I wish I could give a more satisfying, thorough conclusion to this question but the problem quite simply stopped occurring. I don't know how, I don't know why, but when I went to do a sanity check just now it is as though this problem were never a problem in the first place. Now, any one of my plug-ins require ALL the DLLs they are dependent upon & referential to present as siblings in the directory of that plug-in. I consistently was getting results otherwise previously which is what prompted me to post the question, but now all is well I guess.