How about, skill SEVERLY impacts the amount of damage you do? What if your blunt skill is 5, and you're attacking a heavily armed Nord with a warhammer? You shouldn't do ANY damage at all, not even a little. Just a suggestion.

I personally don't liek it, it's not realistic in any way. If I'm fighting a stronger opponent, his hits are more powerful but I can also deal damagae even if lesser.

OB for both of course. If you control manually your character it's stupid to have a "miss" option, because you already miss if you aren't near your enemy. Same for blocking.

The only way I can see to make a workable hybrid would be to have weapon skills and related attributes affect the speed, aim, and recovery time of your moves. The game would play out like OB's combat in a way, but a more skilled character would just be faster, smoother, and more accurate than a novice, and a lot easier to control. Having your L1 "fresh meat" character fight just as fluidly as a L30 swordmaster, only doing a lot less damage, make no sense, and felt just as wrong to me as MW's "whiff" attacks without a decent animation to show what happened. There wouldn't be a need for a "hit or miss" die roll, because with the lower speed and accuracy, you'd ACTUALLY miss a moving, dodging opponent on plenty of occasions.