Reading about the combat in Skyrim a thought crossed my mind, we have to assign a weapon to an arm & we have to assign a spell to another but we can′t have a spell and a weapon in one arm since it does not make so much sense to weave spells while clutching a weapon or a shield with your fingers, but what about punching ?
So you throw a fireball and a shield spell and then you punch your enemy and cast another spell and punch him again, after all your hand is free for casting spells when you do cast spells and a empty hand is a hand you can punch with, I am personally hoping that they will allow you to punch and cast spells with the same hand because I imagine my character being a monster of defense, he will have a shield and he will use heavy armor AND I want to throw alteration spells + restoration spells, basically I want as much defense as possible while I don′t care much for offense, but this leaves me with 0 options for offense, I am not taking up a destructive magic school except perhaps conjuration (always imagined myself just using conjured creatures as a meat-shield adding to my already immense defense) so it would be nice if I could at least punch with my free hand, do you think that would be realistic or just unfair ?

A pugilist mage? Interesting.

You can change your loadout on the fly. Cast two spell, pull out sword & shield, pull out bow...

Just doesn't seem that complicated to switch between your spells and hand2hand as it is now.

I think if you have a free hand, you should be able to punch with it.

For example on the PC, you can have a longsword in one hand, and nothing in the other. You attack with the sword by left-clicking, blocking by right-clicking, and punching by pressing C. I think that's how the two-hand system will work anyway. The left-hand will be handled by C, and the right-hand by left-mouse button.

If it will be instant I may be able to just hot-key a spell and my mace and play like I′d like to play But I′ve just been hearing how Bethesda wants you to choose but not be able to do all, so I get the feeling I may not have such a easy time instantly casting a shield and then going to a mace.

Edit to the comment below:


:D If it does damage I will be happy, may play with one free hand for defensive spells and just do damage with my shield

Whack 'em with your shield

I think you should be able to punch with a spell IN your hand at the same time. Like punching some guard in the chest with your hand on fire because of a fire spell you have going. I think it should be a perk or something, but it would definitely be cool.

Unless you want to break your fingers I advice against punching without having your fist clenched and I say good luck casting spells with your fist clenched.

I voted something else.

Reason: I think unarmed hands should be used to interact and attack;

Click: Punch
Click and hold: Grab item/people for grapple moves (or hold with this hand and attack with the other), or to grab items off shelves. Releasing the button releases the person/item and drops it (items may be placed in shelves by aiming at flat surface and letting go, a la Morrowind menu), where as releasing and re-clicking throws the item or person held.

I think this would be awesome, having a dedicated "throw" button would also be good, allowing to throw held items. By holding it down, and clicking the right or left mouse button for right/left hand item throwing. this would allow you to throw your sword/shield or other weapons to clear hands quickly for spells or other attacks.

Edit: I realized after writing this that this is slightly unrelated, my apologies

Sounds like an interesting idea. You could build a monk h2h martial artist mage.

How effective do you all think it will be to dual weild shields? *block, block, bash, bash, block, bash, repeat*

If switching weapons will be so fast that it would be wiable to use a mace with my shield + spellcasting, then won′t it just be a feature that will be tedious, why not keep the system from Oblivion then just with an extra arm ?

Lol, what makes you think magic can't be used like that? Who punches without their fist clenched? Your post makes no sense.

how about, you can punch with your hands when spells are equipped to them, the punches will do elemental damage instead of physical damage. That way, it's not really over or underpowered, elemental damage is just different from the regular kind of damage.

Yep I often choose hand to hand for a mage - I would like to have punch working on one hand and a drain fatigue on touch on the other - can I please get a kick finishing move as well

Hahaha. I was hoping someone would point that out.

Exactly.

Or... it could do both types of damage since both effects are in place? You buy the perk for it on level up and then you do normal physical damage and the damage of a spell simultaneously. If doing this removed the physical part of the damage then what the hell would be the difference between this and normal spellcasting? Why is everyone against things being badass all the time? I've seen ideas shot down so many times for being too cool for someone's character. IT's ridiculous.

