Lets face it, hand to hand combat in TES games has always been lacking. It seems that in each game it has been hastily added at the end in a slap job manner. Only mods have made this playstyle (which is more popular than many believe) possible, but these mods are often done last. It took literally years to add poison effects to hand to hand, and enchanting hand to hand has never been fully accomplished. The greatest benefit to this playstyle (and in keeping with TES lore) was a mod that didnt even feature hand to hand at its core, and that is Duke Patrick's Combat Magic. I personally love how he tied the skill to Vanus Galerion, who if you read the in game TES lore books trained both his BODY and mind for combat. the mod has become the staple and lifeforce of my Oblivion game, and I believe for once I may finish the game to the end. I would like to be able to continue a similar playstyle in Skyrim, but sadly with its removal as a skill, lack of perks, and overall poor implementations, this does not appear to be possible. I am sure this can be improved with mods, I myself have been developing my own mods (mainly tweaks of other's mods) to enchance this style of unarmored and unarmed gameplay. Sadly, if Skyrim is anything like Oblivion, it will be years before we see hand to hand fully modded and made wonderfull.


What I propose is a joint effort to break the cycle and improve hand to hand from the get go! My plan is to start with small improvements to hand to hand that can be implemented quickly, with greater improvements down the road.

Small things to be done quickly=
1. Add the ability for hand to hand damage to scale
2. perhaps tie hand to hand to train a different skill (such as Galerions unarmored acrobatics training acrobatics when hit)
3. Add an "Unarmored effect" (perhaps a speed increase/etc. when unarmored, that raises with level?, not armor though, the monk must dodge or use a magic shield)
4. Perhaps tie unarmored to a skill

Big things=
1. Add new hand to hand animations (most noteably kicks)
2. Tie hand to hand to the magic system in some way (Vanus Galerion style!)
3. Add a BLOCK animation for hand to hand (left trigger punches, not blocks)
4. Add some sort of glove enchantability to enhance hand to hand
5. Add some sort of poison ability to hand to hand

REALLY big things=
1. Hand to hand finishing moves
2. Special Unarmed "monk" NPCs (these guys will be tough!)
3. Hand to Hand Perk tree
4. Unarmored Perk tree


I WISH I was as skilled at scripts and animations as many of the modders here, but sadly I am not. I can do some grunt work with these changes (time consuming CS tweaks) but the actual scripting and most especially animations are beyond my skill. I think this would be an amazing feat to add to Skyrim, and would really enhance the gameplay. Great unarmed and unarmored games simply dont exist, neither books (as most DnD books for instance feature meele fighters/mages and not monks). The monk is an amazing and facinating class added to DnD, and Vanus galerion is the TES counterpart. Lets make Vanus proud, and bring his power back into the TES universe! =)