No matter how good of an observer your target is or bad of an ambusher you are, they will only notice you if you're in the 7x7 tile square (
not a circle) they're the center of. If you just keep 3 tiles between you and your target you can throw or fire crap at them until the cows come home and they won't notice.
Unless you are facing a
much larger foe, charging them will usually knock them over, slowing them down a lot. It might also knock
you over, but unless you're outnumbered that's alright because you can just stand up immediately and get in a few attacks before they stand up. If you end up standing over the enemy, that's good because you're keeping them from standing up.
Opportunity attacks can still be blocked by armor, so if you know an attack would be blocked without any action on your target's part (for instance, don't bother trying to scratch an enemy wearing a bronze breastplate in the chest). Knowing this is one of the major advantages you have over the AI, which will automatically perform any opportunity attack.
If using a large weapon (like a great axe or a halberd), check to make sure you're not being penalized for using it one-handed by making it the only thing you're holding and seeing if it's held by one hand or "multigrasp".
In addition to the "kiting" advice, you should probably take the opportunity to throw some stuff at them: unlike bows or crossbows, this doesn't take long and thus you probably won't lose the first strike when they reach you.
If you find good gear your current adventure doesn't have a use for, store it in a lair: it won't scatter around like in most places.
If your backpack is weighing you down a lot, and the stuff in it isn't useful for fighting, take it off before fighting, just remember it before you leave.
For that matter, if you're wrestled by something huge grabbing an article of clothing, remember that you can [r]emove the item to free yourself.
Remember that you can set your [C]ombat preference: you don't want to charge when you don't need to, or have your master shield-user dodge of a ledge.
Most weapon skills work for multiple weapons, so you may want to collect and carry around all the weapons you can use. Somewhat useful, and also really fun.
Don't take any mental/emotional stats.You'll live a lot longer.
Spatial sense, kinesthetic sense, focus, willpower, and and memory are useful.
I dont know if is a known fact, but i've discovered this playing genesis mod long time ago, and it works in vanilla:
get a lot of shields (no needed skill) *r*emove them from backpacks
shields are now in your hands (all of them)
you became the ultimate tank
No, more shields doesn't make you any more likely to block, or even level up shield faster. The only advantage is you have a back-up shield in case your first one is wrestled away.
However, you can hold a bunch of weapons and a shield at once; no need to choose between dual wielding and a shield, you can do both!
That's because some research conducted in another thread found that the best piercing weapon was actually stabbing with a large dagger. They make strangely good anti-armour weapons.
Probably because they have a
really tiny contact area (5 cm^3), which is only beaten by whips (1 cm^3) and you know how much those things shred through armor.