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About this mod
Bound weapon damage now increases with your Conjuration skill level. Damage is approximately equal to that of physical weapons improved by Smithing skill at the same level. This means bound weapons can keep up with normal weapons but don't outclass them.
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Bound weapons in vanilla Skyrim are powerful early on, then quickly become useless as you level, because they're much weaker than what you can produce by improving physical weapons with the Smithing skill. Huw made this mod to make bound weapons remain useful by increasing their damage with your Conjuration skill. However, the result is that at higher conjuration levels, bound weapons become overpowered compared to physical weapons, even those improved by Smithing (at the same level as Conjuration). This is to say, that mod is an improvement, but also an overcorrection in my opinion. This mod achieves very close to a true balance, so that whether you choose to use physical weapons and level smithing, or use bound weapons and level conjuration, you'll do similar damage throughout your playthrough. See this chart comparing sword damage between vanilla and the two mods:
I began with Huw's original plugin and tweaked both the rate at which bound weapon damage increases with Conjuration, AND the base damage of all the bound weapons. It was a process of trial and error as I tried different qualities of physical and bound weapons and tested them out by summoning horkers with the console and observing the damage dealt, then went back into xedit to tweak numbers. Dozens of horkers were harmed in the making of this mod.
Despite the name, damage levels aren't "perfectly" balanced, because the formula used here has to account for all 4 types of vanilla bound weapons (sword, battleaxe, bow, and dagger), which have different base damage levels that affect the calculation. But it's pretty close. See this chart comparing bound vs. physical weapon damage for all 4 weapon types:
I used Ebony as the comparison for high-end weapons rather than Daedric or Dragonbone, to keep bound weapons from becoming too powerful, and because Daedric and Dragonbone are special in lore. This mod does not attempt to account for enchantment-based damage from physical weapons (there's still an upside to using physical weapons) or late game power-smithing. But it does make using a conjured weapon viable for magic-based characters or those who simply want to use one without being punished by the crippled vanilla system.
I began with Huw's original plugin and tweaked both the rate at which bound weapon damage increases with Conjuration, AND the base damage of all the bound weapons. It was a process of trial and error as I tried different qualities of physical and bound weapons and tested them out by summoning horkers with the console and observing the damage dealt, then went back into xedit to tweak numbers. Dozens of horkers were harmed in the making of this mod.
Despite the name, damage levels aren't "perfectly" balanced, because the formula used here has to account for all 4 types of vanilla bound weapons (sword, battleaxe, bow, and dagger), which have different base damage levels that affect the calculation. But it's pretty close. See this chart comparing bound vs. physical weapon damage for all 4 weapon types:
I used Ebony as the comparison for high-end weapons rather than Daedric or Dragonbone, to keep bound weapons from becoming too powerful, and because Daedric and Dragonbone are special in lore. This mod does not attempt to account for enchantment-based damage from physical weapons (there's still an upside to using physical weapons) or late game power-smithing. But it does make using a conjured weapon viable for magic-based characters or those who simply want to use one without being punished by the crippled vanilla system.