Confused about Dex penalty

[Spider]

So, I raised my Dex to 16 or so, and then something happened to where it dropped to 13. The number is in red.

Ok, so obviously something is lowering it, but I can't figure out what.

What I've done:

• Seen a healer (the doc in Shrouded Hills) and used all his available services
  
• Checked the journal for injuries (none)
  
• Slept a whole bunch
  
• Stripped off every piece of equipment

Any other ideas? I think I equipped a cursed item at one point, but then removed it immediately. Could that have done it? Do I need to be un-cursed now, or is my stat bugged?

[Muro]

Unfortunately, that sounds like the effects of the Black Stone Blade.

It's a hexed sword found in a barrel in the restricted section of Tarant's sewers. It lowers dexterity by 4, and due to how it's programmed, its effects are permanent. As well as cumulative (you'll receive an additional permanent -4 dex penalty every time you re-equip it).

A couple hexed items like these were the reason why the #1 advice veterans gave to first time players when the game was still new was to NEVER equip an unidentified magickal item, and to NEVER give an unidentified magickal item to a follower (since they just might feel like equipping it).

This issue was still present in the latest official Arcanum patch, and wasn't fixed until the fanmade Unofficial Arcanum Patch. Unfortunately, if this is what happened for you and you're playing without the Unofficial patch, nothing* can be done to fix this in your current playthrough. There's no in-game way to un-curse yourself from the black stone blade's hex, while patching the game mid-run would cause issues with saves from a pre-patched version.

* If you knew what you were doing, you could try messing with the gamefiles to counter this effect, but it boils down to whether or not you'd find figuring out what needs to be done a less troublesome thing to deal with than either accepting the curse or restarting the run. Plus I'm not sure if a working download link for the undatting tool required for this operation can still be found.

[Spider]

That...is very disheartening. So basically 4 levels went to nothing. Fabulous...

[Muro]

It's actually worse than "just" losing 4 levels. It lowers how high you can go in dex.

By design, you can't put more than 12 points in a stat before it hits its cap.
Race modifiers aside, it means the default for a stat is starting at 8 and being maxed out at 20.

But being hexed by the black stone blade means your max dex has been lowered to 16. Which also means you won't be able to max out any skill that has a requirement of dex 18 for that final level, unless you rely on an item or blessing that gives a dex boost and evens out the hex.

[Spider]

Sounds like it might be time to edit my save file...what rubbish.