what it should be is that you hit the person and as the person is technically on 0 health your character has a chance equal to your critical hit chance with that weapon to do a special finishing move despite the fact that in rpg sense they are dead

If your attack power is high enough; finishing moves will trigger on enemies even at full health.

?

Didn't we already figure this out? It's a critical hit that does enough damage to kill the enemy. I could have sworn this had been answered already.

im pretty sure that critical hits trigger them.

randomly when you kill the last opponent with low health, i don't think there is anything else to it

When I sprint then do a power attack it happens much much more often

Finishing moves seem to be more dependant on where your character is standing in relation to the enemy than any other factors. I seemed to get a good deal of them when I first started playing and they were annoying me since I don't like how defensless my character is while finishing the animation sequence, so I started moving my character really close to the enemies before killing them and now it seems like I almost never trigger the animations anymore.

Another thing, on master difficulty it seems much harder to trigger them, especially once you level up and enemies health bars go through the roof.

I see them happen to my character. She's generally a low health, low armor character.

I think two handed weapons get finishers more often just because they do more damage per hit than other weapons, so a killing blow crit is more likely to happen.

Really can't wait for a mod that removes finishing moves from the game altogether. Horrible design in a game where attack/block/dodge timing is very important. It's especially horrible with Dragons. Normally I can fight Ancient Dragons taking neglectable by relying on timing my shield bashes right, but once I run out of stamina I like to quickly jump back when they snap at me because blocking the blow takes a good portion of stamina too. But NOPE, I've had times where I completely turn around and even manage to jump away from the dragon and even though I'm well out of range of it's bite, it teleports me back infront of the dragon and it instakills me. Soooooo frustrating. I have no idea why Bethesda thought this was a good idea.

But yeah, I think you're right about your theory OP. It's happened to me several time with 2-handers and dragons as well. Their instakill animations go off before they even manage to swing their weapon, which would explain why I can't escape them even when I clear out of range before I see the attack. If you're standing near him at the moment it triggers, doesn't matter how far you get before it actually goes off...You're dead. Terrible, terrible design.

What i`ve figured about these finishers... This is only concerning melee fighters.

1. The program figures out ahead of time or `predicts`when it`s time for the Finisher move. Even if it maybe too soon.
2. The Finisher kicks in if its damage amount is more than whatever health you have left.
3. Criticals aren`t essential, but help.
4. You don`t have to do a Power move. Just do more damage than health he has.
5. You can do a Finisher on a guy that`s not even hurt yet, just as long as you do more damage than his health.
6. The enemy does not have to be the last one left for a Finisher to occur.
7. If you play in 1st person the Finisher will happen in 1st person about 40%of the time, which is cool.
8. Your Followers can Finishers. Sometimes this causes momentary confusion if you and the Follower or friendly both do a Finisher on the same guy!
9. There maybe a random percentile element thrown in... Not sure.

AI Finishers and You...
1. Once the game decides you`re Finished, there`s nothing you can do. Having a little health left and quaffing a thousand potions will not save you. Dodging, blocking won`t help. Fate has decreed you are `Finished`. You have to literally think 2 turns ahead and quaff that potion while at least 50% before the finisher kicks in to avoid it.

2. There`s a horrible delay with Finishers that give you false hope you can do something when you can`t. Sometimes you literally stand there waiting for it like an idiot. Could be smoothed and delay slightly speeded up.

3. On Master, enemy Finishers seem to kick in at around 25th level, but not sure. This could be why some, on other difficulty levels, don`t get Finishers much on them or at all. On Easy you`ll probably never get a Finisher on you or rarely.

4. Never seen a Finisher from an AI mage or with mage spells. It don`t mean it`s not there though...

5. There maybe a random percentile element thrown in.

Player-initiated melee finishers seem to occur when the PC attempts a melee attack on an enemy that would otherwise die from a power attack (benefitting from critical strikes). Another requisite for a finisher seems to be that the enemy is the last remaining combatant - the last red dot on the compass (radar) - or simply hasn't yet engaged combat with you (regardless of other non-engaged enemies in the vicinity) and can be killed in one hit by a power strike. Finishers also seem to be extremely picky about the environment. Physical obstructions very frequently (and annoyingly) have the ability to stop finishing moves short or prevent them completely. The only inconsistency I've encountered regarding finishers is that I'll occasionally find some NPCs immune to them, and that problem usually gets fixed by moving out and back into the cell they're in.

