So I thought of a new build (surprise, surprise!)

Orc Shield Brawler

Concept: Captain America (minus the boyscout aspect) meets The Hulk

Race: Orc (duh)

Combat Style: Sword and Board (or really, FIST and board!)

Description: Essentially a soldier of fortune, he is a remnant of a disbanded Imperial orcish war batallion. He travels the lands looking for work helping people (for the right price, of course). He will not harm innocent people, but has no moral obligation to help them, either.

He fights with his bare hands, mostly. He uses his shield for defensive purposes as much as an offensive weapon. He disdains two things: Magic and traitors. He is still loyal to the empire and considers Stormcloaks traitors.

I'm using mods that ties unarmed combat to the One-Handed skill and perks, adds improved unarmed animations in order to make the character combat viable

Major Skills:
- Heavy Armor
- Block (up the right side of the tree, unless Deflect Arrows gets fixed)
- One Handed
- Smithing (up to Orcish. Orcish fists, baby!)
- Speech (Intimidate)

Minor Skills
- Sneak (to get the jump on enemies...he's a brawler, not an idiot)
- Alchemy (stamina potions, looking for ideas on other possible RP-appropriate concoctions)
- Any other ideas?

I may use a bit of enchanting, just for some minor enchantments from the Gloves of the Pugilist...maybe. I also plan to use 'player.setscale' to make him bigger than a default orc.

Thoughts? Ideas for shouts? Any mods that allows one to make characters "bulkier"?

I might try something similar with a Khajiit. Sounds fun.

That would be cool if you could poison your fists.

I can.

really? never knew....

I mean with the mod I'm using. It creates "Weapons" for your fists, even though you don't see anything equipped, and you use regular unarmed animations. They count as daggers or maces, or something like that.

First impressions:

The unarmed kill cam animations are cool when using a shield. The one where you grab them by the neck and pound their face three times pairs well, and the animation where you hit them with a serious left hook, then grab their face and slam them into the ground is awesome. It looks like your attacking with your shield, which is perfect.

So far the normal combat has been very effective. Shield bash, then two right hooks or a huge haymaker, block, etc. Next I'm going to work on my uppercut (crouching) technique. I can't wait untill I have power bash and shield charge! I just wish I could get Shield Run without having to go through Deflect Arrows.

I'm leveling smithing slowly by only smithing my fists as I need them (whenever a new perk is opened up), and improving the gear that I find. I think this gives much better leveling intervals for smithing.

sounds ballin i need to make a new computer so i can have these tasty mods and try it out

Great idea !
Orcs are one of my favorite races , but I tried playing them and didn't came up with a build , only barbarian two handed warriors I could imagine..
Thanks for the build I'm going to play it !
As for the mod , can you please post it here ?

Mods I'm using that are relevant for this build:

Combat Fists (I could only find this on Steamcommunty. This adds the craftable/enchantable fists to the game. Lets you level one-handed skill, use backstab perks)
Martial Arts (found on the Nexus. This add a bunch of different H2H animations. Simply delete the ones you don't want to use or rename them to mix them up. It includes a cool backflip animation for jumping. It also has an esp that increases jumping height)

Sorry I can't link them right now.

Your ideas intrigue me. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

That does sound like a fun idea. I bet it would even be viable without mods, though you'd probably have to scurry & heal a bit more.

It would be, you'd just have to heavily enchant some heavy guantlets and a ring with Fortify Unarmed damage effects.

I just found a mod that adds an Uruk Hai (LOTR) shield to the game. Could be cool.

I have an Unarmed character planned, but with a different take- he'll be a permanent Stage 4 Vampire and use the Drain Health spell (I modded certain perks to work on it) as well as his fists. I'm working on modding the Fists of Steel perk so that it uses the current armor rating of gauntlets instead of the base, which should help.

I think the 1.5 patch notes said something about deflected arrows being fixed

Is this sword and fist or fist and board? I don't think you can block without a weapon or shield in your left hand.

I thought that would have been pretty obvious from my original post....then I read it again. OOPS!

It's fixed. Fist and board!

Sounds awesome! I had a similar unarmed mod off the the Steam Workshop (Unarmed Fist v3.5, I believe) that also added it's own Unarmed set of perks to the 1H tree. After a while though, noticed his setup was a little off and the "fist weapons" got way overpowered. Maybe dmg increases were multiplying instead of adding, I don't know. I was punching people out in 2-3 hits....seriously like a god among men. I was not fun; no challenge at all. And gameplay was just punch, punch, punch endlessly.

However, sounds like the Combat Fists mod you're running may be setup better. And I have to admit, I do love the shield mechanics. Block, bash and strike adds so much tactically.... I quit my brawler, but maybe I need to restart?? Gah, so many builds to try!

The new unarmed kill cam animations Beth put out with 1.5 makes this build even better!

Deflect Arrows is fixed, too. Time to step up the block game, fellas! I'll post a current pic of my character in a minute.

Here's a pic:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/196/grommy.png/

Name: Gromnir Il-khan (some people will get it....fewer people with really get it)

Nickname: The Bull

I'd like to bump this thread
And what's that shield in the picture ?

That's a mod-added shield based on the Uruk-Hai shields from LotR.

I'm running into a similar problem with proper calibration of the Unarmed buff for my rework of the Fists of Steel perk, since it's possible to have gauntlets with an AR well over 150 if you stack +armor perks and extreme crafting. Granted that's nowhere near what a similarly upped 2H weapon can do, but it's still pretty high for a fist strike. There are some opponents with a ton of HP, though, so I might just leave it high.

Aye. That it is.

I was looking for something along the lines of a tower shield and came stumbled upon this one. It fits the character perfectly.