you thought that legendary Daedric shield with your shield skill at 100 would actually do something?).

Okay, now that's an exaggeration. Executions don't kill you at full health unless your total health is so low that they'd be able to one-shot you anyway. The execution is triggered by an attack that will do more damage than you have left.

The real issue at hand is the lack of damage mitigation (either by dodging or blocking) The game doesn't factor in player movement in, or whether or not their shields are up (I may be wrong, I am assuming this)
This stops players who have the skill to dodge/block from surviving.

That's a problem. I have to admit I came into this thread with low expectations, but actually having READ the guy's posts his grievance is legit.

Well, to now play devil's advocate for the other side, there is a legitimate counter-argument - that your blocking with a shield isn't foolproof. Once in a while the execution happens despite the fact you're blocking.

The problem with this is that the game invents that "fault", it is not a result of a gameplay error.

So in effect, the game forced you to "fail" when you wouldn't have.

That is objectively poor design.

I thought they only triggered if the attack was going to hit anyway. Maybe you were dodging and maybe you were blocking but in either case your attempt to avoid the blow was unsuccessful. Even if you were moving fast, that doesn't mean you were moving fast enough. I could be wrong, but that's the way it seems from my experience, and dodging blows is the way I play the game. My character has died thousands of times and I only get execution animations about 5% of the time and I'm usually far to close to the enemy when it happens. Personally, I like them.