Is there a "free" fine steel mace?

[Chicken Slayer]

The game design provides the base line player (no guild membership, no stealing, etc) a Fine Steel Bow (Fort Nikel) and a Fine Steel Longsword (Fort Coldcorn) on the way to Weynon Priory. These are super weapons in that their base damage is not equaled until level four when silver weapons show up. The game also provides three Ubersuper weapons (Calibens Grim Retort, Honorblade, and Frostwyrm, via non deadric quests. It would follow that there should be a Fine Steel Mace lying around somewhere between the Imperial City and Weynon Priory for Blunt specialists, but I don't recall finding one anywhere.

[Unionhack]

Unfortunately, looking around the webs for weapon location databases seems to turn up a negative. "Fine" steel weapons (not sure about iron) can't be random loot on enemies, so really, you can only find it at a weapon shop or spawn it through console (which I imagine you don't wanna do).

Shouldn't be that expensive, but I imagine you'd have to be around level 10 or something for them to be added to the leveled lists.

You can find a few normal steel maces lying around Leyawiin, but none of the fine variety. Check the fighter's guild there and the Bravil castle dungeon.

[Chicken Slayer]

I don't necessarily want one, I am more interested in deciphering the patterns of the basic game design (the game without guilds) and whether or not the designers made one available the way they did with the other two weapons (along with the quiver of silver arrows in Kemen). It is possible that they thought providing a free silver battle axe near Agnar's body was equivalent, but that is far fetched, IMO, since it is so distant from the path to Weynon Priory and on to Kvatch.

[Unionhack]

Honestly I think a lot of decisions like that in regards to Oblivion, Skyrim, or any ES-type game really can be boiled down to just pure whim or aesthetics. When a world is so massive compared to a more linear game where logical equipment pacing is possible (ie; you have to go through a lot of stuff in the mid-to-late game in Ocarina of Time to get the best sword in the game as opposed to being able to magically find it five minutes in), sometimes players are able to just find stuff and I think that's part of the appeal, I guess?

Like in Skyrim for example. At level 1 you can go to Whiterun, punch Uthgerd in the face a few times, lead her out into the wilderness to die, and then have a full suit of steel plate armor to begin with, which is a significant upgrade from the common iron or leather you can often find at level 1. It takes like 10, 15 minutes to do this tops.

Generally speaking Oblivion is good about holding the really, really good non-leveled weapons to restricted areas until you reach a certain point in quests (this is the case with a lot of Fighter's Guild stuff), but you are talking non-guild gameplay here. Anytime I play Oblivion I always single out at least one guild for my character to be in because I like doing that.

It's an interesting line of thought, to be certain. You can be rewarded for going off the beaten path, but from what I understand a lot of the game giving you strong equipment comes from the leveling system, which of course prevents you from picking up a glass greatsword at level 2.

This UESP page is a neat article that kinda pertains to what you're talking about.

[legoless]

You can find a Fine Steel Mace in Lyra Rosentia's house in Bruma or The Dividing Line in Leyawiin. I think that's it.

(along with the quiver of silver arrows in Kemen)

Considering the triviality of silver arrows, I doubt this was an intentional game design decision.

[Chicken Slayer]

Silver arrows are not trivial if you are a dedicated archer playing a low level game, or simply trying to complete The Collector quest right away since there are ghost bosses placed in your way in several locations. Several things indicate that the game designers had such low level games in mind, not the least of which is the non leveled Dwarven equivalent Imperial Dragon armor reward for the main quest.
There are two game paths. The most obvious is following directions to Weynon Priory and then on to Kvatch. The second is the most intuitive, which is to go adventuring from map marker to map marker, which takes you from the sewer first to Vindasel, then on to Cheydinhall (past Barren Cave with its two vampire bosses--an easy way to get best level equipment). The orc in the Cheydinhall general store gives you markers (incl Kemen) to keep you on that path (which leads to the furthest of the unmarked Ayleid statue ruins). The orc thug in Cheydinhall gives you two more markers to keep you on the path, the first of which has a fine steel bow, and I believe that the second has a ghost boss early on. The furthest statue ruin, Welke may have a ghost boss before level 4 as may Wenyandawik. Wendir certainly has ghosts at level 1, and I think that Hrotanda Vale does as well (plus the Forelorn Watchman ship/quest). Those 15 silver arrows are just enough to deal with those ghosts if you are carefull to retrieve most of the arrows after each kill.

[legoless]

Several things indicate that the game designers had such low level games in mind

I severely doubt that, considering it's an exploit. The majority of the game is levelled; these items are exceptions to the rule.

[Chicken Slayer]

How is in an exploit?

[Unionhack]

I wouldn't call it an exploit if you can just head there and grab the arrows, but that doesn't mean it's flawed game design.

I highly doubt the game was created with the development team intending something like "yeah so we're gonna let them escape the prison and be presented with a huge open world, but there are only two ways to proceed and one of them requires that you pick up these fifteen arrows so you can deal with ghosts".

Low-level runs of Oblivion were an invention of the playerbase in response to the very weird leveling system, and almost certainly not the intention of the developers.

[legoless]

Low-level runs of Oblivion were an invention of the playerbase in response to the very weird leveling system, and almost certainly not the intention of the developers.

This. You're intended to level up. Case in point are the quests that require you to sleep.