Preface

I loved the ideas behind the mods like Bring Your Silver and Know Your Enemy. My only problem with them was they required running a zEdit patch each time I added/removed a mod (plus more patches to be compatible with other mods).

They were also needlessly complex in my opinion (a 30% resistance and a 60% resistance doesn't make any difference in the grand scheme of the game)

So I made my own mod, using Spell Perk Item Distributor I could give Resistances and Weaknesses to any creature and NPC I'd like, without tangling with plugins in any way

To prevent the "complex" part, I just picked the D&D 5e Resistances and Vulnerabilities system. Which is in my opinion the best way to introduce this system in a simple "close to vanilla" way


Description

Basicaly, each enemy (except some extreme cases like Ghosts, Hagravens and other major enemies) will now take 50% less damage from certain type of weapons and take 50% more damage from other type of weapons, same applies for magic


Physical Damage Classification

Slash Damage includes Swords, Axes, Greatswords, Battleaxes and claws from Argonians and Khajiits

Piercing Damage is what Daggers, Arrows, Crossbow Bolts and Spears deal

Bludgeoning Damage is dealt by Maces, Warhammers and fists of Man and Mer races


Examples:

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Horkers now:
Take 50% less damage from Frost (Fat insulining and all that)
Receive 50% more damage from Shock spells (cause you know, they're all wet)
Take 50% less damage from Bludgeoning weapons (again, all that fat prevents bludgeoning damage from being a real issue)
Receive 50% more damage from Piercing weapons (arrows, spears, daggers)

Skeletons now:
Take 50% less damage from Fire and Shock spells (Bones are pretty resistent to fire and they dont have a nervous system)
Receive 50% more damage from Cold spells
Take 50% less damage from Piercing weapons (arrows might fly through the gaps or barely chip the bones)
Receive 50% more damage from Bludgeoning weapons

Ghosts now:
Take 0 damage from any physical weapon (they're ghosts)
With a few exceptions though, Silver weapons will deal damage as usual, same as Daedric artefacts and Bound Weapons.
Enchanted weapons will deal no physical damage, but the enchantment will affect them as usual (a fire enchantment on a steel sword will affect a Ghost, even when the sword itself doesn't)



A full list of resistances and weaknesses of every creature can be found in this spreadsheet kindly provided by ShalabiRogue, so go give kudos!


How to add modded creatures:

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First and foremost, is highly adviced to create a new _DISTR.ini with the name of the mod where the new Creature is found.
I'm gonna use the Giantesses mod by Mihail as an example.
I'll create a _DISTR.ini file for the mod, is just a text file named after mihail's plugin but with a _DISTR at the end. In this case it will be mihailgiantesses_DISTR.ini (notice I changed the extension from .txt to .ini)
This file should be placed inside the DATA folder, where the plugin or esp from mihail's mod is.

Then we pick the Resistances or Weaknesses we want to give the Giantesses, the _DISTR.ini from this mod contains examples of each one, let's pick Resistance to Piercing
From this mod's _DISTR.ini

;RESIST PIERCING
Perk = 0x800~Resistances and Weaknesses.esp|CREATURE,CREATURE,CREATURE

The semicolon at the begining means these lines are disabled by default, this is because these are examples.
Once we copied the lines to our _DISTR.ini, we remove the semicolon from the second line (the first line is just there as description)
Then we'll replace the "CREATURE" placeholders for the names of the giantesses.
There are 2 types of Giantesses in Mihail's mod, normal Giantess and Giantess Matriarch, we can use the * wildcard and simply put "*Giantess", this will cover both Giantess and Giantess Matriarch

So the text inside the mihailgiantesses_DISTR.ini will look like this

Perk = 0x800~Resistances and Weaknesses.esp|*Giantess

Now we save the mihailgiantesses_DISTR.ini file and it's done, all our Giantesses from Mihail's mod will have resistance to Piercing damage.


J3w3ls made this awesome tool you can use to distribute and customize the Resistances, Weaknesses and Immunities to different creatures from vanilla as well as some well-known mods.
Make sure to read the instructions! It's truly an amazing work, so go give some kudos!



Armor Plugin
Trying to classify each piece of armor was a pain, some of the vanilla armors lack sleeves or pants, they're almost as bad as the bikini armor meme.
Since it was getting overly complicated, and it would break the system on armors with more than 4 pieces (or cloak/pouches mods) I opted for yet another simple solution, keep the vanilla classification of Clothing, Light and Heavy armor.
In order to get the benefit (and weakness) from an armor, you need at least 3 pieces of the same type of armor equipped. 
Armor resistances and vulnerabilities depend solely on the chest piece, since in vanilla and in most modded armors, this piece represent almost the entirety of the outfit.

Clothing have no resistances nor vulnerabilities (they already have 0 armor so this balances it out pretty well.

Light Armor protects the user against Slash damage, but increases the incoming damage of Piercing weapons (an arrow will pierce light armor and prevent you from removing said arrow, further increasing its potential damage to the body)

Heavy Armor protects against Slash damage, but Bludgeoning damage will dent and batter said armor, further increasing the damage to the body

Armor plugin also covers Flesh Spells, beware this will stack with the armor you (and NPCs) wear. 

Oakflesh - Resistant to Piercing and Frost, Weak to Slash and Fire
Stoneflesh - Resistant to Bludgeon and Shock, Weak to Piercing and Frost
Ironflesh - Resistant to Slash and Fire, Weak to Bludgeon and Shock
Ebonyflesh - Resistant to Bludgeon, Weak to Piercing (ebony flesh is basically a stone flesh but completely inert to magic)


Requirements:
Spell Perk Item Distributor
Keyword Item Distributor (KID)

Instalation:
Install like any other mod, no extra steps required

Load Order:
Doesn't matter, esp is also light so it won't count towards plugin limit.

Uninstall/Update:
Should be safe to update and uninstall at any time.

Compatibility:
It should be compatible with most thing.
Mods adding completely new creature races only need a to add them in a _DISTR.ini file
Animated Armoury will require a patch (which is unfortunate, because it wouldn't if the keywords were implemented as part of the update.esm), anyway, I might provide one later on. Done.

Recommended Mods:
Lore Friendly Ghosts, pretty good alternative for Ghosts, make sure to read the description to make it compatible with this mod.
Runic Mage Armor, I use the overlay one, nice looking and unobtrusive way to see what Flesh Spell the enemy is using

Future Plans:
Make armors have their own resistances and weakneses (like Know Your Armor does), that way Player and NPCs will have Resistances and Weaknesses as well. Done
Add a Bestiary and a Grimoire, giving hints about resistances and vulnerabilities of creatures and armors.


That's it for now, any bugs you find, feel free to report them and I'll fix them as soon as I can