refinements VS Skills-and-Abilities

Although I've always used 'BG2-ToB Refinements' mod (its fork is found here), I've never considered the meta or analysis of the HLAs.

Refinements: HLA overhaul, originally with the intent of better differentiating each class’ HLAs. I haven’t touched this in years – if anyone has some up to date comments on how it works and if you’d recommend it, I’ll edit this accordingly.

The current Refinements mod apparently works on EE??

Yes, there's a mod which revamps HLAs, it's called Refinements: https://github.com/UnearthedArcana/refinements

House Rules and S&A, if you need links. Note that their proficiency systems aren't compatible with each other - the monk proficiency tweak is totally compatible with Skills and Abilities' new proficiency system, if you use it, but the "rebalanced proficiencies" and "rebalanced weapon styles" are not.

I mentioned it in my comment, but skills and abilities does that, spread across a couple different components. Two-handed attacks receive 1.5x the strength damage bonus (rounded down), and the revised Two-Handed style increases base damage, speed factor, and APR, making it a faster and more reliable way of dealing damage. The revised two-weapon style also slightly decreases your offhand damage, even at 3 pips - not much of a nerf, but overall I think the mod's changes to single-weapon, weapon and shield, and two-handed styles make them very tempting alternatives, since they all have their own strengths.

Skills and Abilities: Larger writeup on this coming soom™. Short version: a proficiency overhaul that takes BG1’s weapon groups as its starting point and adds new proficiencies which can better diversify character builds, such as Spellcraft (bonuses for arcane casters), Divine (bonuses for divine casters), and Swiftblade (bonuses while hasted). Other components overhaul Protection from Magical Weapons, change Turn Undead, and allow bards to pick locks and disarm traps (EEex required for these). Optionally changes weapon styles as well, incentivizing approaches other than dual-wielding, and adds HLAs drawn from 3.5E.

Check out releases on the right hand side. Download that and put the 'setup-xxx.exe' file and the associated folder in your game directory. Then just run the setup from there. Or use something like Project Infinity to setup, sequence, and install your mods at one time.

There is a nice mod (https://github.com/Gibberlings3/Skills-and-Abilities), that gives bards "Find Traps" and "Open Locks". Maybe this is something for you?

Link: https://github.com/Gibberlings3/Skills-and-Abilities