I saw a mod on youtube a while back where a guy made some joke spell that when cast on an NPC, their head would fall off.

In an attempt to make alteration more exciting to use in combat, I am making several "physics manipulation" spells, one of which is a damaging ability that would be Alteration's equivalent to a firebolt, a sort of main DPS spell that I intend to be a little like that spell that Harry Potter discovers at some point which simply cuts objects. This ability would have perks to boost the damage, and a perk that gives a chance if it hits an NPC in the head, to decapitate them.

So I got to thinking about how this guy accomplished his spell in the video, and I thought about it for a while. It appeared that when he was close enough to the target, he would actually enter the normal killmove with the target, but would not when he was far away.

I also read that sendanimationevent() actually causes events associated with an animation to occur, such as using the death animation will actually kill the actor or a weapon swing will actually do damage.



So, thinking about this, I concluded that this guy is likely sending the decapitate killmove animation to the target actor. I was wondering if someone could enlighten me as to how to find these animation event names that I could send with this function, or if I am even on the right track.

Thanks for your time.

The mod "Vampiric Thirst" by MsLeches over at the nexus uses powers that cause killmove animations, maybe that could help?

Unfortunately the source scripts are not included in that mod, so there is no way to see how he is triggering killmoves there.