In every TES game its been the skill on the fringe of combat skills, where you aren't very effective with it and the enemies with weapons will kick your ass if you try it against them. It was useful in Daggerfall for kicking down doors, but we don't do much of that anymore. What should we do? Keep it, toss it, find some improvements? Get some brass knuckles...

to make it usefull


disarming weapons

rugby style tackles

kicks (while holding weapons, although not overpowered like dark messiah)

grabs

throws

etc



otherwise its useless

If it's not going to be affective offensively, lets make it really awesome defensively (disables and such).

IMO hand to hand should never be as good as fighting with a weapon. I mean, we all want the game to be realistic, and hand to hand being even against a sword or axe is just stupid. It should be reserved for those who want to challenge themselves. I like the idea of multiple attacks though (tackles, kicks etc).

Hand to Hand hasn't been usefull in any of the TES games to date. That is going to be for the extreme Role Players. I don't see how you can make Hand to Hand useful when someone is wearing body armor.