............ I've been watching closely and it appears my opponents start with a little more HP than I do. But my sword strikes seem to do about 15 hp damage while theirs do anywhere from 40hp to whatever it takes to go through a block, armor, and my 120-150hp in one stroke. 200?
The sword I am using does make a big difference. The clamshell falchion is the worst. It is all offence and no defence and I died with one stroke 3 times in a row. The bosuns choice isn't bad. I can sometimes survive up to 3 strokes with it. I'm excited! I picked up a French Court Sword. It's defense is 40+, but I haven't had a chance to test it yet. The changed sword ratings are hurting me for sure. The Waloon was a favorite for me because of its excellent defense, but it has been downgraded to no better than average, leaving me defenseless against improved opponents.
Methinks that every blade "level" should have two swords at minimum. One that is offense oriented like the falchion and one that is defense oriented like the waloon used to be.
I can't see where your enemy could do anything like the damage you reported(40-120/150hp in one stroke)! The weapon stats are certainly not any where near that level, wel maybe a couple of the quest blades are if you add a high level NPC's stats to them maybe, but you shouldn't be finding NPC's with quest weapons now? So that is a puzzle.
At the lowest end on the old stats, the breadknife(90gold) min damage used to be 3, max 9 and it had stats of 40 piercing 0 blocking. Now it is min dam 3 max dam 9 piercing 20, blocking 3
In the old patch 5 weapons, at the top end of the 'normal'(non quest) weapons we had stuff like the Bosun's choice(20,000gold) with min dam 40, max dam 55, piercing 55 and block 55.
Also in terms of best piercing/block stats, the Cardinals Guard(8,000gold) with min dam 20, max dam 35, piercing 100, block 70
And the Soligen Rapier(9,000gold) min dam 20, max 35, piercing 70, block 100.
Now as top level weapons we have:
Russian Cossack's Shashka(9200gold), min dam 29, max dam 43, piercing 55, block 35. That's the highest piercing rating and value in the normal weapons now(non quest weapons).
High status weapons(so 'noble' class - french court sword, spanish nobility etc) are also part of this new top tier:
French Nobility Sword(4910gold), min dam 20, max dam 35, piercing 35, block 45(best defensive rating, along with the Walloon Sword at 45 block also).
Spanish Nobility Sword(2280gold) min dam 18, max dam 28, piercing 33, block 40.
The highest damage swords are now:
Russian Cossack Shashka(as above)
Damascus Shamshir(5890gold) min dam 25, max dam 49, piercing 49, block 25
Knights Templer Sword(5400gold) min dam 22, max dam 49, piercing 35, block 40
Probably overall compared to the weapons at patch 5, damage and piercing stats have come down at the top end. At the lower end they have a wider spread now, so the current Cutless is a bit better:
(old)Cultess, min dam 14, max dam 19, piercing 10, block 0
(new)Cutless, min dam 15, max dam 18, piercing 15, block 11
the smallsword a little less good in defence:
(old)Smallsword, min dam 13, max dam 19, piercing 30, block 35
(new)Smallsword, min dam 15, max dam 19, piercing 33, block 19
the merchant balde a little better for an early 'defensive' approach:
(old)Merchants Blade, min dam 8, max dam 12, piercing 30, block 5
(new)Merchants Blade, min dam 10, max dam 15, piercing 13, block 14
etc.
Stats didn't change massively overall, mostly a couple of extra points here or a couple of extra points less, we have a slightly better range of defensive weapons now from the early level Merchant Blade to the top level French Nobility Sword. But all the 'normal' weapons are now much less powerfull than the quest weapons, there is quite a big difference between even the top teir normal blades and those quest weapons, which should make them even more valuable for the player when they get them.
But like i say Hylie, since patch 5, on the current Build Mod 14(this is the first stage i played it), i've found Swashbuckler level near impossible to play, so the changes i've made to blade stats have not changed that aspect much(if anything it may be a little easier than i found it!).
Enemy HP has not been touched that i'm aware off(i'm not sure where you would change that in the code), but like i mentioned from when i first started playing the Build Mod 14, you do seem to run into groups of bad guys every now and then that are just really hard(impossible even sometimes?) to beat - i'm on a save gave just before such an encounter right now(died 4 times so far trying to beat them). This has always been the way with Build Mod 14 since patch 5(maybe before even?).
Sword combat in general seems much harder than it used to be in build 12, and it is probably a good thing overall(it used to be very easy!) but could do with more tweaking and playtesting for sure, i'm currently playtesting a wider range of damage levels for most weapons, keeping the max dam structure, but lowering the min dam levels to see if this makes combat less leathal at Adventurer and Journeyman levels(then if so i'll eventually test at Swashbuckler!)
EDIT: When i say 'Build Mod 14+patch 5' i mean just those two files, nothing built ontop of anything else, no melding of build 13+14 etc, just the Build Mod 14 beta from the download at the Mod DB site + patch 5. Since then i've added patch 6+7 ontop.
I alwasy tend to preach lessons on coding details in the hope of getting more people into programming :nk , but maybe I rather deter them instead 
(well, I'm more testing than playing) 
ops2
