I have not been really thrilled with Skyrim's dual weapons system. Not in the least because you cannot hotkey your off hand weapon to appear in your off hand. But I do like the idea of a character who fights with a pair of daggers, or short sword and dagger.

So I created a shield that looks like a dagger. It acts just like any other shield, bashes, uses the blocking perks, etc... But it has the mesh of a dagger, so it looks like you are using a dagger to block with.

Here is how to create one from any dagger in the game:


Make a copy of the dagger's mesh file and rename it. Open it with Nifskope, and go to the root node. Beneath it will be a string called NiStringExtraData.

Its text will say WeaponDagger. Right Click on it, select Edit String Index, and manually enter the word: SHIELD.

Save your mesh file.

Go to the Creation Kit. Copy the entry for a shield and create a new one for your parrying dagger. Replace the mesh with that of the dagger you just created. Also create a new Armor Addon that points to the same mesh. Edit the name and stats as desired.

Create the Crafting and Tempering entries to go with it.

Done.

Aime's Defenders is a mod that does this for all the vanilla daggers, including a bound dagger spell. But if you want to create a custom defensive dagger (or any other weapon) from another mod, follow the steps above. I just did so with the Elven Silver Dagger mod.

Clever idea!

Yes, how incredible. Before Skyrim was released all those years ago there were occasional, silly requests to dual-wield two shields. Pete Hines and some devs informed the forums that dual-wielding shields would NOT be possible, to the dismay of many. Not that I, myself, would want to make a 2-shield toon, but with the process above it looks like this could be possible, for someone who wants such an idea, eh?

This has already been done for Oblivion, similar to SubRosa's method. We have off-hand daggers, swords, staves, sticks, frying pans and flowers - it all exists! We also have all those items as main hand weapons. So you could, for example, bash with a bunch of flowers and parry with a skillet... if you so wished...

Flowers or frying pans would actually be something I'd want...whenever I start gaming on PC again. ....yea because that's another dilemma in my life lately... see ya in the Computer Issues thread.

I love the idea of using an iron skillet as a weapon!

I did come across one minor drawback to the parrying dagger I created. When you sheathe your weapons, the dagger remains visible in your left hand. It is the same as your shield would be, if had a real shield equipped and your primary weapon sheathed. So that can look a bit odd.

But given that in Skyrim every time you prepare a spell it automatically goes to your left hand first, that means that you do not have that dagger there very often.