> > GM:"They turn and try to flee"
> > PC:"Woohoo, as they turn I stab them through the heart"
> That would take a complete success to do. [And they would get talked
> about afterwards for stabbing people in the back]
>
> If they do drive them to negative that might mean that they are now
> running even faster as the retreat has now turned into a rout.
But this is where the purpose of the contest gets complicated. If the contest is between PCs "We want to kill them" and NPCs "We want to run away!", then the LEAST a PC success can reasonably mean is that the NPC does not escape. They may even be unharmed, but they shouldn't escape. And thereafter, killing them is a simple matter regardless of the actual level of victory.
If the PCs had said "We want to defeat them", then chasing them off is a viable option. And it's unfair to force too precise an interpretation on the PCs intent, it's what's meant that matters, not what's said. If, in the first example, the NPCs run away, that's a victory for them. It cannot be a victory for the PCs, unless their intent was compatible with chasing them off, in which case it's not a contest... "I run away!" "I chase you away!"
Wulf
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