Looking for the most "legit" attribute respec mod

[Faust]

"Legit" carries rather nebulous meaning in this context, so I will attempt to elaborate.

TL;DR

I want recommendations for a reliable up to date mod that allows me to subtract and add points from and to my HP, MP, and SP in a manner that will make the game think they were added legitimately on level-ups (if added) or never added in the first place (if subtracted), to prevent mechanics from breaking in unexpected ways.

Long Story

Once upon a time I played a game called New Vegas. I didn't like my SPECIAL distribution, but I didn't want to restart my playthrough. So I subtracted a few points from my Agility and added them to my Endurance via concole commands that remove or add points to specific SPECIALs. Then I discovered that even though I had enough Endurance, I wasn't allowed to install any more implants, because the game doesn't actually read your END stat when checking for implant elligibility, it reads a hidden variable that changes only when you get an END point "legitimately", as in add points to your END through the SPECIAL menu that pops up when you use the Intense Training Perk, the Lonesome Road ending perk, or use a special console command that summons that very window. This made me severely paranoid of using concole commands to fix my build because what other hidden variables could be hiding in the depths of the Gamebryo engine that would prevent me from having a proper build? I can see that level-up Stamina is already different from enchantment Stamina because one adds to carrying capacity and the other one doesn't, so it seems like I might end up falling into the same pitfalls in Skyrim

So now I'm in a similar predicament playing with a few Simon and Enai mods. I've no clue how to distribute my points between health and magicka and I'm gathering up a sizeable backlog of uncashed levels that I very much want to clear up so I can assign those scrumptious perk points. I have no desire to "Legendarize" any of my skills and therefore level 81 will be my "hard cap" for the rest of the playthrough, so I want to make every point count.

For this reason, I want a safety net that will alleviate my current choice paralysis if ever it dawns on me that I should have gone with 600 HP and 300 MP after all instead of 500/400, by allowing me to reshape my attributes into a state I'll consider perfect, AND do it in a way that won't break anything later down the line. No stamina subtractions while allowing me to keep the weight limit, no HP additions that won't be reflected in the regeneration calculations, etc. I want everything to work the way it's meant to work, and I'd be grateful for assistance in looking for such a thing.

[Skumboni]

Did you try googling that?

[Sairek Ceareste]

Attributes are much more simple in Skyrim than in New Vegas.


There's actually four main attributes. Health, Magicka, Stamina and Max Carry Weight. The reason enhance stamina doesn't also enhance weight is because they're two separate things, but taking stamina on level up DOES yield +5 maximum carry weight capacity.


You can use the "forceav" command to forcefully change these attributes to the desired amounts though with buffs that enhance these attributes, it does indeed get messy, but it works good enough for me at least since I'm a masochist and started everything at the low number value of "1".
However, there are indeed mods that do this, although I do not know if they are up to date with the current Skyrim version or are compatible with it:


https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/30595 Adds a potion to reset all attributes.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25241 Adds options through MCM to respec whenever you want.


For the record, it's almost never worth it to put points into magicka in vanilla balance. There's like, three different ways to get essentially infinite magicka in this game or reduce spell cast costs to literally 0. Further more, leveling spells in their related schools also makes them cost less magicka even before perks that you can grab to half their magicka cost.

[Yellowbeard]

Try a playthrough where you just level health...only health...upon level up.
Use enchanting and perks to take care of the other two.

[Faust]

Originally posted by Skumboni:

Did you try googling that?

Ye. Yielded a bunch of semi-outdated shady "Well maybe but I 'unno lol" kind of content.

Originally posted by Sairek Ceareste:

You can use the "forceav" command to forcefully change these attributes to the desired amounts though with buffs that enhance these attributes, it does indeed get messy, but it works good enough for me at least since I'm a masochist and started everything at the low number value of "1".

Keeping the save as clean and orderly as I can is an important concern to me. Messy is the exact thing I'm aiming to avoid.

Originally posted by Sairek Ceareste:

For the record, it's almost never worth it to put points into magicka in vanilla balance. There's like, three different ways to get essentially infinite magicka in this game or reduce spell cast costs to literally 0. Further more, leveling spells in their related schools also makes them cost less magicka even before perks that you can grab to half their magicka cost.

I'm playing lightly modded. Simon's overhauls don't seem to have any room for heavy cost reduction abuse, and thus I actually have a good reason to keep my magicka in a reasonable state, what with severely limited cost reduction enchantment slots (only head and chest for a maximum of 4, and I need those slots for other important enchantments too), seemingly multiplicative cost reductions instead of additive, incredibly high baseline costs (master spells can be 200+ magicka at 100 skill without perks or reduction buffs), and a much more ample arsenal of useful spells across all schools encouraging me to balance my cost reduction enchantments across most of them instead of committing to one or two schools.

[Death Approaches]

DO NOT USE FORCEAV. forceav is bad unless you know you need it, as it locks a value, it won't change,

re: "mechanics" (you're using that incorrectly, btw) this is the same problem you had in FNV, you didn't know what you were doing... let's say you had endurance 4... now, two examples; 'player.modav endurance 4'... you get an endurance of 8, *but* you'll notice there's a (+) beside it, because that's a modified actor value, meaning you try to slot some implants, and can only fit 4, you have an effective endurance of 8 for stamina and other rolls, but your actual endurance is still 4... but 'player.setav endurance 8' there will be no modified indicator, it will really be 8, and you can slot 8 implants at the clinic.

you don't need a mod for this, you can manage it all yourself with simple console commands, but learn the right ones. as for playbalance, you'll know what values you set, so subtract elsewhere accordingly.

a little paranoia is good, but as long as you always use setav, none of those things you list will happen, if you setav health 4500 or something really high and unfair, your health regen will charge you up to 4500 each time before stopping. if you're worried just make a hard save before starting your tweaking, then fully test it before you run off adventuring.

listen to what yellow said... it really can be that simple. or put another way, you're really overthinking it. consider - this game is (mostly, actually) meant for console players, many of whom can't bother to read for 2 seconds on anything, if something is better it'll have green numbers, therefore equip that, and that's as far as they go to equipment or character management. and it's perfectly fine to play this way. you can thrive, not just survive, on ~150 HP at 50th lvl with no health regen boost on Master or Legendary, dumping all your points into stamina, so your 2H melee bruiser with his hammer gets it done fast, if you find/buy/enchant armor/jewelry/weaponry to augment what's lacking.

