Further testing needed, but it's dawning on me that Hand to Hand isn't exactly the 'useless' combat skill I've often thought it to be.

Right now I'm playing a Nord Crusader - the default class, with Hand to Hand as a minor skill. I wanted to see how it worked, as I've never used it before. The whole "only damages Fatigue at first" thing seemed odd, and also super dangerous. So some guy is hitting me with a sword, hurting my actual *Health*, while I'm... punching at him, making him sleepy?

But I gave it a shot, first reserving Hand to Hand 'practice' for creatures like Mudcrabs, Kwama Foragers, and Rats - small things that I could easily kill with weapons if I needed to.

First thing I noticed: Hand to Hand raises *really* fast, even with a Combat specialization. I had to stop using it a while so my combat skills (which were Majors!) didn't fall behind.

Second thing: After your H2H skill gets around 40 or so, and you can hit pretty consistently, you can pretty much keep things staggered so they're not hitting you so much. *And*, even if they don't get staggered with every punch, you're hurting their Fatigue, which means they have less of a chance to hit you.

So lately I've been expanding my boxing matches to include bigger creatures, from Cliff Racers to Kagouti. I'm still wary of taking on NPCs, especially in groups (3 Ashlander witch-women north of Ald-ruhn almost killed me when I got a little cocky), but I think eventually I could actually use H2H as my main skill, if I wanted.

Like all combat animations in MW, the H2H anims leave much to the imagination, but it's cool if you can think of it the right way - you're wearing down your opponent, letting them waste their energy, and then pummeling them to the ground. Plus the animations for KO-ed creatures and NPCs are rather hilarious.

Clearly I'm really late to this revelation, but over the years I've heard so much hate for H2H that I figured I should come and spread some love for an often-maligned combat skill. Anyone else find this to be not just a weird quirk, but actually fun & effective too?

You know, hand-to-hand is one thing I've never done in any of these games. I've played Monks in Neverwinter Nights. I don't know why I've done it here. I like the idea of not being reliant on weapons. So I may have to try this sometime. After all these years there's still so many things I've never done.

I once had a Khajiit with Hand-to-Hand, Sneak and Illusion among his strongest skills. You can do critical damage to fatigue if you sneak up on someone, often knocking them out. When an enemy is paralyzed (Illusion spell), they take health damage instead of fatigue damage.

I also had MWE Combat Enhanced for that character, IIRC.

That's really encouraging to hear. I only started playing Morrowind in earnest a few years ago, and there are many, many things I haven't done - but because I've never done them before, I don't know exactly *how* much I haven't done. Probably the biggest draw to this game, for me, is the sense of exploration it offers. So I'm glad to hear that there is lots of exploration left!

But yes, H2H is lots of fun, I find. Originally I was turned off because of the simplistic animations and the strange way it works (damaging fatigue, then health). But then I realized, I like the weapon-combat system in MW, and the animations for that are just as basic. So much of the game is really played in your head, anyway, rather than on screen. So maybe instead of just literally punching Hlormir Wine-Sot while he is lying on the ground gasping for breath (lol!), maybe I'm actually putting him in a sleeper hold or something. It's the same way you have to imagine your epic sword-battle with a Golden Saint as ... well, an epic sword-battle, rather than 2 mannequins robotically whacking each other for a few seconds.

Of course, it helps that H2H seems to be also pretty effective.

The only time I ever use hand to hand is to rough up that one Nord protesting outside the Raven rock mine. I might try out a hand to hand build next time in Morrowind!

One of my earliest, and best, builds was a pure mage with H2H minor. He ended up using the magic skills for utility and H2H for damage. If I were to do another H2H build I'd take it as a major and just start out from Seyda Neen fighting my way trying to use only H2H to level. That would get you to 100 H2H around level 7 or maybe level 10 if you work on Alchemy a little for restore health and fatigue potions. It levels surprising fast as a major and at 100 skill nothing can touch you. Even Golden Saints are no threat, although they take a while to kill.

You may get bored with H2H eventually (it can be tedious) and switch to something else but there's nothing like the feeling of power at low-mid levels you can get with H2H.

