In other words, how? Say I want to load Y.ESP, whose master is X.ESP. If I make a change in Y, save, and exit, and open Wrye, it shows Y as having lost its dependency on X. And if I run it anyway, when the game references something in my changed version of Y, it crashes.

So how do I keep the X master for Y, when saving Y in the CS? In advance, thanks.

Look up "ESP Mastering" on the CS wiki.

Basically, it involves temporarily changing the X.esp to behave like an ESM file.

For minor changes, you can often use TES4Edit to make patch files that work with other ESPs

Thanks. I'll check it out. I was trying to change combat style, and TES4Edit doesn't provide the input code for them, while the CS does.

Hm. If there is a combat style listed, double-clicking it should get you a drop-down box listing all the available ones.

If not, you can probably get the code you need from the CS, but do the actual editing in TES4Edit. Probably far easier.

It was actually pretty easy in CS, just a drop down box, as well. Though I agree, if both can do the same thing, usually TES4Edit is much he simpler to work with.