This makes many changes to almost everything relating to combat, with a focus on making it more realistic and action oriented, and keeping it as compatible with any other mods as possible.

This is a Beta, and it hasn't been thoroughly tested. There are also some things I'd like to add before the full release.
Please tell me of any bugs or imbalances.

WIP Thread: http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=696412

------------------------------------------Details--------------------------------------------
===Damage===
-Damage has been dramatically increased from both weapons and spells, including hand to hand. People should usually die in 2-3 hits from weapons, even less from spells. A lot of factors have a strong impact on this though, such as the armor rating of the target, the damage and durability of the weapon, or the current fatigue of the attacker. A spell that can be used repeatedly will probably kill in around 3-4 hits, but more magicka-consuming spells could kill in one or two if they manage to hit before your target lands a few hits on you.
-Weapons and armor now lose durability much more slowly to prevent them from breaking in a couple hits.
-Not only is hand to hand effected by the damage multiplication, but the actual damage of hand to hand has been increased, and the fatigue damage has been increased to be closer the new damage amounts. You can actually kill someone easily with really high skill or strength, but at any low or average range of those stats you'll do much less health damage but still do a decent amount of fatigue damage.
-Health healing effects have been magnified by roughly the same amount as the damage increase.

===Combat===
-Blocking is now much more powerful. With a moderate amount of skill you can easily block 100% damage.
-Included as an option are Duke Patrick's No Recoil block animations. Without recoiling after every swing against someone who blocks, combat is much more fast-paced, and you can no longer just wait for them to hit your weapon then kill them while they're defenseless.
-The angle of strike has been reduced to 20 degrees. Meaning your target has to be within a 20 degree cone in front of you for attacks to hit successfully. This makes it much easier for misses to occur, and makes dodging a much more viable tactic.
-Power attacks do 2-3x more damage, and cost only a little more fatigue to perform.
-This also includes Duke Patrick's Combat AI tweaks.

===Weight===
-The weight of armor now has a dramatic impact. Heavy armor will greatly hinder your movement and increase fatigue cost from moving. Armor reduces damage taken by quite a bit though.
-Wearing heavy armor (typically high weight and armor rating) will greatly slow you, but allow you to survive a few more hits at least without dying. If all of the right factors come together though (such as your opponent wielding a dull weapon with low skill and strength) you can survive 10 or more.
-Wearing no armor at all means you'll die in only a couple hits, but you'll be very fast and hard to hit, and you can keap on your opponent much more easily than someone weighed down by heavy armor.
-Light armor is a medium between mobility and defense.
----Important-----
At the moment, NPCs are not slowed by armor weight, only the player. I'll have to use scripts later to fix this.
-Characters can now carry much more weight before becomeing paralyzed, but the amount of weight carried has a strong impact on the fatigue cost of running and jumping, so the effects of encumberence are gradual rather than immediate. It may have a large impact on run speed as well, but I'm not certain yet.

===Fatigue===
-Fatigue now drains as you run, but you also run a little more quickly.
-Endurance represents your physical health/stamina, and effects how quickly you recover fatigue.
-Athletics represents your skill in running, how efficiently you move. It increases running speed and reduces the fatigue cost of running.
-Having higher endurance allows you to run longer by pushing the regeneration directly against the degeneration of running. With high enouph endurance, you can overpower the degeneration and reach the level of stamina to run forever, but your regeneration will still be greatly slowed while running. Athletics on the other hand reduces the cost of running directly, and allows you to keap more of your regeneration while running.
-Jumping costs much more fatigue, and the expert perk reduces it by more.
-Attacks cost much more fatigue to perform, and the weight of the weapon plays a huge part. This gives you a reason, just like in reality, not to constantly swing wildly.

===Traps===
-Traps now do dramatically more damage as well, and being hit by one is now almost automatic death.

===Arrows===
-Arrows now move a little more quickly, making it a little harder to dodge or block them.
Arrows will now always be added to a creature's inventory when they are successfully hit by one.

===Bandages===
I haven't tested this part, and I'm not sure if it actually works or not.
-For people that want to heal without using magic, you can now apply bandages to gain health regeneration outside of combat.
-To make a bandage, find any piece of cloth and activate a set of Shears. Larger pieces of cloth give more bandages.

===Skills===
-Most skills now level a little bit more slowly, this was done because the other necessary changes to skills would not be compatible with balance mods that reduce skill gain rates, which most people see as necessary. In general, they rise 25% more slowly.
-Mercantile, since it was already hard to raise, rises a little faster than origionally.
-Speechcraft, which was easy as hell to raise even with slower skill gain rate mods, rises a little more slowly than other skills.
-Weapon, Hand to Hand, Armor, and Destruction skills all rise 4x as fast as before to compensate for the fact that fights last much shorter and much fewer successful hits are actually exchanged.
-Magic skills now raise a little slower than before on a successful hit, but the amount removed from that has been added to the initial cast. Skills that make more sense to have a stronger effect on skill on the initial cast (such as destruction) have had more of the skill gain added to the initial cast, and skills that make more sense to have a much weaker effect on skill on the initial cast (such as restoration, illusion or alteration) have a much weaker skill gain on it.
-The attributes tied to some skills have been changed to ones that make more sense. For example, Hand to Hand is now tied to Endurance, and Acrobatics is now tied to Agility.

===Other Stuff===
There are some other little changes, but I can't think of them all, and I don't want to spend the time mentioning them all.

---------------------------------------Requirements------------------------------------------
This requires the Shivering Ilses Expansion pack.

--------------------------------------Compatibility--------------------------------------------
-This is not compatible with magic overhauls like Mighty Magic.
-This is compatible with general overhauls like MMM, Francesco's or OOO, but some AI settings will probably conflict, so load this before them. OOO probably makes a lot of little changes to Settings, so load this after it.
-If using Francesco's, do not use the optional skill rate gain changes.
---------------------------------------------Credit--------------------------------------------
Credit goes to Duke Patrick for the new combat AI and the No Recoil animations. Some extra information is included in the download on his request.

----------------------------------------------Updates-----------------------------------------
Beta 1.1: Fatigue settings improved, armor weight penalty improved, skill changes added.