For me doing a quick save and load after I alter the stats worked. It still froze when I tried to go back into the inventory after a few tries but I was able to load the quick save after that and then create a save with the stats edited with no issues. This was at the very start with just my main character in the group after the first scene now I have two party members and no crashes.
This worked for me, but I altered it a little. I did a quicksave after changing all the stats and then loaded the quicksave, after loading the quicksave I made a manual save and then went to main menu and loaded the manual save. It did not freeze or crash this time and the stats are locked in place. Thanks for the tip.