Err, just as I am leveling my new thief, I decided to go for the thieves guild naturaly. As I am doing quests, I just thought of blunt knockout.
We've seen in in The Thief, we even have it in WoW as Sap, and so on.
So, I think it would be a great addition to Skyrim or TES in general if we would be able to knock out some enemy while he is not aware of our presence. It is realistic and it would help greatly while playing, roleplaying like a thief.
So yeah, it wouldn't be a killing blow ofcourse, just knocking him out for good.

Any thoughts on this?

maybe not blunt knockout techniques, but I'm subtly reminded of the Thief series ( ... i think u just said that)
Pretty sure the dev for the Dark Bro quests, Oblivion and Skyrim, was a writer for Thief too.
Man, I miss all those trick-arrows.

I too think this would be a fantastic addition to TES. I am playing a pure thief who never kills anything and this would make certain situations much easier.

Aye that too!
It was just amazing how enjoyable that game was, all those smoke bombs, trick-arrows, dragging body where you actually pick it up.. It would just be great if it was possible in Skyrim, and it would surely encourage people to play thief more then now. I don't say I don't like how stealthy classes work here, but they could use improvement.
And as Entreri said above, being a thief is not about killing, so I think knocking out or more thief tricks would be more then welcome

Blunt weapons and the ability to knock people out rather than kill them would certainly be welcome in my book. I'd also like to be able to drug and/or poison food and drink to stealthily deal with enemies without having to get close to them. Obviously, it'd be best if you had to put the food and drink on a table to get the enemy to take them or pay a waitress to deliver them if they're in a public venue. It'd be further signs of Skyrim lacking great AI if bandits just ate random food they found on the floor.

Non-lethal poisons as well. Knockout poisons would be incredible. Paralysis gets close, but it's not the same!

Why stop at Blunt? it should be possible to knock foes out with Bashing in general.

Judo Chop!

Nerf warhammer?

Edit:

I fully support the idea of an interrogation skill...I'd much rather incapacitate someone, adminster a 'talking potion', and use those tongs that are lying around in strange places to extract information on what the shopkeeper has in stock, or to find out 'where the trouble is' that the mercenary is going to.

However, Nazeen and Patron of Blah Blah Blah would require a decent and regular dosing with the 'Please continue, my good sir. Potion'...