Swords, An idea . . . Options

[WeJaFo]

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.