increased chance of critical damage with shorter blades (more precision attacks and easier to aim at weakpoints IRL?)

that's interesting. imagine a system where your sneak attack multiplier would be governed by both sneak and weapon skill. to get the maximum multilpier player should have both skills maxed. in case of 100 sneak, 0 short blade; 0 sneak, 100 short blade; 50 sneak, 50 short blade player would get only half of the multiplier.

and to reply that short blades wont get any bonuses - they DO. because they do less damage ur skill will go up faster. when killing a creature with claymore it will be dead in couple of hits but with dagger player has to hit that bloody thing like 20 times. by the end of the battle, who has gained more experience?

That is exactly what you do. If an enemy is within 0-12 or 14 inches from you (in your face) unless you back up, the damage on longer weapons is reduced. Imagine swinging a sword at someone whose choking you. At best, you can hit them in the head with your hilt.

Also, as far as the sneak multiplier goes for shortblades, here's my logic. While you can obviously get a good strike with a sword when sneaking, there are many less ways to do it, as well as making it quieter. First, just imagine trying to thrust with two weapons, the first a longsword, and the second a knife. It is harder to aim the tip of the longsword at a specific point because leverage is causing gravity to push the blade down from the fulcrum of your hand. A knife is short enough to negate this. Also, knives can easily be drawn across throats, or used to stab the chest from behind (by gripping your enemy and pulling the knife towards you)

Thats the simplest solution, but not the best one. The best solution would be to split it into Greatsword/Sword/Concealed weapons. Greatsword is all the two handed or hand and a half swords, sword is all one handed swords, and concealed weapons are the daggers and stars that can be used for melee or throwing.

I think splitting the skills is a bad idea. It may be more realistic or whatever but how many skills do you want warrior types to have to learn and level up just to be good with weapons. Give the various weapon types within a skill advantages and disadvantages on their own.

Actually, making shortswords more useful than longswords isn't at all difficult. First of all, they weigh a lot less, and swing faster. If encumbrance would actually limit players in a proper way, this would make it the weapon of choice for any player who lacks proper strength. Also, a lot of fast swings with a shortsword adds damage faster than a longsword. It's no wonder that the romans conquered all of europe with their legions using short swords as their main weapon.

What you could also do is let short sword damage be governed by agility more than by strength. On top of that, shortswords and daggers can negate a big part of the amor rating when doing a sneak attack. After all, with those weapons it's easier to strike at unarmored areas.

Lastly, daggers can be concealed. This would require some better AI to function correctly though. So if you'd have visible weapons (not only equipped ones), guards and other people would keep more of an eye on you when you walk around. But if you'd be carrying a dagger instead, they'd think the threat from you isn't serious, and you'd be able to get behind them and suprise them with a dagger in their back.

I'm usually just using one weapon skill per character, I think splitting them would increase the willingness to use multiple types.

I think it would be okay to leave Blade as Blade, and have shorter and lighter weapons affect the sneak modifier and attack speed. splitting up axe and blunt seems more important, and their Perks for leveling should be differend. splitting up 1h or 2h seems more pressing too. this is just my opinion. I'd like them to split all kinds of blades into diff. skills with their own fighting styles if at all possible. swinging a broadsword or a Akaviri katana should be different after all.

Splitting up Axe and Blunt isn't important at all. They're both top heavy swinging/chopping weapons. That means they handle mostly the same way. There's basically three ways to use a melee weapons: swinging, slicing and stabbing. Slicing is mostly for long blades, stabbing is mostly for short blades/spears, swinging is used with both axes and hammers. It's impossible to slice or stab with a blunt weapon or an axe.

If there need to be more different weapon skills, I'd say spears, and a short/long blade split is more important.

I agree.

Actually I'm surprised some people aren't asking that Axe be included with Blade because there is a blade on an axe.

