Game Skyrim Forum

Was wondering if I have to wait for a construction kit or if anyone knows a way to make it so when I go to first person on my high elf char it I am not staring through his chest.

I just recently made a topic about this little issue...but in a different section of the forums because I wasn't sure where to place it really.

I have been looking into it myself for part of my mod, will update you chaps if I find anything.

Nice, I hope it goes well and you figure it out

You can actually use setscale commands to change your characters actual size. SetScale 1.0 to reset to default, Setscale 0.94 to 0.96 for a somewhat short character, or setscale 1.6 to 1.8 for a relatively tall character. You can go under 0.90 or over 1.10 though you'll probably run into unintended issues the more extreme you move away from a medium sized character. Such as bumping into ceilings, not being able to climb effectively, and if you go to Statue of Liberty or to insect extremes lots of interacting with the world will feel impossible. I guess if you wanted to have a higher first person view you could make your altmer taller, though that may have quite limited potential being as altmer are already are the tallest race by default... And you might still be viewing the world through your chest which still may be unsatisfactory.

So any possible update on this?
Yes but not the first person view, which is the entire point of the topic.
No, you walk through clingings/doors if you were too tall and climbing would the same actually. I guess you've never used the command before
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No, it doesn't make your first person view higher. You can't do that with a console command apparently. That's the point.

Still wondering if anybody has a fix for this issue. It sorta seems like something you can do w/o the CK but maybe not. I've looked at the files myself but I didn't see anything that might fix this.

I recently started a High Elf and this was the first thing I noticed. Standing next to Ralof at the start of the game I said "Wait.. Shouldn't I be taller than him?"

Uh, pretty sure you are NOT looking through their chest, you are looking through their face, but all races are almost the same height.

Neck would be more accurate. Regardless, it's lower than it should be.

I recommend not using the player.setscale if you want to play the game legitimately and not unintentionally nerf or buff yourself. The problem with player.setscale is that it doesn't just increase the size of your character, it also increase your movement speed, your jump distance, and even your damage output. It scales all of that to match your new size. You may have a difficult time noticing this if you make minor adjustments from the default value of 1 (say 1.03 or 1.04 to get your character to Nord size), but it's still happening regardless. Your character will be able to move faster than s/he should be and hitting hard than s/he legitimately can. The differences are very obvious when you do more extreme changes. I imagine the opposite is true if you shrink yourself. Now, if that kind of cheating doesn't matter to you, then there you go. But for players who want to play the game without cheating and wish they could modify their character's height, player.setscale is not a good solution (unfortunately).

I was very sad to realize all this after doing some tests after reading up on this proposed solution in another thread, because I've invested a large amount of time into my character and (for whatever reason, probably because I've been sticking to a first-person view almost all of the time) I just now noticed tonight that my Imperial character is noticeably shorter than even the Nord women. Makes it difficult to feel heroic. But, I'd rather be short than turn into Skyrim Supersoldier through this particular console command.

It kind of makes me wonder if there is an actual movement speed/damage output difference depending on your race selection. Is an Imperial character slower at running than a Nord character? It would certain explain why I have to sprint occasionally to keep up with a Nord quest NPC (when following them to a location). Do Nord characters, in fact, do more damage in melee than Imperial characters because of their larger scale (typically set at 1.03 compared to the Imperial's 1.00)? I'd love to know if these subtle differences are built into the scales or only a result of using the setscale command.

Actually, after posting the above I ran some tests that show race selection (which influences your character's scale) has an impact on your movement speed, jumping, and likely damage as well. You can find the thread here:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1286166-hidden-stat-differences-based-on-race-selection/

Yes that's quite unfortunate, that it's currently not possible to alter the players height with purely cosmetic consequences (or at the most inconvenience with some ceilings). If someone could figure out a way to alter the characters damage output/running speed to be unchanged that would be quite nice though. I've noticed it seems like nords, and especially altmer seem to run very fast. I never tested this, but I think the changes to setscale commands came around the time Fallout 3 was released... Maybe even when Oblivion was released. In Morrowind altmer didn't seem to run any fast due to their height, and I don't think setscale changed damaged output though I could be wrong. At setscale 10, a mudcrab would likely one hit things. At a very tiny percentage of setscale any powerful melee enemy could be reduced to very little damage I think. Slight changes often aren't noticeable to that degree, but it's either be default uncustomized height or have running speed/melee damage not at it's intended level, either to become underpowered or overpowered.

Haha, that's excellent. Does your damage reduction go up, as well? Makes me think of Clerical Prayers...Thor's Might!

Just melee damage, jump height, and speed I think.

Regardless if it does indeed make your character stronger/faster, it feels very weird playing an altmer or nord yet you're shorter than everybody else in first person. THAT at the very least needs a serious fix.


As for making your character taller w/o making them stronger, I'm not so sure that's possible. Using the setscale command even in Oblivion had this side effect, but nobody really seemed to mind it.

It doesn't increase magic damage too? Strange that it would increase melee and not magic. Then again, I suppose it does kinda make sense in a weird way.

Would need to re-introduce Attributes to counter the effects of the SetScale effect.

@OP It will most likely be possible once Skyrim Script Extender is done. Its usually not something that can be done even with Construction Kit (change is universal like an INI tweak rather than specific to any character/group of entities). Hopefully it will be possible to do individual variance in Jump Height/Distance as well [without the other effects of SetScale: BTW I haven't used the console or the SetScale command even though I've known of its presence in the engine for some time - mandatory for technical reasons].