I've noticed that sometimes mages using frost magic will slow my character down to a crawl or even a standstill, and sometimes frost spells don't slow me down at all.

Similarly, when I'm casting frost spells at enemies, sometimes the enemies get considerably slower than normal.

So what is affecting the difference?

According to UESP, frost resistance/weakness and the Augmented Frost perks affect this... but it doesn't seem that consistent to me.

Today, for example, my lvl 9 or so Nord was slowed down ridiculously by what appeared to be some basic Frostbite spell by a mage in Fellglow Keep. The spell did little damage, but I *couldn't* move by walking - I had to actually run in order to move at all, and then it was incremental.

My Nord of course has 50% frost resist and a ring of resist magicka 10%, but no other resist or weakness.

One suspicion I have is that it might be based on the target's Stamina - mine was pretty low at the time the spells were hitting me.

Any idea? It would be great if I could figure out the key here, and harness it to get great slowdown results against the AI...

Interesting. I've noticed inconsistencies too. You may be right about the stamina level, all the times when I've really been slowed by ice mages I noticed my stamina level is all the way down.

When I use frost magic on enemies, it usually seems like it doesn't slow them at all. It definitely doesn't cut their speed to 50% like the description says.

For a long time I didn't notice the slowing effect either, but lately I've begun to notice it as I use frost magic more frequently. A spell like Frostbite, cast in a constant stream at an approaching enemy, really will (most of the time) slow them down. *Sometimes* it slows them down a lot - maybe more than 50%. I think I have a hard time estimating relative speeds, though. For the longest time I didn't notice *any* difference in my own speed when wearing heavy armor vs. robes. I was quite surprised that some players on the forums found the speed difference so noticeable that they encouraged getting the Steed stone!

Against giants, ice magic can be incredibly effective and slowing. Against dragons, sometimes frost spells or even just weapons enchanted with frost will slow them to an incredible level, even while they're flying. But not all the time, and I'm not sure what causes the discrepancy.

I looked up slow effect on uesp and on the talk pages someone mentioned the slow effect from different frost spells stacking. Or it being effected by augmented frost.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_talk:Slow

If you ever find the answer, I would be interested.

Ah, thanks, I'll take a look. I always forget to look for those talk pages; they seem to hide them over there.