Simple answer would be a killing blow, but it seems like there's more to it than that.

Many times an NPC wielding a 2-hander will walk up to you and go right into the finishing animation before even swinging. The theory here is that, for finishers only, a killing blow is calculated right at the beginning of a swing animation, before the killing blow even lands, which doesn't make much sense. This causes slow attacks that would normally be easily avoidable, like a 2H power attack, to be completely unavoidable. Since the finisher is triggered right when the animation starts you never even see the attack coming.

There are also times where a finishing blow is triggered off of attacks that wouldn't have finished you if they landed normally. This one is harder to confirm but after a lot of experience getting hit many people have a pretty fair gauge of what will kill their character. I've also scored finishers off of attacks that to my experience wouldn't have killed my enemy if landing normally.

I'm curious to see what people think the exact conditions for landing a finisher are.

One time I was dodging attacks by a two handed bandit....then for some reason...my character would not budge, as if he was stuck...I mashed all my buttons "WWWWWWWASDWDASDWASDSSSSSSSSSSSSAAAAAA" and then came the finishing move (cutscene) by the bandit, and he smashed my head into the ground. I was furious

My hypothesis is that Skyrim employs a revolutionary new software based annoyance detection system. Whenever the game detects you're not sufficiently annoyed, it does finishing moves until you are

I've gotten that one a lot. I think even if you're effectively dodging the attacks you can get stuck in a finisher if the first millisecond of the Bandit's swing animation happens while you're in range.

It seems to be the damage possible with your weapon when power attacking, even if you don't power attack. Thats my experience with my 2h weapon.

If it wasn't the case, it would screw up the animation. You would see an orc swing at you, then you get hit, then you get an animation of the orc swinging at you from the start (again) to remove your head. While he would have struck you only 1 time.

I was being pounded on by a guy with a battleaxe and my magic wasn't doing diddly squat. I was almost dead and grabbed my sword, realized I didn't have a shield and said Screw it I'm dead anyway. Started to take one wild pathetic swing and suddenly I gutted the guy. I was like, How in the hell did that happen???

Could it be as simple as you are delivering a critical hit that the game knows will finish off the opponent? In other words, late battle critical hits?

Interesting. Do you think it incorporates the damage possible if you crit automatically as well?
I'm not sure what would be wrong with the animation coming after you get hit with the final blow. Sure he only actually hit you once so the extra finishing blow would be just be an unnecessary spectacle, but that's kind of what finishers are anyways.

That right, it could be working like you are saying, but i think dev make it this way following the logic i said. But indeed, the extra hit from finisher would allow you to block that last hit, thus, enhancing gameplay.

I think the requirements for a finishing move is to have the enemy on low health and the amount of damage you're weapon has needs to exceed the health of your enemy. Finally, you need to do a power attack or hold down the button.

You can do finisher even without power attacking (at least on sneak attack)

An additional requirment for finisher is that the foes must be the last one in the battle, otherwise, other foes could bash you whil you are doing the finisher.

The first part is plausable, but the second...I can attest to having a finishing move animation without using a power attack.

Ok, I guess your right on that last part. I have to admit that I wasn't 100% sure on that, I took a guess...

This is not always the case. I have sneak killed 3 thalmor in close proximity all the the throat slit animation, all in the same battle. Ive also had a few in normal battle with 2 enemy combatants, the ones I remember particularly are those with Forsworn.

Detects enemy HP, compares to weapon damage + perks, then rolls a %. Finishing moves have like 20% chance of happening I think by default, which u can change to 100% with

set killmoverandom 100

you don't need to powerattack to use a "finishing move"

i am pretty sure that they are kinda random... if you are way stronger than your target, the chance is higher and if the target is something like a dragon or high lvled draugr with tons of health, the chance is lowered.

For your Thalmor battle, since you were sneaking, you were probably "out of combat" between each slit throat.
For the other battle, indeed, i'm surprised that you could trigger a finisher while someone else is bashing you, never happened to me.

But are sneak animations held to different rules than other finishing move animations?

I think this is the big problem with these finishing moves. The developer's choice appears to have been:

A. Trigger the cutscene at the start of an attack (based on the fact that if the blow lands successfully, the target will die). or
B. Trigger the cutscene upon contact with the target, which would result in an 'action replay' type effect because you would actually see the attack twice.

The problem is that the method apparently employed by the game (A) makes no allowance for a possible dodge or successful block.

I absolutely HATE this addition to The Elder Scrolls. It just feels like another dumbed-down action RPG effect for the sake of 'coolness' and it is why the 'No Finishing Moves' mod was the first permanent mod I used for Skyrim.


Stannie

It's bugged for me... I can't find a way for them to occur more often

The Thalmor fight was in the sewers looking for a particular person. The three Thalmor detected me and rushed me in direct combat. I only had around 50 sneak at the time, but I did use a few invisibility potions to make them "break" visual contact. Basically it was direct combat, me sneak>invisible, go behind thalmor>slit throat, thalmor 2 detects me again, me sneak>invisible, etc etc.

Three of them with throat slits in around 15-20 seconds or something like that, and all in the same combat "moment".

The other dual ones though I *think* were due to different groups of forsworn. For instance I remember one at a redoubt camp, me decaping a forsworn and a second forsworn appearing from the side/rear and attacking me just after the animation and I then got another kill strike animation with a decap (or was it a dual stab?) dual stab.

I personnaly like the finishers, expecially sneak attack one, too bad there is no bow finisher. On a game with such amazing graphic, sneak slice throat while breaking from invisibility look really great!


Then you broke combat 3 time. Losing aggro on everyone each time.

you can't be hit while peforming a finisher at all, just like your target. try to hit someone while he performs a finisher... impossible.

Last night just as a bandit chief was preparing to swing at me, I hit favorites and potioned back up to full health, and bam the guys hits me with a finishing move and I am dead. I was so ticked off, but I guess that should pretty well confirm the part about the decision being made a split second before the attack actually happens. And no the bandit was no capable of one shotting me either.