Less Annoying Horses aims to make horses behave in a more realistic and less suicidal manner by making them less likely to engage in combat and somewhat better in combat when they do, while causing them to run away instead of fighting to the death if combat is going badly for them. Responsibility is also set to 0 so they won't report any crimes.   These effects are achieved without scripts by simply altering the stats for horses, including reducing their responsibility and confidence, and increasing their personality, health and damage, and slightly increasing their aggression.  With Less Annoying Horses installed, your horse should typically not become engaged in combat if you dismount as soon as the combat music starts before the enemy targets you and you approach quickly to engage the enemy.

Less Annoying Horses can be merged into the bashed patch if you use Wrye Bash.  It may conflict with other horse mods that alter the records for the player horses.  It is perfectly compatible with the horse whistle and tracking features of Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul and works nicely alongside Maskars.

The optional file NPCs Don't Drop Weapons is a simple GMST tweak to prevent NPCs and certain creatures like goblins from dropping weapons and shields.  This prevents unnecessary clutter and makes looting enemies who die in tall grass easier.  This mod is so small I did not want to create a separate page for it but instead have offered it here as an optional file.