I think it's been confirmed that blocking in Skyrim will include more options like shield bashing and etc which is groovy but I hope they change the basic mechanics of it. In Morrowind, a successful block actually blocked all damage against the player, while Oblivion simply lowered the damage you took. I'm not sure if I've seen this discussed anywhere before, but how is Skyrim going to be handled? Will blocking just lessen the damage taken?

It really bugged me in oblivion how my character would take any kind of damage despite a successful block. I think the system should be closer to Mount And Blade where you don't take any damage assuming you block an attack, but you have to worry about the condition of your shield (You still had that worry in previous Elder Scrolls games but actually having your shield break or its 'condition' be lowered to zero was never a worry). Combat felt much more fluid and more realistic that way in my opinion. Oblivion's method mostly just felt broken to me. I think it's still going to feel broken even with more 'options' related to blocking if the only benefit is to lose less health. I think the only real reason for having it not block all damage from getting to you was to make sure NPC's and the PC weren't sitting still with their shield up the entire time. I think a better fix for this is to have it lower your fatigue and have the possibility of your shield breaking be a much bigger concern for characters. (Maybe every shield should have a 'critical' percent value so there is always the chance that a blow could shatter even a new shield). What do you guys think?

When you block with a shield you don't take damage. Simple as that.

If I were to come down on you with a Warhammer and you blocked, would you feel any of that impact? Yes you feel all of it and might even break your arm. Shields in reality don't negate all damage, they just give you a means to try and deflect a blow from you.

Sounds waaay too overpowered.

When you block with a shield, you take no damage. Simple as that. I mean, it doesn't make sense to get hurt when you block. Now, you should get staggered when you take a significantly strong blow and after a few incredibly strong blows your shield might break but for the most part, if you block with a shield it should keep you from taking any damage.

In fact http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJA9QLY0Iew&feature=related is a good example of what blocking can do, although the Witch King is much stronger then what a Human could exert.

Dark Messiah style.

I agree completely. The blocking system was one of the worst parts of Oblivion's combat system. The solution lies, as you say, in tying it in with Fatigue (which was never actually used for anything significant in Oblivion) and with item breakage. The game Demon's Souls does a very good job of this using Health/Fatigue meters very similar to those in Oblivion: holding a shield up reduces your stamina recovery rate, blocking a hit drains stamina, attacking drains stamina. Blocking a heavy hit when you have low stamina does damage to you and also staggers you, opening you up to further attacks. This set of combat mechanics creates a very dynamic system which requires smart, varied tactics to defeat different types of opponents: you need to use different rhythms and strategies to attack archers, sword-and-shield fighters, two-handed-weapon fighters, monsters, and so on.

If Skyrim's blocking system is just "Oblivion plus special moves", I'm going to be very disappointed. But all the news so far has been encouraging, and I have faith that they're overhauling this aspect of the combat system along with everything else.

Not really. NPCs have the same capabilities and also it allows you to not take any damage when blocking but reduces the lifespan of your shield. Also your still going to take a stamina hit. Half the time I didn't even find it worth blocking in the other games, I would just go berserk on them to kill them especially now that there is Dual-wielding, shields need to be jazzed up or they won't be used.

The different betwen bloquing with or without shield (besides the armor bonus) should be the ability to block arrows.

The deadly reflex option sounds best. If you just hold block you'll block some of the damage, if you time it well you'll block most of the damage, if you time it perfectly you'll block all of the damage. A nice gameplay mechanic, but also makes sense - if you time it well that probably blocks the attack completely, but just spreads the impact onto your arm, wheras a perfect block would deflect the force rather than absorb it.

Something mandatory, when you block you are not affected by poison and enchantmentes.

If you hold a tower shield up at your side, and I smash it with a two handed hammer, are you not going to get bruised in the side from the shield connecting to it ?

You can have a whole door between you and your enemy but if the door is held by you it′s gonna fall down on you and crush you, the same with a shield just on a smaller scale, and instead of crushing you entirely maybe just crush a part of you giving you a bruise, that is, taking some HP off you.

Now if shields were force-fields from star wars... that would be a whole different matter.

No. In real life if you take too strong a blow on the shield directly (i.e. you're not skilled enough to have it slide off of it) you'll get your arm crushed. So the amount of damage you block with a shield should depend on a skill/perk.

I think you are mistaking pain with dammage. Besides, I don't think hitting a shield with a warhammer would be a gratefull experience either.

