I havent heard any mention on the topic of damage, and to a lesser extent damage modifiers. I guess what I mean is the base damage of a weapon or ability and how it stacks up to other types of damage from its teir. For instance, in OB a 1h iron sword might do 3 damage, while a 2h iron mace might do 5. If these values were sent directly to Skyrim then it would favor the 1h weapons because they only do 2 less damage a hit and can swing faster.

The spells follow a similar suit. If a destruction spell does 25 damage in OB, and can be used in conjunction with a 2h weapon or a sword/shield then how will its damage compare in Skyrim where you must equip a spell to use it? This is where the most damage will be lost if spells aren't tweaked in the right manner, because even as a fighter you could just cast your mana bar worth of destruction spells to supplement your damage output.

There are a couple ways to balance it and I am curious as to which Beth has chosen. They could implement an 'off-hand' system where spells or weapons equipped to the off-hand did some % less damage. Or they could just make 2h weapons more than double the damage of a 1h weapon.

Maybe it is just me but it seems like all the roads lead to an increase in player damage with weaponry OR spells and a decrease in player damage with spells AND weaponry.

Of course it is going to feel like a lower damage when combining spells and weapons. In Skyrim, you have two hands, where Oblivion had "3 hands" (as long as one was always magic.)

I am sure they are going through a lot of balancing with the weapon types. A 2 handed weapon should do more damage per second than a 1 handed. Dual wielding should do more damage than a 2 handed. A 1 handed weapon can use a shield, and it seems like a 2 handed will be able to block as well (but likely less effective than a shield). There are now a lot more choices for a fighting style. Do I want a lot of damage with little defense, lots of defense with little damage, a combination of melee and magic damage, magic damage with a shield, melee weapon with magic for defense.

The spells may be more powerful than in Oblivion (especially since the default attack speels were fairly underpowered), but for now we have no idea. We do know there is more versatility in the spells (3 ways to cast, cold slws them down, etc.)