I know it goes against some people's mentalities to want to be "the best", but trying to optimize as best as possible kind of breaks the game; you can easily become god-like without cheating or using exploits; I mean you can die if you just stand there, but who does that? you can make it so all fights are just boring, smack <dead>, brushing off all spells cast at you, can't be poisoned, never run out of stamina, etc.

take the Dragonborn/Miraak final fight, can be a lot of fun, can be very hard, might even require a reload if you mess up... can also be <smack!> (runs off to drain a dragon), <wap!> (again...), <powersmack!> (again...) and you're done. yawn. wow that was fun, huh? 4 minutes of cutscenes, 3 seconds of playing. woo.

at this point you might as well just toggle god mode on, and not have to worry about recharging weapons with soul gems or counting arrows because there's no risk, no challenge... and no fun. it's become a walking simulator.

so don't go crazy perfecting your build, just play! when you find yourself dying when you think you shouldn't, THEN look into the why of it, and adjust accordingly.

[Sairek Ceareste]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

DO NOT USE FORCEAV. forceav is bad unless you know you need it, as it locks a value, it won't change,

I've never had this problem, although I am running a bunch of fix mods like engine fixes (which everyone should be running anyway because it makes Skyrim do things it was intended to do and makes it crash less), so maybe that's why, but it works perfectly as intended for me. I've never had an issue, even when changing more unique things like the weapon attack speed multiplier.

[Faust]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

"mechanics" (you're using that incorrectly, btw)

I don't think I am and since you've provided no reason for me to think otherwise, I give no credibility to this statement.

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

this is the same problem you had in FNV, you didn't know what you were doing... let's say you had endurance 4... now, two examples; 'player.modav endurance 4'... you get an endurance of 8, *but* you'll notice there's a (+) beside it

I just checked with .modav and there was no +, actually.

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

but 'player.setav endurance 8' there will be no modified indicator, it will really be 8, and you can slot 8 implants at the clinic.

That one, however, does appear to be true.

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

you don't need a mod for this, you can manage it all yourself with simple console commands, but learn the right ones.

Golly gee, that sure is informative.

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

a little paranoia is good, but as long as you always use setav, none of those things you list will happen, if you setav health 4500 or something really high and unfair, your health regen will charge you up to 4500 each time before stopping. if you're worried just make a hard save before starting your tweaking, then fully test it before you run off adventuring.

What about things like base Stamina? Do I have to use .setav separately for Stamina and Carry Weight, or will the game adjust Carry Weight automatically?

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

Everything else

While I do appreciate your concern, this is not information that I can make use of. As I've mentioned before, I'm playing with a modpack that sets a number of hard boundaries which prevent me from doing ludicrous nonsense like crafting loops or 100% mana cost reduction or anything similar. I have a credible reason to tweak my build and I get noticeable benefits from doing so. And while I don't require these tweaks to succeed even with the boundaries set by my mods, I happen to be under the effects of a particularly eccentric cocktail of personality traits/flaws that compell me to refine and optimize things I care about, so I very much wish to fiddle and tinker, I just want to have more freedom to bounce back from dubious decisions.

[Faust]

Originally posted by Sairek Ceareste:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25241 Adds options through MCM to respec whenever you want.

Finally had the opportunity to check the mods. The potion one doesn't affect carry weight, but this one seems to be what I need, though it requires that UI mod that I can't stomach. Still, this is probably the closest thing in the market to what I want, so I'm grateful for the useful rec.

[Faust]

Ite, so using player.setav ended up with the exact result I expected. Those 50 points of carry weight that I got from putting 10 levelups into stamina appear to be set as a separate "Permanent Modifier" value that is applied on top of the baseline value (information extrapolated from the console command 'player.getAVinfo carryweight'), so when I type player.setav carryweight 300, I still end up with 350 due to this permanent value of 50.

Funnier yet, if I type player.setav carryweight 250, I end up with 300, which you'd think would be the desired solution, but when I type 'player.getAVinfo carryweight' to see the breakdown of the stat - my base value is 300, and the only other modifier shown is the permanent 50 from levelups, and SOMEHOW my 'level-up value' (which is what I presume the game calls the "end result" attribute) is 300. Where is this -50 modifier hidden? I know not. What repercussions it may lead to? No idea. I'm not a gambling man, and this kind of nonsense is exactly the sort of thing that makes me worry about the house of cards collapsing in on itself when the game trips over some strange value mismatch and spergs out.



Meanwhile, I attempted to use the respec mod found by Sairek, and it seemed to work (I didn't check the values through the console), setting both my Stamina and Carry Weight appropriately, but after that I kept getting inexplicable crashes every other loading screen. Maybe it's because I removed the mod afterwards (it needs SkyUI and I HATE SkyUI, so I figured it'd be harmless to download both, do a quick cheeky respec, and then delete the two buggers), so that one doesn't seem to be an option for me either. I am now quite bummed.