Hi all,

I have been thinking of ways to increase the viability of using a one handed build, with an empty offhand and have come up with a couple of ideas, below. I would appreciate if you advise as to whether or not there exists a mod that does either of these or a helpful pointer as to how I might go about implementing myself.

1. The first is by penalising having a offhand in use. For instance, if you are holding a shield you are going to be a lot slower and use more stamina.
2. The second is by making it so that you can't change your weapon or shield equipped during combat. How realistic is it that you can pull a shield out in two seconds. Having the off hand free means you can swap in a spell at the penalty of lack of blocking. Having the free hand full means you can't use it and it will have to wait till after combat.

I would love to hear about how I might bring this into my game!

Thanks,
S

Well it wouldn't be all that hard to pull a shield out quickly. Warriors of old perfected techniques that let them shrug the shield over their shoulder and onto their arm very quickly. Putting it back might be a bit more difficult though. If you really needed to get a hand free i guess they would just drop the shield. Someone might be able to mod a way to make you drop the shield when putting it away if you are in combat.

That's a good point. What I am trying to achieve though is a benefit to keeping the offhand free. At current it doesn't feel like there is any benefit to playing in this style and I think there should be. A fencier style of fighting, so to speak.

Power attacks could require much less stamina if one hand is entirely free- think about it, wielding a single weapon effectively is DIFFICULT. How much more so must it be to be able to hold two and make use of both of them? I'm not sure how a shield would tie into such a system, but it seems to me that a warrior wielding a single blade is going to be much more proficient in its use than a warrior holding two. Stagger resistance might be another benefit for melee combat, as the free arm could be used as a balancing tool, instead of being held at the ready constantly- maybe a more "artificial" way to represent this would be enhanced backpedaling speed, to assist in avoiding attacks altogether.
Perhaps magicka could regenerate quicker with an empty offhand, as the character's "mental load" is reduced. I can tell you that as someone who favors bound weapons and Atronachs, a lot of my magicka is drained before a fight even begins. I can see a primarily Destruction oriented Mage benefiting from this, too (and it still makes sense [imo] that magicka would regenerate faster when not focusing on a spell in each hand).

I'm not very creative, sorry if my suggestions are little simple or prosaic. My expertise lies in playing through mods, not creating them
I really hope you find a way to flesh out pure one-handed combat. I don't believe I've yet seen such a thing [in a mod], and it would be interesting to play with. Definitely seems like it would add flavor to a sometimes bland combat system (don't flense me yet, I still love Skyrim!!!).