Oblivion's Blade and Blunt split—does it actually matter which one you pick?

[RiftenWanderer]

Coming back to Oblivion after years of Skyrim, and I'm confused about committing to either Blade or Blunt early on. In Skyrim you just level One-Handed and it doesn't matter if you use a sword or mace, but here they're totally separate skills. Does picking one lock you out of viable builds, or can you swap between them without gimping yourself? Playing on Normal difficulty, level 12 right now with a mix of both and I'm worried I'm spreading myself too thin.

 

[EbonyWarrior]

Yeah, you're actually fine mixing them at level 12. Oblivion's not like Skyrim where you're locked into a skill tree forever—you can totally swap weapons and level both skills without gimping yourself, especially on Normal.

That said, the real difference is that Blade and Blunt perks are completely separate. So if you commit hard to one, you get access to perks the other doesn't have. Blunt has some solid armor-ignoring stuff if I'm remembering right, while Blade gets more crit damage bonuses. But honestly? At your level, it barely matters. You're not hitting the high-tier perks yet anyway.

The thing Oblivion does that Skyrim doesn't is let you actually use multiple weapon types without penalty. Your skills level independently, so a mace one minute and a sword the next won't "waste" anything. You're not spreading yourself thin so much as just... not specializing yet. Which is totally viable.

If you want my take: pick whichever feels better to you right now, and don't stress about it. By level 25-30, if you want to focus on one, you can. Or just keep using both—Oblivion's way more forgiving about build flexibility than people remember. The real trap is trying to be good at everything (all skills maxed), but two weapon types? That's nothing.

What difficulty are you actually playing on, or just Normal?

 

[ScrollsOfTamriel]

The previous reply nailed it, but I'd add that the perk trees themselves are way shallower in Oblivion than Skyrim, so even if you do commit to one weapon type, you're not locking yourself into some 10-level progression chain. You get maybe 5-6 meaningful perks per skill before you hit the cap, and honestly most of them are just damage boosts or weapon-specific effects. Nothing that fundamentally changes how you play.

Where it actually matters is endgame stuff - like if you're planning to do the Daedric quests or Arena later, having a solid Blade or Blunt skill makes those way easier. But at level 12 on Normal? You could probably one-hand a dagger and still be fine. The damage scaling is just different than Skyrim.

My real advice: don't overthink the "spreading thin" part. The game rewards generalists way more than it punishes them. If you hit level 30-40 and realize you hate using maces, you can respec your attributes and just... stop using them. Oblivion doesn't judge you for it like some RPGs do.