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Dump Stat: Difference between revisions
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* The stat would be useful if it wasn't nerfed into oblivion at some point in the testing process. Luck increases your chance to instantly kill weaker enemies! ... by .01% per point, and it maxes out at 10. Pass.
* The stat is glitched so it doesn't do what it's supposed to. ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Physical Evasion or ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Armor Magic Defense are two notorious examples.
* The stat actually ''is'' useful, but
* The particular game requires you to have a dump stat, either implicitly (e.g., a game where a score of 2 in a stat is "average" and you have 3 stats but only 5 points to buy them with) or explicitly (e.g., the same game, but instead of having points to spend, you are simply told to assign one stat a value of 1, one a value of 2, and one a value of 3).
* It's just a stat you don't need for '''this''' character or playthrough. If [[Min-Maxing]] is involved, playing twice with different styles will pay better than playing it with [[Master of None|average in all stats]], so one has to be sacrificed.
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=== Card Games ===
* Attacks in ''[[Pokémon]]'' are divided into normal and special; usually a Pokemon naturally has one attack stat higher than the other. By teaching a Pokemon inclined towards Special attacks only Special moves, the Attack stat becomes completely useless. The opposite is also true; similarly, it's not usually worth it to boost either defensive stat for [[Glass Cannon]] Pokemon who have really bad HP, since they're not going to survive much of anything anyway, or the speed stat for a slow Pokemon, because once you're slower than any likely opponent, the stat doesn't matter anymore (and some attacks/sets benefit from a low Speed stat, like Gyro Ball, which gets more powerful the higher the targets speed is compared to yours, and Metal Burst, which doesn't even ''work'' unless you go last). There are, however, some movesets that take advantage of upping what would normally be a Dump Stat in order to barely survive what would normally be a lethal blow, or to better-utilize attacks that work well against an otherwise difficult opponent.▼
** Some [[Elite Tweak]] builds that emphasize this to the extreme. The most ridiculous example is for Shuckle, which naturally has ''four'' dump stats: its Speed, Physical attack, Special attack, and HP are all, to be charitable, quite abysmal. Due to its absurdly high Defense and Special Defense, as well as the Sturdy ability (which allows it to resist [[One-Hit Kill]] attacks), it can afford to use only [[Standard Status Ailments]] to deal damage—a strategy used by the Pike Queen in Emerald. Using this strategy, everything except HP becomes a Dump Stat when leveling up: the two defenses are already high enough that they don't need the help (though Defense will end up getting points anyway because they have to go ''somewhere''), the attack stats are irrelevant, and Shuckle is going to be going last so often (i.e. pretty much always) that there isn't much point to increasing its Speed.▼
** Pokemon actually encourages the dump stat mentality for Special Sweepers; it's more advantageous to have a special sweeper with a low attack than a high one. Why? Confusion damage is calculated based on the attack stat, so a Pokemon with a higher attack will take more damage hurting itself in confusion. That's the whole point of Swagger.▼
** The Pokemon Shedinja essentially has ''three'' dump stats; since its HP is always set to 1, putting effort values in HP, Defense, or Special Defense<ref>unless you baton pass a substitute to it, then the last two have a use, though not a major one</ref> is altogether meaningless, not to mention its pitiful Special Attack.▼
** There was a Suicune build in the second generation that actually used Speed as a dump stat—even though it's normally the [[God Stat]]! You see, the vast majority of people dealt with powered up Pokemon by using Roar or Whirlwind, which normally goes last... but a [[Good Bad Bugs|bug]] made them fail if it went first, and if both pokemon used Roar or Whirlwind, only the slower one succeeded.▼
* ''Space [[Munchkin]]'' parodies this trope with "Stat X" a mystery stat in addition to the 6 core D20 stats.
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*** That being said, each individual character is bound to have at least two Dump Stats. Since the rules allow for all of your useful abilities to be powered by [[One Stat to Rule Them All]], pretty much everything else becomes one of these (except Con, because everyone needs hit points).
*** Most 4th edition characters need two good stats to work properly. Their main stat, which covers attack and damage rolls, and a secondary one depending on their powers (like Rangers and Paladins needing at least a little bit of Wisdom, and the Fighter either Wis, Dex or Con depending on the weapon for secondary effects). Anything else can be dropped in case of extremely bad dice rolls.
** 5th Edition makes one token attempt to punish Dump Stating, by including the potential for saving throws to be based on any one of the six stats. In practice, Strength, Intelligence and Charisma saving throws are nearly non-existent, so it's right back where it started. Besides that intelligence now shares Charisma's problem of doing '''absolutely nothing''' if you don't have skills or character abilities based on it since it no longer determines how many skills you get or how many languages you know. Due to the poor implementation of "Bonded Accuracy" <ref>A design philosophy where a player character's raw ability modifier is tightly controlled to prevent gaining high numbers and allow basing all numbers in the system around that one modifier, but in practice means any character that doesn't max their main stat at the start is irredeemably useless because they'll always be ''behind''.</ref> dump stating is arguably mandatory, and with Dexterity and Constitution as useful as ever, viable ability score setups tend to look very similar.
