pcsteamthe-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim
I suspect that some of the "Active Effects" shown for my character in Skyrim (PC – Steam) are listed, but not actually applying their benefits.
How can I check with the console – or otherwise – that an effect such as the exp. boost from a guardian stone is in fact, working?
Console commands do not affect achievements in Skyrim. I've used it to clip through places when I ended up falling and becoming stuck and still received achievements in the same session. I've also togged tgm on occasion while testing stuff and still received achievements after I finished testing without restarting my game.
Once you get past all the speculation, this thread seems to confirm that using console commands do not affect achievements at all.
Of note from that thread:
Note: The images link to their respective character's UESP wiki articles.
Night Mother — Oblivion
Source and higher resolution version of the images: Reddit /r/Skyrim post, "A list I made of all the characters that appeared in an Elder Scrolls game before.", by OccupyTamriel; except 'Night Mother' - images are from UESP wiki.
Best Answer
It used to be possible to directly query your experience progress with this command (you can replace smithing with any of these things):
In principle, you could save, do a bunch of smithing, check your skill advancement, load, deactivate the guardian stone, do the same amount of smithing as before, check your advancement again, and compare numbers.
As of patch 1.9, this no longer works, and a cursory examination of the available commands reveals no obvious alternatives. But if you still have an older version of Skyrim for some reason, this method ought to work for you. Otherwise, you'll have to eyeball it and/or smith enough to level up smithing. Instead of eyeballing, you might try taking screenshots of the Skills screen and overlaying them with your image editor of choice.
Having said all that, in my (limited) modding experience, the Active Effects page is rarely or never incorrect. If an effect does not get applied correctly, it's generally not visible in Active Effects, and I find that's the most reliable way of detecting these problems in the first place.