Ultra niche Skyrim mod lets you become the most potent mage of all: the fist wizard

Somewhere in a filing cabinet is a contract. On that contract is my name and the name of my employer—PC Gamer's publisher Future PLC—and a job title: «news writer». And look, if someone assassinates the JFK of videogames* I'll be there to break it down for you, but personally? I think my true job is telling you about tiny, mini, minute, trifling little mods that I find very amusing and intensely niche. And guess what, friends? I've got another one for ya.

ELAF Left Hand Shield Bash is a mod from a creator named—get this—ELAF, and it rectifies one of the venerable RPG's most glaring oversights: that players and NPCs cannot use their unarmed left fist to absolutely batter interlopers who get within punching distance. In Todd Howard's world, the left hand is a purely auxiliary extremity: you can use it to wield a shield, a spell, or a second weapon, but if you have nothing in it while you're wielding something in your right hand, you can't use it as a weapon unto itself. Attempting to use an unarmed left hand (while the right is armed) just makes you block.

What kind of world is it that lets you be half a wizard but not half a boxer? A bad one, I reckon, and that's presumably why dear old ELAF has set out to fix it. Using their mod, you'll be able to restore your left fist to its rightful place as a Mack truck full of justice addressed to your enemies' faces, capable of staggering them and knocking them flat. You're still a wizard, really, but a wizard of a new type. The fist wizard, whose grimoire is more of a pamphlet, consisting as it does of one very effective spell delivered fast and repeatedly. No verbal or material components necessary.

It might seem like a minor change. That's because it is. But like all these hyper-particular mods, ELAF's effort has earned its fair share of plaudits from Skyrim players with big, specific dreams. «I always wanted to do this!» squees a user named tinaslynn in the mod's comments section, «You, my dear, are a genius!» Another,