SPERG Weapon Styles

REQUIREMENTS:
SPERG 4.0 or above

WHAT IT DOES:
This small mod is an add-on for seorin's Skyrim Perk Enhancements and Rebalanced Gameplay (SPERG). It modifies SPERG's One-handed perk tree to include additional perks that allow the players to pursue "combat styles." One of the styles, dual-wielding, already exists in Vanilla and SPERG, and has merely been given some additional perks. The second, single-wielding, is new. It's perks only function when wielding a one-handed weapon and nothing else (not even torches or spells). It started off as a mod that let me play as an agility and speed oriented fighter, but it's grown a bit, fleshing out the two combat styles that are possible with one-handed weapons. Some of the new perks are shared between the two styles, while other are exclusive to one.

Additionally, this mod renames SPERG's "Weapon Master" perk to "Dual Weapon Style," and "Dual Savagery" to simply "Savagery."

THE PERKS:
Single Weapon Style
One-handed 60
When wielding a one-handed weapon in one hand and nothing in the other, attack speed increases by 45%
Tireless
One-handed 70, Single Weapon Style
Reduces Stamina cost for power attacks by 30% when single wielding. Skirmish Tactics increases damage by 25% when single wielding.
Agility
One-handed 90, Tireless
When wielding a one-handed weapon in one hand and nothing in the other, there is a 10% chance to slow time during an enemy's power attack, with a 20% chance to deal lethal damage while slowed.
Celerity
One-handed 80, Tireless or Savagery
Increases run speed by 20% while wielding one-handed weapons (single or dual).
Unburdened
One-handed 75, Single Weapon Style or Dual Weapon Style
When wielding one-handed weapons (dual or single) and nothing else, armor rating increases by 20%.
Inexorable
One-handed 90, Savagery
After performing a critical hit while dual wielding, each hit that follows within five seconds results in another critical hit.
Brutality
One-handed 100, Agility or Inexorable
When wielding a single one-handed weapon and nothing else or two one-handed weapons, there is a small chance of doing lethal damage or staggering the opponent.

INSTALLATION:
Either use Mod Organizer (the best program ever) or Nexus Mod Manager (better than nothing). You can also manually extract it to your Skyrim directory. Load SPERG Weapon Styles.esp after SPERG.esp.

UNINSTALLATION:
Just unclick the .esp. This mod uses no scripts, so it should be OK to remove without screwing with your save files. Remember to do a Perk Reset in the SPERG MCM menu before uninstalling if you've taken any of my new perks, so you get back the perk points.

COMPATIBILITY:
This mod modifies the One-handed tree and two SPERG perk names. Since it requires SPERG and SPERG already overwrites these assets, it should be compatible with everything.

KNOWN ISSUES:
Originally, I intended this mod to focus on speed and agility. In the course of developing this, however, I realized that it provides a different experience depending on which hand the weapon is in. As I learned, this is because equipping a one-handed weapon in the left hand and nothing in the right hand does not allow you to block, but instead allows you to punch with the right hand. Additionally, you only get one type of attack, a left to right swipe. This has the effect of slowing your attacks. Keep in mind that this does not slow your attack speed, and here's why. When a weapon is equipped in the right hand, the normal animation sequence is a right to left swipe, then a left to right swipe, then a right to left swipe, then a left to right swipe, and so on. Although your weapons are moving at the same speed, the animation sequence itself is faster when you have both of these attacks following each other in sequence. When you only have one, the animation sequence is slower (noticeably). There's nothing I can do about this, so my suggestion is to simply use your one-handed weapon in your right hand if you're going for absolute speed (which, as stated, was the original intent of this mod, but by no means the only way to play and enjoy it).

It might be interesting to play this way if your unarmed damage is high (SPERG ties unarmed damage to the Pickpocket tree, so a combat-oriented thief build comes to mind). I haven't tested this, however, so I can't make any promises about how effective it will be.

So you end up with two options: the right-handed fighter, who is faster and can block, or the left-handed fighter who can throw a punch and swing a sword. This is really an unexpected but pleasant result, since I love more options in character bulding. If people report favorably on the left-handed build, I might add some abilities to improve unarmed combat while wielding a one-handed weapon.

Along the same lines, when I was using the Joy of Perspective, I noticed that the left to right attack wouldn't play in first person when wielding a one-handed weapon in the right hand. I tested this on a vanilla game, and both animations played fine. On a game with the ONLY mod being the Joy of Perspective, the left to right attack failed to play in first person. Outside of first person, the animation played fine. This causes attacks in first person to seem slower, as described above. I notified the JoP team about this, but received no response. Let me know if this issue exists for you!

THANKS:
seorin, for his incredible work on SPERG!

FUTURE PLANS:
This mod is mostly finished unless someone has a really good idea or I become better at making mods; all that really remains is bug reports and balancing. However, I did have the idea to create weapon-specific perks that benefit from the combat style perks that you have chosen. Anyone that opens up the CK and looks at this mod can see what I'm talking about. I'm not really happy with where they're at, and have kind of hit a wall on what to do, but if I'm feeling creative there might be an update in the future.