How to disable instant killing of a player?

[Varlor]

The enemy can take less than half of my HP and still finish me off. How can I disable this?

[smr1957]

That often happens with the kill cam. One way (which also gives a lot of other kill cam options is to use the mods Violens - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/668 ,
and disable the player kill cam in that.

[Malkiah]

The only sure fire way to avoid it in melee combat is to simply play as a warrior with a ton of HP. The insta kill only happens because their critical hit is enough to kill you. Not hard if you have the default 100 HP and use light armor or robes. Like if you played as a warrior, you would end up doing the same to your enemies, sometimes even instakilling them at full health, if they are using light armor or robes, the only exception is other heavy armor warriors or bosses.

PS: And yes, before some else points out, mages can get protection to sustain melee combat with perks that buff spells like oaksflesh, stoneflesh, etc. But still, having more than 100 HP is necessary to survive any kind of melee combat.

[Alucard †]

I vaguely recall this could be done via Skyrim.ini without need of mods.
I think i saved that info somewhere i'll get back to you when i find it.

EDIT: Nope sorry these only work for the kill cams against NPCs not the Player
Tho here is the article if you want to experiment with this:

https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/Guide:Skyrim_INI/VATS

You put these commands in Skyrim.ini after [VATS] (if there is no [VATS] in your ini then type in one)

Example :

[VATS]
bVATSDisable=1

^ This for example disables the annoying ranged shot kill cams whenever you attack a low health enemy with a ranged attack resulting most of the time with a miss or you getting killed afterwards cause you are locked in that stupid animation for so long that the enemy can brew tea , eat a sweetroll , read all tomes of Lusty Argonian Maid then slowly casually walk up to you and kill you after the animation ends.

And yes these kill cams are indeed refered to as VATS in game code xD

[SpeedFreak1972]

Also I might add that certain mods that disable kill moves will break certain sequences .... I had it in oldrim with a certain viewing of the past at the top of world. All I want to say be weary.

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by SpeedFreak1972:

Also I might add that certain mods that disable kill moves will break certain sequences .... I had it in oldrim with a certain viewing of the past at the top of world. All I want to say be weary.

Ugh that cursed sequence broke for me so many times without any mods installed or tweaks made in Oldrim :< it was so annoying.

EDIT: I recall even Unofficial Patch didn't fix this. It still could have chance to happen and i couldn't figure out why. Unofficial Patch team were not able to reproduce it when i reported it.

To this day i don't know what was the cause of this glitch it happened on 2 different PCs. It was not the FPS issue cause i kept the game locked to 60.

[smr1957]

Originally posted by SpeedFreak1972:

Also I might add that certain mods that disable kill moves will break certain sequences .... I had it in oldrim with a certain viewing of the past at the top of world. All I want to say be weary.

That may be true of some mods, but Violens is completely safe to use - never any reported issues with it. Though, as Speed said, be wary of others - they may not handle things in the same way and that could cause issues, as he posted.

[Liquid Inc]

I would use Violens, OP, which SMR linked in the first reply. That gives you the option to turn it off and you can always turn it back on later if you so desired with a simple tick box.