Has anyone figured out how to change weapon abilities?

After a bit of experimentation the behaviour of the tools seems to be as follows:

Tests:

Setting "weapon" to "BrilliantBlade" and "trait" to "Trait_EQ_CardinalBlade_Abili (Trait)" produces a sword which reads as having the cardinal blade ability in the menu but triggers the brilliant blade ability when activated

Setting "weapon" to "CardinalBlade" and trait to "Trait_EQ_CardinalBlade_Abili (Trait)" and adding baseDam and corDam integers to the local blackboard set to 100 produces a blade that looks and acts like the cardinal blade, that states in the menu that its activated ability deals 100 damage but when activated only produced a hit for 15

Conclusions:

The value set to "weapon" in the "weaponref" section not only determines the model that the weapon uses, but also its ability and all variables for that ability. The weapon model and ability are irrevocably linked, you can't make a mace that has frostfangs effect.

Values in "traits" determine what abilities the weapon is displayed as having in the menu, but has no impact on what those abilities actually do.

Values set on the local blackboard will change the numbers displayed in the menu, but have no impact on the weapon's behaviour in game.

No explanation:

The Cardinal Blade is supposed to deal 20 damage to non corrupted, so why did the test make it deal 15 to a thief? I didn't think thieves had 5 points of armour.

It'd be nice to make weapons that could use a model from one weapon and an ability for another (Or even a model from one weapon and an ability from an artifact) but it doesn't seem doable. Am I missing something?