LE Ebony Blade lore friendly scaling rebalance idea

[As3IrC3]

i'll try to cut to the point since the ebony blade is pretty well known. so here are a few facts on the vanilla weapon.

-can't be smithed, so scaling is bad.

-it's cannon so it must stay that way.

-piss poor base damage. exactly the same speed and damages as a 1h elven sword.

-lifesteal enchantment compensate, but don't work against some enemies (like dwemer automatons).

-in vanilla skyrim it benefit from one handed perks and scaling despite being used with two hands.

-mountain of mods that overbuff the base stats or make it temperable, and often make it a generic sword with a bad, but unlimited enchantment.

 

now my idea is to make it apply with both the one handed and two handed perks and scaling, granting exp for both too. i'm not too familiar with all the inner working of skyrim and the creation kit, so i guess it could be a mountain of work, or just adding one more keyword to the weapon.

 

everything past that point is strictly a supposition of how things would interact and should not need to be implemented manually.

if it does, it would be room for many more interesting discussion since it would add a lot of work anyways.

 

first for the base damages and be done with it:

-i'll be writing most bonuses as absolute multipliers rather than percent to avoid confusion (+50% is *1.5)

-for the sake of comparison i'll be using the bonus from max level legendary smithing without potion or enchantments to overcap. so a +10 to base damages.

-weapon perks gives a +0.5% damage bonus per level, resulting in a *1.5 at lvl100. and first perk is a *2 at rank 5/5. resulting on a total of *3 base damages on maxed skills.

-1h dragonbone sword has a base damage of 15, 25 with smithing, reaching 75 with maxed skills.

-2h dragonbone greatsword had a base damage of 25, 35 with smithing, reaching 105 with maxed skills.

-ebony blade has base damages of 11, multiplied by 3*3=9 (for one handed and two handed), reaching 99.

-sword is weaker and greatsword is slower, but both can be over-smithed (even without glitches), and will easily hold one or two much better enchantments.

 

now for the more specific perks (everything maxed obviously):

-power attacks would cost 25% less stamina, so 0.75*0.75 = 56% of the base cost, a 44% reduction. (everything else will follow the same logic)

-both standing power attack bonuses would multiply to 56%

-sprinting power attack would crit for 4 time the damage (four times the base damages of 11, without skill and enchantments bonuses)

-no change for the sideway power attack that hit all targets.

-backward power attack has two times 25% chance of paralyzing, so 44% chances.

-every attack has two time 20% crit chances. so 44% of criting, which include a 4% chance of criting twice in a single attack.

 

lastly, you would also be able to enchant gears with both fortify one handed and fortify two handed for a pretty hefty bonus as you max your enchanting skill.

 

all my previous calculus assume that the bonus in every single perk modify the damage dealt (act multiplicatively), and are not adding bonus physical damages on hit (so the damage used to calculate one perk would stay the same when calculating the other perk), in which case the resulting damage would be lower.

 

i would love to hear opinions from people who might know more about the balance, and moders who have a better clue about item tags and keywords.

[kodaxmax]

I think perk for 1/2 handed weapons litterally just check the equip slot. Meaning it can't use both perk trees simultaneously. Alternatively it could just have a 1/2 handed and dagger version which swap out depending on the highest of the players sneak, 1h or 2h skill. It is supposed to mold to the user/victim anyway if memory serves (most deadric artifacts do).