Bear with me for a minute, as this needs a little example to explain properly.

Let me introduce Anduril(<--Link), Sword of Aragorn (Before you ask, yes; I'm a Lord of the Rings freak.).

While watching the the Extended Edition special features on The Return of the King DVD, the design of Anduril was discussed (I would also like to state that I think Anduril is the most beatiful sword ever invented; It's hanging on my wall right behind me right now!).

They stated that the sword was primarily held with one hand. Notice that the grip of the hilt really only has room for one hand. However, the pommel of the sword is extended enough that the wielder could get his second hand on there for a nice powerful two handed swing. Sword like this are known as 'hand and a half' swords, rather than one handed or two handed.

My proposal (question) is this:

Will we see any swords like this? For example, let's say we have a sword of Anduril's size in Oblivion. The player could choose whether to wield it with one hand or wield it with two.

If the player chose to only use one hand, he would have the obvious advantage of being able to use a shield.

If the player chose to use both hands, he would have a substantially higher attack damage with the weapon (Not a huge boost in damage, just enough to make it worth the trade off of not using a shield.), but at the cost of reducing the effectiveness of blocking (A sword won't deflect a blow as good or easily as a shield will, obviously.).


Also, realize that this would not be able for all swords. The smaller ones would only have a hilt sized for one hand, the extremely large ones would be too heavy to wield with one hand. This would be for the medium sized swords.

Would this be a good idea, or would it just unnecessarily complicate things?

Questions? Comments? Flames? Please proceed.

hmm, to do that I would think the devs would have to something like that of Diablo, you know the barbarians and mabey another person or two. it would be quite interesting if that took place.

I'd like to see something like that with their power attacks if you had no shield equipped. Like usually you fight with one hand but when you draw back he'd grab it with two for extra power on the hit. Good proposal but it is doubtful that the devs will implement it as it has not been announced.

P.S. you're probably not gonna get flamed for posting good topics man...but if you go posting things like, "what kind of toast would you like to see in Oblivion?" there might be a problem.

LOL toast.

Oh, I know the devs won't implement anything new so late in development. Still good chances on mods, though.

I thought it was a decent idea, but I do think that it would just be more complicated than it's worth. I mean, for all that trouble you could just switch between a one handed and two handed sword. Still, I'm just throwing ideas out.

I have no problems with throwing ideas out, it's quite interesting but no toast though.

There already is a Mod out for morrowind like this (Its pretty awsome too)

Its something like Lilacor

I know I spelled that wrong... I'll try to find a link, you'd find in under morrowind summit if you searched for weapons with the highest vote

lol it talks to you too

Yeahu, hand and a half swords would be nice. Its a nice way to catch someone off guard by switching from a one-handed grip to a two handed, gives better controll and power too.

Agree.. I like this idea, like in D&D you have the honoured user Sword.. with the feat 'Exotice Weapon ...' something u can wield it in one hand, but if u use two hands u get pluss on attack bonus due to u get more much power and strength into the blow..

This would be very nice indeed, of course the disadvantage of using it in a two-handed way would have to be enough in order to make sure you use both in proportion, otherwise it would be pointless. Of course you wouldn't be able to use a shield, but many people do not mind about that. Perhaps another feature would that if your fatigue goes down low enough when using it two-handed, you have to swithch to one-handed.

In Morrowind; you're right, I wouldn't mind not using a shield. But in Oblivion, with the player activiely controlling the blocking, it will most likely be a bigger penalty to not be using a shield.

But you can also actively block with just your sword as well, even if you don't use a shield