' Wrote:With the Assassins Blade perk and the Shrouded Gloves, you get a x30 damage multiplier with daggers, or x12 with swords. <strike>Then throw in a full Armsman Perk which doubles things, and you're at x60 with daggers, x12 with swords.</strike>
However, other basic enchantments don't multiply.
Just to see how the numbers vary, I just ran through my level 79 female Breton who has full Armsman as well as Assassins Blade, AND also carries and equips some special enchanted gear - Ring of Combat (enhance one handed / archery 40%), Necklace of Combat (dittos), Dragonscale Gloves (dittos), Dragonscale helm (enhance archery 40%)
Regardless of how she's dressed, whether in her underwear or fully decked out, her ebony dagger does 60 points of damage. Base damage with her Daedric Sword is 69, but fully decked out with enchanted items, the sword does 152. Base damage with her Daedric bow equipped with Ebony arrows is 96, but fully decked out with enchanted items is 218. (That doesn't count the enchantment on the bow itself, which is 37 points of shock and 30 points of fire - for up to 285 points.)
So a sneak attack for 3x damage with her bow can do 654 points of damage.
A sneak attack with her sword doing 6x with the sword does 912, if she has Shrouded Gloves on it does 1824.
Sneak attack with a dagger does 900 (x15), 1800 (x30)<strike>, or 3600 (x60)</strike>.
However - that's only good if it's a sneak attack. As the dagger doesn't have the reach of a sword, if she's spotted, she's still only going to do 60 points versus doing 152.
That's the main reason I like sitting off and shooting arrows. An ancient dragon has a health of 3071. Oh, look, I see an ancient dragon, sitting over there. Go into sneak mode, and also quaff a handy potion of enhance marksmanship (+108% damage). Suddenly I'm doing, with a SINGLE arrow, about 1,400 points of damage.
So, yeah, fully geared up a sword can barely do more than a dagger on a basic sneak attack, but if you're super sneaky, the basic dagger does double the damage of a sword. The only problem, of course, is that if you suddenly find yourself in melee combat, the reach of the dagger is a LOT less, and the damage suddenly drops down to where the sword is now doing x2.5 the damage per swing.
FTFY
Armsman doesn't just affect sneak attacks--it affects everything, so it *should* show up in the base damage of the weapon, and shouldn't be included when calculating sneak attack damage. Shrouded gloves also affect swords, so it's 12x damage with swords, 30x with daggers. No 60x, sorry:P
Since 30 = 12 * 2.5, if you have more than 150% bonus one-handed from gear, swords will out-damage daggers on all sneak attacks, in addition to the fact that they always do more damage on non-sneak attacks.
