1. I'm glad the armor/block changes - more oriented to active defense game.
2. There are two mods allow to reduce "blacksmith exploid" - [post='http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4429']one[/post] [post='http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5298']two[/post] .
3. DW is for people prefer more dynamic action - more damage are received and given. This mod highs up it only (weapon damage is increased too)
4. To the author
There is no, if I know, mod affects leveled lists to add epic/legendary weapon for NPC. They use worse weapon then player. OK, but with your mod the difference is just dramatic. Think about more flat curve please. Simply - make "low/middle end" weapon damage higher.
5. There is the [post='http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2700']mod[/post] gives active and passive block to the game. It will be nice to see something like that in your mod too.

1. Glad you like it
2. My mod currently does not aim to rebalance smithing though. Just combat.
4. Could you explain what you mean? Are things under or overpowered? At what levels? What type of enemies and what type of player character?
5. I don't think that's possible to do with SkyEdit yet, or I can't figure it out. The author of that mod probably used some other tool, but I'm sticking to SkyEdit until the creation kit is released. Then I should be able to do something similar too.

this mod has my interest, checking it out. Noticed a concern about dual wielding (admittedly haven't read all posts) but one thing that confused me about skyrim is the inability to block when dual wielding. I have an idea to solve this..but I'm not sure how to implement it.

re dual wielding:

Do you really need to be able to power attack with your offhand (or should you even be able?) ?

I think not.

Holding down the offhand attack button should enable blocking with your offhand weapon imo, if someone knows how to make this work i'd be very happy.

Can you make the actor use the shield blocking animation when trying to block with offhand?

Not without scriptint, so not without the creation kit. And with creation kit, hopefully, but also very unsure.

How would DC play with PISE? I'm thinking it might be possible to load DC after PISE, but I'm not sure what kind of conflicts might arise.

I didn't play using PISE myself yet (even though I guess I should, it does look interesting ), so I can't tell for sure how well the 2 would work together balance-wise (though I think it should work very well). Just opened PISE in SkyEdit and it doesn't look like he changed any of the game settings I changed, so there should be no incompatbilities. If there is anything both mods change though, you should load my mod after PISE if you like the change in DC better, and load PISE after DC if you like the change in PISE better. All other changes in both mods will still work.

DeadlyCombat_StaggerNoSpam.esp only has effect(e) <-- did you mean (d)?
if yes then I'll definitely give this a try.

Ermm yes I did thanks for catching that one

Edited OP for new version 1.40.

Edited OP for new version 2.00, now with normal attacks from enemies staggering the player!

Hi Borgut,
You know, the fact that the player can block while staggered and NPCs can't is intriguing. Why shouldn't they? If the staggering animation allows for movement and certain actions (blocking) then it should be the same for everybody triggering the staggering animation, be it the player or a NPC. This makes me think that perhaps NPC can be scripted (i.e. forced) to block while staggered. Personally I believe this would be huge if possible since it would add balance to the whole "normal hits stagger" feature.

Think about it; if a NPC can block and even bash while staggered the player can no longer win the fight by spamming the attack button. Se we would have hits causing physical reaction PLUS balanced fights. It would be epic!

I'm not sure whether that's possible or not, maybe staggering simply works differently for players than it does for other actors. Can give something like that a try though

I was thinking...maybe there could be some way to just lock control of the Player once you're staggered? That would solve the problem altogether. Then when you get out of stagger or if x seconds passes(failsafe programming option) then you unlock controls again.

Mm?? I'm sorry but I don't understand why it would be beneficial to prevent the player from doing anything while staggered.

In Oblivion, it worked like this and people complained how boring and frustrating it was to be chain-staggered by multiple NPCs without being able to react at all.
In Skyrim, players can react -which is IMO good- but NPCs can't (currently at least). The fact that they can't leads to the exploit that players can chain-stagger a NPC 'till it dies. Again, not really fun IMO.

Not sure how well that would work, the player should still be able to for example dodge I guess, or back off. Though I can always try if everything else fails, can't tell for sure how it'd play without trying.

Looks good, will try.

Edited the OP for new version 2.10, which makes the player fully stagger in the same way that other NPCs do, preventing him from attacking while staggered.
Because I've been trying to make this work all day up until now I didn't get much time to test how it feels in game, other then just quickly testing if it works. Will be testing if it feels right and doesn't get annoying or too hard after a while now, but need other people's feedback on this as well

So if you have tried the mod and something doesn't feel right, make sure to post feedback!

So I take that giving the NPCs the capacity to block while staggered was not possible in the end?

Didn't try yet.. now that I think of it, maybe if I change the conditions I can also make NPCs instead use what used to be the player-only stagger animation. However, I'm not sure whether NPCs being able to block during stagger is a good idea. Because if I manage to get a clean hit in, I want to be able to exploit my advantage by getting in a couple more hits, I don't want him to immediately block and counter again

I see your point. Then the idea would be to give staggered NPCs the possibility to block, meaning, they may or may not do it.

This possibility could be tied to the NPC's block skill (so that a staggered NPC with block at 75 would block almost always while a staggered NPC with block at 25 would block almost never). The combat would feel quite balanced this way I believe.
Another option would be to add a fixed chance of blocking while staggered (to make it less predictable) or a chance dependant on the NPC's reamining health/stamina.

If I remember correctly, the fixed chance option is quite easy to implement (get random number from 0-100 if number > x, then block. Else, don't).

What do you think?

uploaded a new version 2.11 now including all the script files, so it should work correctly

@tiny lampe

I could maybe try giving them some options to survive... but I'm not sure if it's going to be as easy, because I don't know how the game will react if I try to force someone to play an animation which he can't actually do because he's staggered Iirc in oblivion forcing actors in combat to play certain animations didn't work at all (only worked when not in combat), so it might be hard. But I'll try and see.

Much appreciated Borgut.
I'm crossing my fingers

Just a quick post of what to expect in the next version:

- Easier installation because there will be just one .esp file.
- Same extent of modularity, but now options are chosen through an in-game menu activated by a magical scroll automatically added to the player's inventory.
- Timed blocking
--> blocking takes extra stamina if the player is ''turtling'' (=blocking for a long time),
--> if the player times a block nearly perfectly (so has been blocking for a very short time when he blocks an attack) he'll stagger the attacker
- Increased importance of stamina by having the player stagger even if he manages to block an attack if he has a very low amount of stamina

I'm hoping to have this version out tomorrow, but if I run into trouble or things turn out to take more time than expected it might be postponed to Sunday

Edited OP for new version 2.20.

Changelog:
2.20 (11 February 2012)
- Timed blocking.
- ''No stagger spam'' option for player staggering.
- Bows and magic have less overpowered staggering effects on player.
- Reworked modularity of the mod.
- In-game menu for tweaking some features.
- Most features in one main file, allowing me to work more efficiently on
future versions from now on.

Edited OP for version 2.30.

Changelog:
2.30 (12 February 2012)
- Fixes a bug where timed blocking an arrow with the Deflect Arrows perk
could stagger archers.
- Melee attacks from enemies against the player now usually recoil the player
instead of staggering. This still interrupts the players action but is a much
faster response, allowing the player to play again more quickly instead of being
forced to wait for the stagger to end.
- Timed blocking a power attack will now make the enemy recoil instead of stagger,
to represent the extra momentum an enemy gets from his power attack. Timed blocks
against normal attacks will still stagger as before.
- The player's normal attacks now cost a (very small) amount of stamina.