* R. Talsorian's ''[[Mekton]]'' and ''Cyberpunk'' games effectively made every stat except Reflexes (and possibly Body) a Dump Stat. The Reflexes stat was the [[One Stat to Rule Them All]]: all-important to every aspect of combat and if your character ''did'' happen to get hit, Body determined how hurt he was. Several of the others - Empathy, Cool, and Technical Ability, were worthless. The most [[Egregious]] of these was Attractiveness. No. Use. At. All. That said, house-rules can save other stats - something so simple as a "Luck Save" will convince [[Player Characters]] not to skimp on anything. [[Butt Monkey|Except Attractiveness]].
** ''[[Cyberpunk 2020]]'' also has two dump skills. The Brawling skill is added to a character's Reflex score when they make an unarmed attack. The Dodge & Escape skill is added to a character's Reflex when they try to avoid an attack or escape when grabbed. But the Martial Arts skill is added to a characters Reflex score when making an unarmed attack ''and'' when avoiding an attack or escaping when grabbed, and is added to the damage of unarmed attacks, ''and'' gives the character an additional bonus with "key" attacks (e.g., kicking for Muay Thai, throws for Judo, holds for Wrestling). This was supposed to be offset by the fact that each Martial Art had a difficulty factor, by which you multiplied the cost to improve the skill during play ... but some Martial Arts (like Wrestling and Boxing) have difficulty factors of 1. This makes Dodge & Escape useless unless your [[Game Master]] doesn't let you use Martial Arts for dodging non-melee attacks, and makes Brawling completely useless for anything other than role-playing a character who had no formal combat training.
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* ''[[Mutants and Masterminds]]'' 3rd Edition and ''DC Adventures'' (a rebrand with identical mechanics) feature this for Presence, which only has the effect of adding bonuses to three solitary Skills, and one can buy all of them together for 1.5 points while raising Presence costs 2 points and gives no further advantage beyond protecting from Weaken Presence effects (which, while possible, has never been printed in official material and the potential issue applies at least equally as much to every other attribute). An easily missed line in skill descriptions indicates Presence actually boosts certain Expertise checks, but the examples given (music) are almost never useful for heroics. It was already a weaker option in the 2nd Edition, and the changes in the 3rd Edition made it even worse.
** A common [[House Rules|house rule]] to fix this is making Presence give a free Presence based advantage (normally worth one point) every rank in it, putting it at 2.5 points worth of stuff for 2 points like most attributes. This leaves Fighting and especially Dexterity as the most obvious Dump Stat, as both are worth ''exactly'' 2 points worth of stuff for 2 points. While Fighting improves melee combat ability and the Parry defense, it's cheaper to improve a single type of melee combat (unarmed, a particular weapon) and parry directly, and some characters can avoid making melee attacks entirely. Dexterity's situation is more dire, as the two skills (Slight of Hand, and Vehicles) it improves are rarely used on the same character (indeed, few characters take ''either'' and both are trained only, meaning a character with infinite dexterity is just as hopeless as someone with negative dexterity) and many characters have no form of ranged attack and most that ''do'' have ranged attacks will focus on only one type of ranged attack (such as bows, thrown objects, or the projectiles created by their super powers) even more than melee characters will. <!-- Stamina and Intellect appear to only grant 2 points worth of stuff, but they actually give more. Expertise is an effectively infinite number of skills, which makes high Intellect very worthwhile if a character has one of the two advantages that allow using Expertise untrained. Stamina is the only way to acquire natural toughness, which secretly boosts its worth a few points, has the minor effect of increasing how long you can hold your breath, and both defenses it gives are effectively mandatory for all non-robot characters anyways. Damage Stamina effects are also relatively common in official material and the only real way to go from active to dead in the system. -->
* In ''[[Eon]]'', the attribute Bildning, roughly translated to Education, is often treated as a dumpstat. Education shows how much general knowledge a character has about the world and things in it, and players make a check in case they want to see if their character knows something about the town they're in, what races are common in the country, and other miscellaneous stuff. The thing is, pretty much everything you get to know by making a check against Education, can also be revealed by making a check against an appropriate skill, like History or Cultural Knowledge. These skills are often more specialized, granted, but at the same time they provide more in-depth information than Education. Besides, most classes that are expected to have a high score in Education also have most of these additional skills. Also, if there's anything worth knowing about a town, odds are a NPC is willing to share some knowledge, or one of the PC's have already been there before.
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* The My Unit creation system in ''[[Fire Emblem: Awakening]]'' goes out of its way to avert this. Whichever stat you pick as 'worst' will actually lower other stats too, though not as much. Picking Luck or Resistance (generally considered Dump Stats) for worst will also lower Strength and Magic or Magic and Speed respectively, all of which are considered very important stats.
