I've been playing Oblivion (somewhat modded) on and off for a while now, and I just noticed that my Lvl 8 Bosmer Scout has acquired a strange -35 modifier to his Athletics skill, which I cannot seem to get rid of. Praying at the altar does not help (although it does remove all Attribute drains), neither does removing all items (so it's not item related) and even the clear all spell effects console command does nothing. At first I thought it might be some mod that does some scripting of stats and attributes (Deadly Reflex, Realistic Fatigue etc.), but the problem seems to persist even if I deactivate all of my mods, load, save and reload. I'm getting to be at my wits end with this rather inconvenient penalty, whose origin is a mystery to me. Does anyone have an idea what might be causing it and how to get rid of it (either ingame, if it's a legitimate effect, or through the console or some other out-of.game means).

Try selecting the penalty and see where it's from

If restore potions or spells and chapels don't restore it, and if it's not caused by any enchantments you are wearing then it is likely a bug from buggy mod.

You could try this mod to reset your stats: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11368


EDIT: oh and welcome to the forums, have a http://images.uesp.net//c/c4/Fishystick.jpg !

Thank you very much, Stat Restore did the trick. I find it very odd that the game itself (or the console, rather) doesn't have a function like this...

And thank you very much for the fishy stick.