Erm, because it wouldn't do more damage? I'm saying it would just do different damage than regular punching... Only because your idea is completely overpowered and nobody would use regular unarmed.

I think that spells should have their own button and allow you to map a spell to your weapon hand. If you try to cast a spell with the hand the weapon is equipped in, there should be an animation sheathing the weapon and then the spell being cast. It should just take one button.

Kick, punch, it's all in the mind.

Makes sense to be able to punch someone if you're unequipped. It would make for a beast combo if you punched and then casted fire damage on touch or something.

If the Hand to Hand system is improved, I'll be unarmed using my magic and fists.

Let me tell you right now why this is impossible.



Assuming RT fires Right weapon (magic, fist, sword, etc...), then LT fires the left weapon.




How would you map punching to LT/RT when it is already being used for the magic spell???

Actually my post makes all the sense in the world. If we could cast spells with our firsts clenched, there would be no reason for Bethesda to change it so that you can′t use weapons and cast spells with the same hand, and if you have to have your fingers stretched out or in any form like that to weave spells and you punch at the same time as you cast a spell you are going to break some fingers.

My reply was to someone suggesting we could cast a spell at the same moment we punch (that is a touch spell but instead of tapping someone with the palm or fingers like in Oblivion to channel the spell you′d thrust your hand at the enemy to do blunt damage as well as spell damage, and frankly if you ask me that would break your fingers.

So what was so hard to understand ?

Edit:


And that′s why RPG′s shouldn′t be made for consoles, if those that design the controller for X-box or the PS can′t do it properly for a game that requires any complex actions to be made then they should just as well skip making RPG′s on consoles, leave the mindless hack′n′slash and racing games to the consoles.

Yes I sound a little angry but I keep seeing consoles holding back RPG′s because of bad design and bad hardware, it′s like we can′t have good RPG's because of consoles anymore.

It's not that it's hard to understand, it's that you're wrong. There's a difference.

In Oblivion we could cast spells with weapons and shields and such, so that right there shows that the TES universe doesn't require mages to have open palms to cast magic. Gameplay is the reason for changing that around, I suppose, though I didn't have too much of a problem with it.

So you wouldn't break your fingers and it's easily possible to cast magic with closed fists. Besides, I also mentioned that it'd be a nice perk, implying that punching with a flaming fist isn't the norm and would be a specialty for someone who is proficient both in magic and hand-to-hand. Simply make it so that you have "Hand-to-Hand" in one hand and some spell in the other. Now make the power or special attack or whatever Skyrim might have activate the spell while punching. There, I just proved two "impossibilites" more than possible, which is easily done simply by not having such a narrow mind (with how narrow minded you two both are, maybe gamesas will hire you and you can eliminate and merge more major skills and spells ).

I'll never understand some of the people here and their desire to make a sandbox game so restrictive. Talk about ironic contradiction.

EDIT: Oh, and the person you were replying to was me. FYI.

Throwing insults now ? How mature.

It has been confirmed that you will need to equip a spell in a empty hand slot and if there is a perk that allows you to cast a spell with a occupied hand then that′s all fine and dandy, but they even said that you should not be able to do everything at once so a perk that would allow that would defeat the purpose. So you really think we will get that kind of perk ?

Restrictions are good for games in my opinion, they present you with challenges and those can be fun to overcome, if you want no challenge at all you can ofc just use the console, nothing keeping you from doing that if you play on a PC.

Next time before you post, calm down, think about the reason someone has reached a conclusion (I base my conclusion that we won′t be able to cast spells with a clenched fist on the fact that we need a free hand to cast spells, so what would be canon in Skyrim is that we can′t do it with a clenched fist) and then base your comment around that.

I probably wouldn′t bother to fuss about your comment if you were a little less mean spirited in your comment, a simple "oh I meant that you should be able to do it with a hand to hand perk" would be more than enough =.= no need to get all high and mighty in a discussion like that.