Sufficiently Good Shortblades

WHAT THIS MOD DOES

Buffs basic unenchanted shortblades by adjusting damage, speed, reach, and enchantments. NPCs with these weapons will be much more dangerous. Daggers have small CE enchantments, short swords buff armor skills, tantos and wakizashis buff speed. These weapons now have two useful attacks: a quick attack best used with no windup, and a more powerful attack that requires a full windup for full damage. NPCs play by a different rule in this case, however, and can use the full damage of their shortblades without windup, making them even more dangerous.

COMPATIBILITY

Replaces unenchanted shortblades, so needs to be ahead (in the mod load order) of anything else that would make changes to these items.

Version 1. 35 (updated 12-3-22):

This mod buffs shortblades by adjusting damage, speed, reach, and adding small constant effect enchantments. These weapons now have two effective attacks: one quick short attack, as well as a more powerful attack that takes a full wind-up. NPCs will attack you with these new, faster, more effective shortblades. The enchantments are thief-relevant skill buffs for daggers, armor buffs for shortswords, and speed for tantos and wakizashis. Daedric items are unenchanted but have had stats adjusted accordingly.

Goals of this mod: make daggers more relevant for Thief classes, provide strategic weapon choices for shortblade-skill characters, increase difficulty of shortblade wielding NPCs.

OpenMW (main download) and ESP versions available.

Old version 1. 25:

"The dagger and short sword are Western Imperial weapons. The tanto and wakizashi are styled after Akaviri blades. These weapons are light and fast, most effective against lightly armored opponents, but a skilled user can outlast more heavily armed and armored opponents. The dagger, tanto, and short sword are thrusting weapons, the wakizashi a chopping and slashing weapon. Rank them by effectiveness as dagger, tanto, short sword, and wakizashi, with dagger least effective." - Garothmuk gro-Muzgub

Most short blade-runs have limited early game flavor, this mod aims to fix that in a balanced way with the following enchantments:

Iron, steel, and chitin daggers: a boost to agility and sneak to emulate the weapons of thieves

Silver dagger, silver shortsword, Nordic silver shortsword: a useful enchantment against undead and werewolves

Chitin, Iron, Steel shortswords: an enchantment that wears down armor over time

Imperial shortsword: a boost to blocking to emulate gladius  & shield combat

Iron/steel tanto and wakizashi: a boost to your shortblade skill to emulate a fine-tempered blade

Glass dagger: dispel on strike to destroy enemy summons, bound armor, and buffs

(no other shortblades were changed)