I think blocking an attack should remove all damage from it, but reduce your fatigue and damage the shield you used.

Eh, I'm not too much of a fan of OB's, MW's or Deadly Reflexes's handle on blocking.

No matter what, a nord with 100 str and 100 skill on blunt with a daedric warhammer should completely crush the shield arm of a lowly bandit attempting to block with an iron shield or dagger. If you ask me, there needs to be a threshold a shield can take before damage is transferred to the user, and a heavier shield will, generally, have a high threshold than a smaller shield of the same material (depends on design, thickness, etc). It is extremely silly how a lowly bandit with an iron dagger can do the scenario above and still be okay to continuously slash and hardly take a lick of damage, while you are stumbling like a moron.

Also, stamina should matter even more. Taking a block will consume stamina. Holding a shield in front will continuously consume stamina. Running out of stamina will remove 90% of blocking effectiveness, at the very least, as you are just too tired to hold out your shield and block an incoming blow. Furthermore, the heavier the shield, the more stamina is consumed, while a lighter shield will consume less when drawn out, though I'd say the opposite for when receiving a blow.

In addition, one should be able to shield bash as a way to stumble an opponent, and possible cause damage if there are spikes attached. However, the heavier the shield, the slower it is to bash someone and it's also quite taxing to one's stamina. Also, some shields it just may be impossible to bash someone with, unless you charge with the shield in front (like a tower shield).

Lastly, I do think the block skill should factor in how effective someone is with a shield. It's one thing to just stick a plank of wood completely vertically and take the full brunt of the attack, it's another to know how to move the shield at an angle to deflect the attack in an effective manner in order to avoid having your arm turn into dust and keeping yourself relatively unharmed. Blocking, in essence, will turn from blocking to deflecting when one's knowledge of how to block increases. This also means those who are extremely skilled with shield should be able to hold smaller and lighter shields and still pretty effective at blocking, as opposed to someone who doesn't really know how to block and requires a bigger and heavier shield to save their butt. By increasing the block skill, the damage threshold will increase, along with shield bashing effectiveness, and a reduction in stamina when blocking.

These are just my basic thoughts. Still need to go more in-depth on how strength, endurance, stamina, the weight of an opposing weapon on a shield, and so on.

At the risk of sounding like a Morrowind diehard, a fix for realistic shields could be a reversion back to type based damage. Thrust, slash, etc. Slashing a shield with a blade would do a lot less damage than smashing it with a hammer, for example. It could lead to mixed arm tactics, as shields are used to block skirmishers, and hammers are used to break through them. Would give a diverse feeling to combat, but would be rather pointless if the AI and battle system wasn't up to it.

I'd advocate for a stamina linked system if the above was too unwieldy. Because to be fair, it would take a lot of work, and only result in marginal results. More immersion, sure, but is the payout worth it? I'd rather have time invested into alternate fast travel options, and quest dialogue scripting that means you can ignore the compass, or whatever its equivalent will be.

Yes but getting bruised in the same place over and over again isn't going to kill me...



Too bad, you did.

There is nothing that says you always get hit exactly on the same spot on the shield, heck the enemy may hit very high on the shield and it could accidentally slam into your face with the top of it, and there could be some internal bleeding or some with repeated abuse.

Not to mention one really can't block with an arm held together by dust that used to be bones.

I think shields should have a damage threshold, similar to the system armor used in FO:NV. Rather than blocking all damage or a percent of damage, it should block a certain number of damage. For instance, for a shield with a damage threshold of 20, a dagger doing 15 damage per attack would be completely mitigated but against a warhammer dealing 50 damage you would only block 20 points of the damage, so you would take 30 damage and possibly be knocked back. The damage threshold could also be increased by your block skill, meaning a high block skill could work wonders for your survivability.

I can't remember how Oblivion or the deadly reflex mod handled it so excuse me if this has already been said, but I feel this system would work well with shields.

Vanilla Oblivion wasn't that great. By a skill of 25, you no longer lose stamina when blocking. After that, it reduced most damage, and allowed one to get in 1-3 hits.

With Deadly Reflex, it was similar to vanilla's, but if you shield was held for longer than a second, it lost blocking effectiveness. I think your shield defense decreased and you were more likely to stumble.

I have the impresion that people here things that warhammers are heavier than really are. Of course if you block a hit of a warhammer the size of the ones seing in oblivion youll die, but who can lift such a thing?

A minotaur lord, with one hand. Imagine what one could lift with both hands...