I used H2H as a backup skill for my one archer, which started out really awkward for the first few levels, but with a little more skill turned out to be quite effective against single targets. The lack of reach tended to be a problem against multiple opponents, however, because if you're in range to punch the closest one, all of the others following can probably reach you with swords, spears, axes, etc. The usual tactic was to "thin the herd" with the bow, and then pummel the last one still standing.

Do it!

Sounds fun - I'll have to try a mage who focuses on *utility* magic in MW.

I was shocked to see my skill skyrocketing the way it has. Currently (lvl 15 I think), H2H is my highest attack skill, despite being a minor skill, despite my not using it a whole lot (definitely not grinding), and despite it belonging to a non-specialized skill set (the pre-made Crusader class, which I'm playing, has Combat as a specialization, while H2H belongs to Stealth). I mean, the skill started at 15; one Mudcrab later, it was at 25.

One of the things I love about the Crusader class, I'm finding, is that there's a good deal of variety between Blade, Blunt, and Hand to Hand. My current setup is essentially to switch between a warhammer, sword & board, and h2h. If I just want stuff to die in one or 2 hits, the warhammer. If I'm facing multiple foes or an enemy I don't want to get hit by, I'll often use the shield & sword. For single enemies I'm not too worried about, h2h. But my h2h skill now is around 65. As it gets better, I suspect that I'll just start using it more & more.

Also, the fact that your fists are considered basically enchanted weapons for the purposes of hitting daedra and spectral undead is just awesome, and proof that MW is the game that has been kindest to h2h, of the last 3 anyway.

Yes, I've found the reach thing to be a challenge in group fights. Since I use heavy armor, I was thinking I could just stand there and 'soak' the damage while pounding on people one at a time. But the problem - as you no doubt found - is that all those other enemies are not only damaging your health, they're often staggering you as well.

It's quite strong for 1v1 fights. Even if you don't kill your target, you reduce their fatigue so low that they aren't going to be very effective.

It's pretty awful late game though. Not only is base damage significantly lower than top-tier weapons, but you have to work through enemies rediculuously high fatigue bars before you can even damage their health. The biggest detriment by far is that you cannot enchant your fists, so your damage output is will never even be comparable to what custom enchants are capable of.

I wonder if it would be more effective at high levels against mage type NPCs, who might have lower fatigue than warrior NPCs? That's just a guess.

I feel like I remember some mod(s) which add "weapons" / "fists" for H2H combat. Like gloves that give you a Cast On Strike enchantment with your fists. I feel like having such a feature could make the skill more viable for lategame. Essentially giving it a weapon.

There's an old mod called Fists of Fire that does something like that:
http://mw.modhistory.com/download-51-3886

There are also "parrying bracers" (shield with bracer mesh):
http://mw.modhistory.com/download-55-15131
http://mw.modhistory.com/download-55-8612

Interesting! I haven't seen high-level gameplay in MW, really (usually don't get into the 30s), so I haven't come up against the 'Runaway Fatigue/Health' problem yet. Something to think about.

Don't think I've seen those things on the Nexus... but then it seems as though the Nexus isn't the primary place for MW mods?

WARNING: boring history lesson incoming....

Elder Scrolls modders didn't upload mods to Nexus until Oblivion came out. Before that, we used Morrowindfiles, Euro-Morrowind, Morrowind Summit (later called Planet Elder Scrolls) and other sites. I think many Morrowind modders were hesitant to adopt Nexus at first because by then (2006-2007) we'd seen so many sites go down. But the newer generation of modders adopted the Nexus quickly.

So we have a peculiar situation with Morrowind mods: most post-2006 mods were uploaded to the Nexus, but pre-2006 mods were uploaded by third parties to Morrowind Mod History before Planet Elder Scrolls went down. That is why those three mods are on MMH, and not Nexus.

I'd never *heard* of MMH before this thread, so thanks!

I figured it must be something like that; I had heard of Planet Elder Scrolls (I think I downloaded my first Oblivion mods from there, in fact).

I've seen some other sites for mods - Great House Fliggerty, IIRC. But it's good to know of another place to look.

Yes, there appear to be still a lot of people who don't know about it - by the numbers of threads always coming up looking for "lost" mods. It's a great source for a lot of old stuff, and more people should be made aware of it!