Description

See the video: https://youtu.be/ar2v72lx-Dw

Melee Power attacks will:
Knock enemies down and send them flying
Trigger a 1 second slow-mo moment for coolness reasons

Works with any weapon, or unarmed. The lighter the enemy (by his 'weight' attribute) the farther away he will knock-back. You can knockback corpses too, as Nazeem will surely find out.

Compatibility

It should be compatible with everything as far as I can anticipate -but if another mod has another perk that also fires during melee attacks, then whichever mod is last in the load order should win out.

It does use scripts, but the scripts are tiny and only fire during the knockback moment. They don't even make new variables -I don't see how they could bloat your savegame or cause any kind of CTD. See the code in the source folder; I think they're pretty tidy in how they get in, do their thing, and get out, but I always welcome feedback if you think they could be tidier.

Installation
Unzip to Data folder and tick the checkmark for knockback.esp.
Or seriously, do yourself a favor and just install Mod Organizer 2? already; it's not 2012 anymore.

As soon as the game launches you'll get a little notification saying "Power Attacks will now knockback your enemies." -if you see that, it means the mod is on and should work.

Uninstallation

Remove the esp and the scripts -or turn off in MO2. Nothing should be left behind in your savegame except a perk; you could clean that up with Fallrim tools? -which is another must-have if you're into modding.

Why am I not like the other girls

There are other knockback mods out there, but I learned that they don't work if your attack happens to kills the NPC. I think the reason why those mods fail at that moment is that PushActorAway(Target, PushForce) only works on the living, and by the time the script kicks in the NPC is already dead. I got around this limitation satisfactorily, I think. Also, I prevent the bug that makes NPCs invincible if a killmove happens to trigger during knockback.

Also, the way other mods work is by either enchanting a certain weapon -which is too limiting, or by attaching combat spells to individual attacks in the PC record -I think that's too dangerous, don't mess with the Prisoner Ref 0007 kids. By using perks, this should work with any weapon and any race, vanilla or modded.

F.A.Q.

ESL when?
I don't know how, bro. I only know how to do that in SSEDIT, and SSEDIT is telling me I need to renumber forms in Creation Kit. No idea how to do that.
Does this work in Oldrim? Does this work in VR?
No idea! I have neither of those, please try it out and let me know!
Is this compatible with X?
It likely is. It would only conflict if other mod also fires some magical effects during melee attacks.
Can you remove the slow-mo effect?
What? You never played Max Payne? Gah! Fine, if enough people ask for it I'll add a new version without it. I don't think it deserves an MCM menu, honestly.
This makes combat too easy -I just kill them while they're knocked down on their butt trying to get back on their feet!
I know. Ideally, I'd like to apply havok impulses to living characters without having to knock them down first, but I don't think it can be done? Let me know, experienced modders!
I want knockback on spells too! And ranged combat!
Yes to crossbows? and fireballs?! I don't think I could add anything else myself though.

Credits

SCSI True Hit Force? inspired me to use perks instead of enchanting weapons. If it only could kill NPCs consistently during knockdown then maybe I would have never made this one.
CIPSCIS Tutorials?. Great resource.
The amazing community keeping this 9-year-old game as if it had released yesterday.