Stats Overview

This page is mainly a place holder for real analysis which hopefully, someone will do later.

PC

Derived PC Stats

Derived PC stats (health, magicka, fatigue) are based on a static element + a dynamic element. Specifically:

• Health = static health + (gmst factor, default=2)*current endurance.
• Magicka = static magicka + (1+(gmst factor, default=??))*current intelligence
• Fatigue = static fatigue + (gmst factor, default=??)*current fatigue.

Some mods (e.g. Oscuro's) change the gmst factors that determine the dynamic contributions.

The static components are what you set with the setav script command. Static health starts out at something which is based on strength (?) and is incremented a little each time you level (I think -- again based on another gmst setting). Magicka and Fatigue do not have per level increments.

Luck and Effective Skill Level

The effective skill level is the level at which a particular skill is considered to be when using the skill. It is a combination of the base skill level, any abilities, spells, etc. that affect that skill, and base luck. At default, effective skill level is

Base Skill Level + Benefits (Spells, ModAV, etc.) - 
                   Detriments (negative Spells, ModAV, etc.) + .4(Luck - 50)

Note that if your luck falls below 50 it will count as a penalty towards all of your skills. Also, there are two game settings that determine the bonus due to luck: FActorLuckSkillMult and IActorLuckSkillBase. Follow the links for the equation.

Racial and Birthsign Abilities

However (more complexity), it appears that racial and birthsign bonuses are NOT treated as magic effects, but rather are applied as changes to the player's static attributes. E.g. the Apprentice(?) 100+ fortification of magicka shows up as an increase of static magicka (which would otherwise be zero). OTOH, adding the birthsign ability by script (instead of through birthsign menu) may or may not apply to the static magicka. (I only did quick testing.)

PC Leveling Mods

I'm not sure that this stuff is properly accounted for by the leveling mods. E.g., KCAS seems to not handle health leveling properly. Specifically, it seems to ignore the dynamic effect, which would thus lead to excess health once the dynamic effect is applied. But I just skimmed the code, so I could be wrong.

NPCs

How do npc stats calculations compare to pc stat calculations? Many of the gmsts used in the calculation are different. But is it fundamentally different with regard to derived stats or not?

Related

Wrye Bash (as of version 0.83) allows pc stats to be imported from a savegame to an esp file. This can then be edited and the edited data can be reimported to a savegame. But Bash only deals with the static parts of derived stats -- actual stats (esp health) will typically be higher in game.