* Vitality and Healing in ''[[Guild Wars 2]]'' are very niche stats that only see use in specific builds due to how the game works: everyone can heal, then investing in Toughness to reduce direct damage taken is often a better idea than increasing health, and the scaling of healing abilities with the Healing stat isn't always good enough to justify investing in it except for heavily healing-oriented builds. Only classes with very low base heatlth benefit substantially from Vitality if the player doesn't want to go full [[Glass Cannon]], and the Necromancer is a particular case due to its [[Multiple Life Bars|Death Shroud]] scaling with maximum health and being generated in percentage amounts. Vitality even becomes detrimental in the Fractals of the Mists due to the Agony debuff that deals unmitigated damage based on maximum health, then investing in any other stat becomes mandatory to succeed.
* INT/Wisdom in ''[[Dragon Quest]]'' games prior to 8 only governs MP growth, which is useful in the early levels but suffers serious irrelevance after a while, skews the level a spell is learned by +/- 3 (but real world luck matters more), and (in the 4/5/6 trilogy) making the AI controlled party members less stupid. That would be ''very'' useful, except mandatory AI control of party members [[Scrappy Mechanic|proved so disliked]] and [[Artificial Stupidity|subject to dumb moves even with high stats]] every remake (the [[No Export for You|only official way]] to play 5/6 in English and [[Bad Export for You|only good way]] to play 4) removed it except for temporary party members (whom you have no control over the Wisdom of anyways).
** Luck in [[Dragon Quest III|the third game]] gives a 0.05-0.24% chance to avoid a [[Standard Status Effect|status ailment]] nothing else. Even ignoring the question of if this rate is worth it, very few enemies worth worrying about actually inflict status effects to begin with - the one that does (the [[Bonus Boss]]'s sleep attack in the remakes) can't be guarded against anyway.
▲* Attacks in ''[[Pokémon]]'' are divided into normal and special; usually a Pokemon naturally has one attack stat higher than the other. By teaching a Pokemon inclined towards Special attacks only Special moves, the Attack stat becomes completely useless. The opposite is also true; similarly, it's not usually worth it to boost either defensive stat for [[Glass Cannon]] Pokemon who have really bad HP, since they're not going to survive much of anything anyway, or the speed stat for a slow Pokemon, because once you're slower than any likely opponent, the stat doesn't matter anymore (and some attacks/sets benefit from a low Speed stat, like Gyro Ball, which gets more powerful the higher the targets speed is compared to yours, and Metal Burst, which doesn't even ''work'' unless you go last). There are, however, some movesets that take advantage of upping what would normally be a Dump Stat in order to barely survive what would normally be a lethal blow, or to better-utilize attacks that work well against an otherwise difficult opponent.
▲** Some [[Elite Tweak]] builds that emphasize this to the extreme. The most ridiculous example is for Shuckle, which naturally has ''four'' dump stats: its Speed, Physical attack, Special attack, and HP are all, to be charitable, quite abysmal. Due to its absurdly high Defense and Special Defense, as well as the Sturdy ability (which allows it to resist [[One-Hit Kill]] attacks), it can afford to use only [[Standard Status Ailments]] to deal damage—a strategy used by the Pike Queen in Emerald. Using this strategy, everything except HP becomes a Dump Stat when leveling up: the two defenses are already high enough that they don't need the help (though Defense will end up getting points anyway because they have to go ''somewhere''), the attack stats are irrelevant, and Shuckle is going to be going last so often (i.e. pretty much always) that there isn't much point to increasing its Speed.
▲** Pokemon actually encourages the dump stat mentality for Special Sweepers; it's more advantageous to have a special sweeper with a low attack than a high one. Why? Confusion damage is calculated based on the attack stat, so a Pokemon with a higher attack will take more damage hurting itself in confusion. That's the whole point of Swagger.
▲** The Pokemon Shedinja essentially has ''three'' dump stats; since its HP is always set to 1, putting effort values in HP, Defense, or Special Defense<ref>unless you baton pass a substitute to it, then the last two have a use, though not a major one</ref> is altogether meaningless, not to mention its pitiful Special Attack.
▲** There was a Suicune build in the second generation that actually used Speed as a dump stat—even though it's normally the [[God Stat]]! You see, the vast majority of people dealt with powered up Pokemon by using Roar or Whirlwind, which normally goes last... but a [[Good Bad Bugs|bug]] made them fail if it went first, and if both pokemon used Roar or Whirlwind, only the slower one succeeded.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* [[Word of God|Alt-text]] in ''[[Rusty and Co.
* As the characters in ''[[The
** [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0044.html Intelligence] is Thog's dump stat. Could you tell?
** Charisma is O-Chul's.
** There are actually a lot of characters who have one trait worse than all the others
*** [[Heroic Sociopath|Belkar]]'s is Wisdom, which is so low that he can't even cast the most basic of the spells associated with his ranger training. (He apparently took the training just so he could learn [[Dual-Wielding]].)
*** V's are Strength and Charisma, fittingly for a [[Squishy Wizard]] and [[Insufferable Genius]].
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