Edit: Regarding NPCs, I've found they have all of the same applied rules, except that they can perform finishers on targets that aren't their last combatants.

I've definitely killed Draugr with finishers with another draugr right behind them waiting to kill me. Since I only have about 3% of my health left sometimes, it's actually quite annoying to lose control. Especially when the first person finishers screw up and take .01 seconds, then have you (invincible, but frozen) standing around for 3.

Oh well... when Bethesda finally manages to fix the game, I'll apply a mod to kill the bug that is finishers once and for all.

From what I gather there is a % chance for it to occur when the enemy is low on Health or the damage of your weapon exceeds their health points. Stunning or Staggering enemies seems to significantly increase the possibility of it happening. If you use the first word of Unrelenting Force to stun an opponent or power attack them causing them to stagger, following up with another normal attack will almost always be a finisher.

every time i kill a summoned familiar i do a finisher, maybe it's holding the power button when your enemies health is low, ???

There doesn't seem to be much mystery when it comes to finishing moves. There's a few things to note for the PLAYER to be able to do a finishing move:

* The player must be in the correct position for a finishing move to trigger. There's room for error, but if you're not in the correct position to perform a finishing move when you initiate a strike, it won't happen.

* A finishing move gets calculated once the player begins to strike with a weapon. It doesn't have to be a power attack. (I.e. once the player presses the Left Mouse Button)

* The damage your weapon is capable of inflicting in a single normal strike has to be of a certain amount that would be capable of at least killing your opponent if multiplied by ~2.0x - ~2.25x.

* The chance to do a finishing move seems to increase the more overkill damage you're able to inflict.

* The base chance for a finishing move seems to be 50 percent.

* You can only inflict a finishing move if your opponent is the only nearby enemy in combat.

That's fine and dandy, but then there's the NPCs. It seems like most of those rules apply to an NPC inflicting a finishing move on the player, but it seems like position doesn't matter when it comes to NPCs inflicting finishing moves. So finishing moves trigger even if the following finishing move animation looks like it doesn't even hit you. This differs from the player because the player has to be in the right position and then the player's position is further corrected (Automatically by the game) so that the finishing move doesn't look silly and it actually connects with the foe in question.

Just my two cents. o.o ...

I had a finished performed on me by hired thugs on master before I even got out of Riverwood. It's pretty brutal at times. I tend to stay far away from 2H NPCs, or always keep my shield up and only attack when they are staggered or have just swung. I really need to invest in illusion more and make them beat each other up.

Really, I'm not happy with in in regards to NPCs getting those off on you with 2H weapons. It significantly decreases some of the drawback from those weapons being slower when they can get the attack off instantly without giving me a chance to react to it and get my shield up. I wish that they were required to land the attack normally for a finisher to be performed on the player, and the finishing move instead was just a second follow-through attack. Or that we could disable it entirely.

What difficulty are you playing on?

Not true! I've done finishers back to back on enemies who are lined up one behind the other, and can both see me, and are both looking to stab me.

You have the potential to do a finisher any time you kill an enemy.

Short of using the Sneak master perk, I don't believe that's possible.

just a fairly improved Ebony War Axe to the face of lower-tier draugr. Kill one on the second hit with a finisher, OHK the next one with one.

Provided it's true, the only way I can explain that is that the other Draugr started fleeing (Which they tend to do) so the game didn't consider them to be in direct combat with the player. Otherwise, no-go.

he`s right. i`ve seen it too. And they are all in kill player mode. There are other factors in this.

However, it`s true that the Player needs to be level with the enemy to complete the Finisher requirements- I forgot about that one.

I've never seen this happen and I've played for quite a bit. I've also never seen it in any video short of the master Sneak perk. The only thing that I've seen come close to this in any way is when Draugr are fleeing, one is halfway across the room running his buttocks off and I fatality one of his friends and then proceed to chase him down and do what must be done.

Having started a new play through, I have decided to suffer Master difficulty and found that NPC's are certainly performing finishing moves more frequently. eg all the [censored] time.
Getting to rage quit point, especially when the hired thugs arrived due to me noising up some NPC or other in a town.

Now playing on Adept instead, at least I can get some hits in now.

Agree
Topic: yea this has been brought up before, quite annoying when you know that you're not supposed to die, but because that idiot had to do a finisher you just HAD to die.
*cue keyboard banging and headwalls*