8.) What's been done to assure that daggers and unarmed remain viable through the game since armor tends to absorb damage? How about other small but fast weapons?

Mat Williams: Well, building up daggers and unarmed skill gives powerful unique attacks. The advanced attacks for daggers can have a character striking 4-6 times in one attack. Even with the armor absorption, the chance to get a critical hit goes way up and criticals ignore armor.

Unarmed is tougher than dagger to be useful since an unarmed character can never parry an armed character. But with enough skill the character can learn to disarm opponents and the character's damage improves as the skill gets better. I don't have the philosophy that all paths have to be equal, some combat skills are going to be a little better than others. Unarmed _is_ viable, but it's not as easy. It's a fine line to walk between realism and fun there.
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