Cranial always lagged like trip.

Then, they changed it to take helmets into consideration. Now, if wearing the proper helmet, they will get like 1 round lag. As far as knockouts are concerned, its VERY obvious that your fight initiating cranials have a MUCH higher chance of K'O'ing someone (also, hence the graze damage).

KO usually sucks, however, because you can't cranial again for a while. Nothing like with my villager, cranialing a mage at convusing/writing and he gets away because it ko'd him and I'd have no other way of lagging.

I think I heard rumors of sometimes you get "cant cranial anymore" affect nowadays even thought they didn't get ko'd?

Finally, theres an edge that lets you get "Around" helmets with cranialing. Don't know if its always or sometimes.