Usually even a marginal victory can count as "achieving a goal", depending, of course, on what, exactly, the goal *is*. If it is to kill/completely discredit/whatever, then yes, it generaly needs a complete victory. But a marginal victoey puts you in a position in which you can kill them at your leisure (accept their surrender, put them in fetters, and then whack their head off. Simple, effective, and used lots of times in the real world).
Your opponents are generally going to be as homocidal as you are - if you are known to be a guy that always kills your opponents, then you will probably not be offered quarter when you are defeated. However, if you accept ransoms etc., you'll probably find that your opponents will accept yours - in other words, your RPG group probably has "accepted modes of behaviour" when it comes to combat.
How does this fit your question? If your group is a ransom-culture, fights will end at Dazed as peoplw surrender. If it is a kill-culture, then you'll see a lot more Parting Shots and CdG's. You *can* stop a fight as soon as one of you goes under 0 AP, or you can go for a more devestating outcome (using PS and CdG). Your opposition will probably have similar ways of fighting.
Some creatures will rarely bother you once you pass 0 AP ("quick, play dead"), while others are simply Mindless Killing Machines. Narrators should give indications of which is which (unless that's part of the secret narrator notes), which is a good reason to have red shir... err, followers, who the narrator can use to demonstrate how the creature works ("The skeleton continues to hack Fred apart, long after he is dead, then it flays him and strips the muscles and viscera from the body...").
RR
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