Why is it so difficult to have a proper unarmed skill/mod? In the CK, there is a "weapon" called Unarmed. In the stats, it looks like this is referring to using NO weapons. Damage, speed, etc. all matches up. In the Skill box the default is NONE, but you can change it to One-handed, which makes the most sense. However, this apparently has no effect on whether or not attacking unarmed levels the skill?

It just seems like it should be so simple, but it's not...what gives with unarmed?

I think this mod's description might shed some light:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29453/?

Il Ducey worked on that mod for a long time. He doesn't come here anymore, or even the nexus. It seems, what he end up doing is the best way, as you can't do much else with unnarmed.

I'll give it a try now.

I've also read that, even though you have to use a "weapon" that you could make it a two-handed weapon, but still look and behave like unarmed and level the one-handed skill. Is this, or something like this, true? Of course, you wouldn't necessarily need it to be tied to one-handed, just seems more fitting, I suppose.

Okay, so that didn't work. I have the same problem everyone in the Nexus discussion thread has. The weapon works, but doesn't increase your Unarmed "skill" any.

A good unarmed mod is probably possible, but would require a lot of complex scripting to get it to work, since unarmed isn't set up to work right like other weapons in the game engine. It would be a big and ambitious project, perhaps someone will take it on eventually though.