I heard the combat music roll, a male Khajiit was staring at me from the top of the fortress and it was not because of my feminine charms but because of the ring of my pockets, with my arms at the ready and all my skills as a monk at my disposal I ran up the stair to meet the assault. He fought cheap, a dagger! I moved back and sidestepped his furious slashes each and every one of them a threat to my being, my heart pounded faster and faster and I found myself on the offense, a few blows and the man staggered back, he glared with his catlike eyes and assaulted me with his dagger again. Too fast, I could not dodge as the dagger sunk into my glass armor and found its way through my reptilian scales, I squirmed my eyes and growled, the wound was light but I had to get that dagger out of his hands. A quick sidestep followed by a slap at his hand and the dagger flew out of his grasp, the game was over, there was no way an unarmed ruffian could out perform a skilled monk in fair hand to hand combat. I relaxed my stance and prepared myself for his next assault intending to end it then and there with a series of strong blows after dodging his first attack. But the first attack never came. The Kahjiit knelt down and I launched the initiative instead, I got in a few quick blows but not quick enough to do him in before he had his dagger back in his hands. He growled and with bruises all over his body he launched back at me with too much fury to care about his stance. It made it easy to knock his dagger back out of his hands. But that time I knelt down myself and acquired the dagger, he punched me but it did no harm to me. With his dagger in my backpack and my fists at the ready I made quick work of the rogue Kahjiit, and after the fight I sat down and pondered long and hard about an aspect of fighting. Why is it so easy to retrieve a weapon with someone beating at you ?

This is the description of a fight I just had in Oblivion, I′ve always been fond of utilizing the tools given to me so I frequently take advantage of power attack perks, especially when I play my female argonian monk, who needs the edge if she is going to fight with hand to hand. But it is far too easy for both NPC′s AND the player to loot stuff in combat, I disarmed that bandit and even with me pounding at his back he didn′t flinch while getting his dagger back, and likewise when I disarmed him again I did not have any trouble looting the dagger from the ground myself.

Now in Skyrim I hear we will get pushed around a bit, if something hits you hard you go flying. But if the same system of looting is kept from Oblivion where you just have to be a bit close and have your cross-hair over an item to loot it, then we will have the same problem with disarms in Skyrim. What I personally propose to fix this problem is for looting items to be a timed event only in combat (making it easy to see so people won′t rage before noticing this), so that if you intend to take something off the ground with something or someone beating you up you will need let′s say 3 seconds uninterrupted and if you get hit or pushed around those 3 seconds then you would fail, this would also allow the player to keep NPC′s from getting their weapon back so easily if they also needed 3 uninterrupted seconds for looting. It would still be possible to loot your weapon back through many means, for example you could use a paralysis spell that lasts 3+ seconds, you could use that force push dragon shout and then get your weapon, we could have an exception where if you cast telekinesis on the item you get it instantly (imagine the classic scene of the wizard making his (or someone else′s) weapon fly to his hand quickly (like what Saruman did with Gandalfs staff in LOTR)), you could lead your enemy away from the item and cast a quick encumbrance spell that would root him for enough time to get your weapon back, you could do the same but just slow your enemy with a frost spell, the possibilities are limitless.

But I am only one man and two minds are better than one, so what I ask is how would you like this matter to be addressed for Skyrim ?

tl;dr You only need to read from the point where there is a blue word.

too many words...

I made a bit of a cheap tl;dr for those that don′t like a bit of light reading.

I see how this could be a good idea, the only thing that I would suggest would be instead of 3 seconds, make it 5. Only because three seconds isn't enough time to find, say, a small dagger, and put it in your back, much less a big sword, staff, or axe imo.

I think what they have said about being more vulnerable to being knocked off balance, stunned or likely to stumble sounds like enough for me. Wouldn't enrage me if they did something like your idea though.

But is the game not able to instantly aim each NPC′s "internal crosshair" or what you would call it, let′s say I make a bandit drop his weapon and it goes behind him. If I shield bash him to stumble backwards won′t he still be able to pick it up unlike the PC who after all has a human in control that does not have 100% timing and precision ?

Nice to know you wouldn′t mind my idea but I myself am not sure if it′s even the best one, anyone else with suggestions ?

use the force to pick it up

Well, I don't think they should be able to pick anything up if the animation for falling/stumbling hasn't finished, and nor should they retrieve their weapon if you interrupt the animation where they are bent to pick up the object (what they've said about magnetism may help with the timing and precision, if that's what you meant).

I would like to think that, like in real life combat, dropping your weapon can have fatal implications. If you drop your sword in a duel, ducking to pick it back up leaves you defenceless and practically invites death. But yeah, I don't see a very practical way of applying this ingame. Perhaps the distance at which your cursor needs to be from the item can be reduced (i.e. you need to be much closer to the item during combat to be able to pick it up), or perhaps you can only pick up something which is directly at your feet.

I like the idea of a telekenesis spell with combat applications. One that could disarm your enemy by bringing you his/her weapon sounds interesting, if a bit unbalanced (perhaps it would work based on a dice roll, based on your mysticism *ahem* skill level, combined with your enemy's strength and willpower). Such a spell could also work with normal non-occupied items, so if you drop your sword you'd have a safer way to rearm yourself.

I like this topic; it's interesting and has a big impact on combat and yet is largely ignored. Thanks for bringing it up OP :thumbsup:

I kinda just meant the telekinesis thing as if you had been disarmed then if you cast telekinesis on your weapon on the ground it would be transported towards you into your inventory or hand. But combat telekinesis does sound a bit cool, imagine if there was a check where your skill in telekinesis and perhaps your intellect was checked against someones strength, like it would be perhaps half int and half telekinesis and if those two added up to being more than the enemies strength you could rip the weapon out of his hands, like a mage with 40 in int and 60 in telekinesis would use it on someone with 45 in strength then it would be (40/2)+(60/2) = 20+30 = 50 > 45, and then you would be able to rip the weapon from his grasp, or something like that, perhaps a perk ?

No thanks. At most maybe a 0.5-1s animation for picking anything up(bending down, if your sneaking then theres no animation) thats easily interrupted. But 3 seconds is extreme.

But then in return would you not mind it if your enemy that you had just disarmed would just pick up his weapon in half a second ? What would you propose to make disarming useful ? That is what I′m fishing after here, ideas for this matter... too bad this thread doesn′t seem to be very popular, guess few bothered with the whole disarming thing.

Then again there are many who complain combat is only hack and slash in Oblivion where you just watch the health bar of your enemy go down but perhaps those people are just those who never bothered to utilize combat to its fullest, those who never disarmed, paralyzed or knocked down their enemy with their power attacks.