The thing is hand to hand has only been simple punching with slightly different varients for power attacks. Martial arts may not be big on gauntlets...but you can't tell me a punch from a guy with daedric gauntlets would hurt just as badly as a punch from a bare fisted enemy. That doesn't make any sense.

If Skyrim brings different martial arts styles to the table, I'd be happy with just being able to use magic to boost the power...but the odds are against that. Different styles could be like monks weapons, the styles getting better, and you could choose which one to use...but that would take a lot of work and different animations. If its going to be simple punches, gauntlets would help a lot.

In the trailer I see a choke hold and a kick, although these are part of finishing attacks for assassin and melee stealth kills. It seems to imply martial arts is being fleshed out. I'd like to see some MMA type chokeouts and some wrestling moves, as well as kicks.

Khajiit and Orcs would be good melee classes IMO. Khajiit because they invented martial arts in Tamriel and Orcs because it fits their barbarian nature.

It makes sense since martial artists down swing their arms as if they were scaring flies away, but use fast and precise attacks to hit enemies weak points.
Gauntlets are heavy and slow down your hits big time while will also exhaust you faster.
They might be a good idea in simple brawler scenario, but in martial art scenario, no.



I already said my version of how weapons can be avoided.
Also, you don't need lot of animations for that.
Not every martial art is movie style Kung fu where one flies around doing crazy moves and takes down people with one finger.
Some guy here on forum posted a link from some game where a character used martial arts.
Animations looked simple yet very nice.
I think that TES could use something like that.



MMA is just a sport and is not that usable in real life.
Don't get me wrong though.
MMA champion would do great on streets, but would get screwed up by some rules usually present during the match.

MMA is very similar to the martial arts the Marines use, which is a form of Akido and VERY practical. A less stylized version of MMA would definitely work in life or death situations as it's designed to incapacitate or kill as quickly as possible.


Most soldiers have always been trained in hand to hand combat in some degree for when they are unarmed or out of ammunition, so it makes sense for well developed fighting tactics to be used in Tamriel as well.

MMA is a very common form of self defense. The Marines use a version similar to it, the Army uses combatives, which borrows from it heavily as far as holds and chokes go. The Israeli Defense Force uses Krav Maga which is not only one of the most versatile and powerful versions of hand to hand combat but MMA actually borrows a bit from it. Thats the thing about MMA it can really be anything you want as Mixed Martial Arts means it is a combination of several different fighting styles. You take the best from all and the worst from none.

Anyways how H2H is right now makes a bit of sense to me. At least the fact that you aren't gonna take the guy with a claymore and steel armor down with just your fists, at least not easily. It does need a reboot though.

Well, how about magical gauntlets then? Its true in our world that gauntlets wouldn't be a huge help for matial artists and more for brawlers, but if the gauntles had magical properties that made them weightless or added elemental damage of sorts, I could see a few develop fighting styles to make use of them.


I think it should too. But Judo would require different animations than what Mui Thai or Karate or kenpo would need. Some of the animations would be the same, but the vast amount of them would have to be different to stay true to the style...in my mind at least. I don't know what game you're talking about...I must have missed that thread...but I'd like to see it.

And beyond that, magic would bring in a whole other dimention that our real world martial arts could never cover. If magic was used to fuel hand to hand instead of stamina like I sugested right away, many styles that we would never have considered could have come into being just because magic. Styles to fight magic users, styles that uses magic to its advantage...they would surely be different.

There's a lot of things TES could use in its hand to hand system...basically I hope they do something to upgrade it from the past titles. This is just one example of what they could do, there's a lot of other things. I just hope to see an improvement.

Morrowind had gloves which they removed from Oblivion. I think it would be nice if they put gloves back in and allowed them to be enchanted for things like H2H (fortify skill or att, fire damage on strike, or whatever). Perks could increase damage or add varied attacks. And it would mean you wouldn't have your monk running around in robes and armored gauntlets. No offensive/defensive conflicts.

What if a perk allowed kicks as well as fist attacks. And you could get another perk to allow enchantments on gloves apply to kicks as well. Fists and Feet of Firey Fury FTW!