Last night, my character became short. I don't know what I did, but my man came out of sneak, turned to Jenassa, and I realized that he only came up to her belt buckle. I couldn't get rid of it; toggling sneak, jumping, exploding myself with a fireball, attacking her and switching back and forth from 1st to 3rd, and eventually had to reload a save (from two hours back) at the beginning of Calcemo's Excavation Site.

Which I will attempt again, perhaps this evening. Is this a glitch with this area? I've been here before with a different character, and no problem.

I am being very careful, cleaning up my battles, clearing the cache on a regular basis, keeping rotating saves to a maximum of 15, 20 for things I couldn't possibly go back through again, and not entertaining too many pursuits, at one time.

Is this random or can I do something about it? Can this become permanent? How do I avoid it? I have a lot of time invested in this person's story....

Sounds like "setscale 0.8" Though the game never alters the player character's scale (as far as i know, at least) so this shouldn't happen in any event.

Never before heard or seen that happen. Probably some weird one time occurrence.

My Xbox game has done that before. Can't remember what I did to snap him out if it though.

Yeah I've had it a few times, it is just a glitch. Often happens if you save the game whilst in sneak. When loaded up you can't get out of the crouch. By the way, a save glitch also happens if you save with the centre screen showing writing, like 'enter cave' . Upon load the writing remains permanently centre screen everywhere you go. Don't save in sneak and don't save too close to a cave entrance or similar.

How to get out of it? Well the obvious is to load a previous save, I presume that's not viable. You need to force the game back into sneak and come out of it normally. Go through a few loading screens or try doing odd stuff like jumping off low ledges, going in and out of 3rd person view. You have to kinda shock the programme back into proper behaviour. Naughty programme!

what happens to me is if I go in the water after I come out the game thinks I am still swimming. I can't drop my bedroll or set up my tent. To fix it I need to find a chair or a bed somewhere in the world and use it. It's a problem because of Realistic Needs I sometimes really need to sleep and there are sometimes no nearby houses or inns.

Haha. That's never happened to me and I literally have no idea how to fix it. Roleplay?

Odd, I know you can deliberately change your character's size with setscale (setscale .9 makes the Dovahkiin the size of a child, for instance. Depending on the race, I'm sure.) I've never heard of it happening outside the console.

This can happen occasionally if you activate an Enchanter while stealthed. There are a few potential fixes: shape-shifting to Werewolf or Vampire Lord forms, sitting in a chair, reloading, clearing the cache if on console. A good friend of mine fixed it recently by going into 3rd person POV, stealthing and then unstealthing.

Good luck!

Now that you mention it, I think that's how I fixed it in my game. Went into third person and toggling sneak a couple times and making sure my character was standing straight up before going back to first person.