I strongly agree in bringing short blade back. You can't use a dagger for 20 levels then suddenly storm through a dungeon with a claymore. :sadvaultboy:

I hope they are separate skills.

I like the idea of not giving sneak attack criticals to long swords and claymores, and only giving them to short swords, daggers, bows, or other small weapons. Daggers though, should have the highest sneak attack critical compared to bows and short swords.

I would rather they be separate. In OB, you had no reason to use knives and short swords.

Just because their weight retio is the same, doesn't mean they are used the same way. Ideally, each weapon class would have it's own skill. In medieval times, Axes were prized for their effectiveness egainst shield lines and breaking defenses, maces don't cut it that way unless they are much larger.

In the same regard, a mace fighter would not do that well picking up an axe and going at foes with it either. I just feel it's better to have weapons behave differently by which situation you would use them in, instead of how they are handled and weighted.

it would be awesome to have it back like in morrowind, Short Blade, Long blade, spear, axe and blunt.

But the issue is in which skill category they are. So how the weapons handle is exactly what should be important. Axes and blunt weapons should definately affect enemies in different ways, but that doesn't say anything about how difficult it would be to use the one or the other. Also, having too many melee skills may not fit into the plan that bethesda has for the game.

But that doesn't make sense when picking a skill. It has to be regulated by how the item is used, not by what the item does. Sure an axe does something different than a mace, so pick an axe if you want, but there's no need to separate the skill for that.

It's too constrained. They need:

Greatsword
Sword
Concealed Weapons (Daggers, stars, and the throwing of those)
Mauls
Large Mauls
Polearms
Chain Weapons
Marksman
Shield
Hand to Hand

The shorter weapons should have less momentum but a possibility to duel wield.

That has nothing to do with them being separate skills though. If a dagger does 1d4 damage and a long sword does 1d8 all else being equal there is no reason to use the dagger, having it be two different skills just means there is also no reason to take the dagger skill. You have to give a reason to use daggers totally separate from the issue of how many skills it should be represented by. I think oblivion did a decent job on skill distribution in that each main category melee fighter/stealthy guy/mage had an equal number of skills to level up. Sure in each case you could specialize in one of those skills but it gave equal variety of skill numbers. If they split up the skills then that most likely means they have to split up or add skills in the other categories as well. Which could be fine, I kind of miss the enchanting skill and I think a spell making skill would be cool. Also maybe a trap making skill though that could be in security, but whatever.

Keep the skill the same for any blade, there is no reason to separate it. A better method is to just have vastly different base action modifiers for each type as Gorpad mentioned.

This includes things like critical chance/damage, sneak damage, enchant damage/charges, poison damage/charges, alert sound volume, etc.

Make each of these things different enough and people will use them accordingly. IE: Daggers being way more silent, with a much higher crit rate and crit damage, possible poison advantage, and crazy sneak modifier would give a good intensive.

Smaller= Faster, More Crit chance.
Bigger= Slower, Less Crit chance, but more damage.

Or at least this is how things in most games generally are and I think that would work well in TES:V

I really wish TES5 has DW daggers, I can't think of any reason why they always exclude this.

Daggers in Oblivion were mostly useful for their enchantments: You can deliver blows quicker than with longswords, so if your dagger does fire damage 20 pts for 1 sec on strike you can do a lot of damage quickly.

Other than speed, daggers in Skyrim should have a higher critical modifier to make them more useful.

Ok sabre is a kinda bad example since for example there is a huge difference between using an ordinary long sword, and using a katana

Anyway, they should make some instat kill perks for short blades, like when you are a master, you can approach from behind and slit throat or something like that.

I'd like short and long blade skills.

In my opinion, and I think this was originally from Absinthe82:

• Long blade should be composed to claymores down to shortswords.
  
• Short blade should be composed of daggers, tantos, and any similar sized blade.

Therefore, long blade is composed mostly of slashing, and short blade is composed to quick stabs and swipes, as well as critical sneak hits and general critical hits.