SPECIAL NOTE: In regards to the spell damage tweaks. Some find it a bit overpowering. After some testing at high levels, I find myself somewhat agreeing, but I am still straddling the fence. Mages can put out insane damage, but burn the entire mana pool in 1-3 shots (but your target will be dead if you hit them). If you are worried about it, just use the magicka boost mod, that alone should give mages a big enough boost to compete with fighters, with more kiting involved. The only downside is that enemies won't do insane spell damage anymore... try it with and without the spell mod and see what you think. Opinions vary. If you do decide to not use spell damage tweaks, then go download the original one that only modifies spell names instead:

http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2222

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Update: Tested with the new Sage's with G's loot mod and detected no conflicts. Should be fine with either rarity mod.

These mods were made with Sage's Creature Balance and Tom Servo's leveled lists in mind for compatability. Two of these are direct modifications of other people's mods, specifically UpdatedSteelWeapons (thanks Arriere!) and SpellRanksnDamage (thanks moho!).

UpdatedSteelWeapons, while using Steel Hurts as a base, no longer even remotely resembles the original. Almost every single entry has been modified and changed to fit my own vision about how weapons should scale, as well as cleaning up some inconsistencies. SpellRanksnDamage is derived from Spell Ranks by moho. I did not change any of his work, but instead combined my own with his to ensure compatability (seperately they would have likely caused conflicts).

These should work fine with any existing savegames, and should be able to be removed without any problems. I did so many times when testing each of them with no ill effects. They can be used in any combination, with or without Sage's or Tom's. There is a pattern to the madness, as these were all designed to work with eachother (but they can be used individually).

A quick rundown:

UpdatedSteelWeapons, and fastarrows makes melee combat faster paced and harder. SpellRanksnDamage ups spell damage to compensate for all the melee weapons doing more damage. This of course makes the spells cost more mana, so MagickaBoost offsets this very well (and giving mages a nice power boost in the process). Fastspells also boosts mage ability to fight for both friend and foe. Mages in general are scarier with all the mods enabled, though they still get torn apart fairly easy in close melee.
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Now for the detailed descriptions:

UpdatedSteelWeapons.esp (Weapon damage increase across the board INCLUDING BOWS--important!)

Removed all creature references to make sure is compatible with Sage's.

Steel is used as a baseline for damage. Steel itself was upped significantly from vanilla oblivion's damage tables. Did not modify the baseline much from Arriere's original mod, EXCEPT for two handed weapons--they were given a healthy bonus in damage to set them apart from the one handers. BOWS were also boosted significantly. Arrows were NOT modified at all.

Silver weapons are no longer the bastard child of the weapon family. You see silver drop not long after steel, so it is an "upgrade" of sorts. Same exact stats as steel, but the ability to harm magical creatures.

Individual weapon types (axe, sword, mace) tweaked so that faster weapons do a little less damage than slower weapons (there were some inconsistencies here originally).

The bonus table goes as such:

Iron -2
Steel 0
Dwarven +2
Elven +4
Glass +6
Daedric +10

You can see this is a steeper curve than the original Steel Hurts. What does this mean? Iron and Steel will still hurt as per the original (iron slightly less, 2handers in general much more), but the gap is widened between the low and the high. Originally the difference was only +1 from one to the next. Enemies with dwarven and elven weapons (and higher) will hit you noticeably harder, but don't get overconfident... as with the original, the game WILL be harder. That is its main purpose, after all.

Enemies with steel will be just as deadly as before, but enemies with higher level weapons will be even deadlier... as will you, once you take their weapons from them.
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SpellRanksnDamage.esp

Thanks to moho for doing this, never would have thought of it myself. What he did was make the spellbook much easier to organize by arranging spells into ranks. Flare 1-5, Invisibility 1-5, etc. My addendum to his mod increases spell damage for stock spells across the board. Roughly doubling the damage and mana cost of all spells, but NOT modifying the ranks at which they can be cast at. This was done because with the weapon damage boosts, spells fell pathetically behind bows and melee.

This will increase spell damage for not only you, but for your pets(scamp, atronachs, wraiths, etc) and opponents as well.

In short, this will make stock spells slightly better than spells you can make yourself. Stock spells will be slighty more mana efficient, and will be castable at a lower rank than if you tried to make it yourself. You will still be able to create far better spells yourself... but you will have a reason to always seek out purchased spells and see what people are selling.

For fun, some ideas for spells I had that can be made in the spell maker (that blow any stock spell away): Cone of cold, shoots out a cloud of ice and briefly freezes opponents (area effect frost with 1-2 second paralyze component... they "freeze" and sometimes fall down--Frost Area effect spells actually go out in a cone if you didn't know!). Inferno, fireball with fire DoT component and Fear (enemies burst into flames, then run around for the duration they are on fire). Etc, etc. :)

Not compatible with Mighty Magicka!
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MagickaBoost.esp

Increases amount of mana you, and NPC's, get per int. Stock spells cost more magicka now, you really need this to offset the costs. It also makes mages much more viable and competitive with pure melee/stealth classes (originally they were OK, but lacked somewhat in staying power compared to the others--even with this I still feel they are at the bottom of the pile in terms of ability to kill/survive).
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Fastspells.esp

Increases spell velocity, making them harder to dodge. There are many of these already out there, and they're all pretty much the same. Modifies only one value in the TES.
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Fastarrows.esp

Same as the spells version. Modifies only one value, does not touch arrows at all. Some mods modify each arrow type for varying speeds, which is also fine.
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BetterSummons.esp

More specifically, all summons last 60 seconds. Cost and rank requirements remain the same. No more 20 second pets.
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BetterVampires.esp

Minor changes. Adds water breathing (undead can't drown dangit), removes ALL +skill bonuses, and instead gives bigger +attribute bonuses (done because those +skill bonuses can lower your effective max level that you can attain, a bug in the way Beth created it).

Hunter's Sight now lasts longer than 30 seconds. Also at rank 2 vampire, you will obtain a small radius detect life ability that increases in radius for each following level of vapmirism (to help you locate victims once you begin to feel the need to feed). More of a role playing change, but I couldn't resist myself.

Most likely NOT compatible with Kiyoshi's and similar mods. If you like those, use them instead. Or use neither. It's mostly aesthetic and RP inspired changes.
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ReducedRechargeCost.esp

Reduces the cost to have items recharged. Done with pure mages and staves in mind. Took nearly 3k in gold every time I needed to recharge my mage's staff... this makes it a little more reasonable IMO.
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OTHER MODS THAT I HIGHLY RECOMMEND (ie, I use these, and these guys are my heroes):

Deadlier Traps (http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1991)
Reduced Detect Life Shader (http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2447)
Nighteye Shaders--no more blue screen yay! (http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2927)
Natural Environments (http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2536)
LOD texture replacements (of course!)
No Fast Travel (I'm a glutton for punishment... I want to HAVE to fight through those bandit gangs on the road :P)