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* 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.
** Empathy was actually ridiculously useful in ''Cyberpunk'', as it determined your starting Humanity score, which determined how many cybernetic enhancements you could cram in your body before [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul|flipping out and killing everyone]]. This had the ironic effect of guaranteeing that anyone who wanted to end up as a weapons platform with (most of) a [[Brain In
* In ''[[Ancient Domains of Mystery]]'', charisma and appearance are dump stats. Outside of shop prices, they have very minor effects on gameplay. Shop prices, after the mid-game, are irrelevant because there is a way of generating an endless supply of money (the Casino).
* ''[[
** Or, if you're playing the ''[[
** Many campaigns make physical stats [[Dump Stats]]. Sure, the buffed out PC can bash an opponent or two into the ground, but the master of [[Social Fu]] can determine the course of whole cities, mind control the [[Big Bad]], call in [[Godzilla Threshold|higher powers from their faction]], or buy their way out of problems. Much like in [[Real Life]], being able to beat others up comes in handy every once in a while, but being well-connected and clever can come in handy daily. As a ''general'' rule in both ''[[
* In ''[[
** Strength becomes a lot less of a dump stat once you realize the only attack capable of harming {{spoiler|Beldr}} is the MC's physical attack, though - meaning if you neglected strength, have fun getting massacred while hitting for chip damage at best.
* The first ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' makes you choose a dump stat. It's odd, in that its effects on your stats is minimal, but its effect on when you learn which abilities is massive, making the choice very much a [[Guide Dang It]].
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* Charisma in ''Murkon's Refuge'' just reduces the rates you pay at inns and clinics. And the inn in the first town is always free, so if you keep that as your home base, it only affects clinic prices. (In the pre-web version, it instead affected how often monsters were friendly, a feature which the creator decided to dump for the web port.)
* For a long time, moxie became a bit of a dump stat in ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'', to the degree that having a high level of it would make the final boss battle exponentially harder, with the main attractiveness of the moxie classes (the special Moxious Maneuver) being less than useless. This disparity has since been modified. A bit.
* To this day, no one has figured out what Combat Shooting does in the PC port of ''[[Wasteland (
* ''[[Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do In An RPG]]'', [http://theglen.livejournal.com/131998.html 1001-1500]:
{{quote| 1047. If my troll is the smartest character in the party, the entire party is vetoed.<br />
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** Personality in ''[[Oblivion]]'': there are ways to boost the stat for the infrequent few seconds you need it, and you typically only need it for a few seconds because time freezes when you start a conversation.
** Security (the skill governing your ability to pick locks) in ''[[Oblivion]]'': successfully picking a lock is based more on player skill than anything else; high Security only slows down the tumblers to make them easier to set (which is already easy with practice) and affects what happens when you fail to set a tumbler (each Security "perk" reducing the number of tumblers that fall back into place by one). Additionally, the Open Lock spell makes lockpicking redundant, and the Skeleton Key gives effectively infinite lockpicking attempts. In ''[[Morrowind]]'', on the other hand, lockpicking is based on character skill instead of player skill, so Security is a worthwhile investment . . . at least so long as you didn't bother enchanting items with Unlock spells.
** Monster language skills in ''[[The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall
** Luck in ''[[Morrowind]]'': its use is never clearly stated, so it's an obvious place to avoid putting points. On the other hand, for people who know how it works, Luck is the [[One Stat to Rule Them All]]: it affects a large number of actions which involve random chance, including the likelihood of a spell-cast succeeding, the chance of hitting an enemy, and the chance of being hit. This is shown masterfully with [[That One Boss|Gaenor]] in the Tribunal expansion; his absurdly high Luck stat of 770 makes him absurdly difficult to even put a scratch on.
** In ''Morrowind'', there really wasn't any need to bother with the Destruction skill since all the damaging spell effects it incorporated were massively trumped by Mysticism's Absorb Health. ''Oblivion'' partially averted this by making Absorb Health a touch-only effect, but in a sense compensated for that by moving it to Restoration (thus giving all the more reason to invest in said skill). As such, Mysticism became even more of a dump-skill than Destruction. For that matter, with the removal of Levitation and Jump effects between ''Morrowind'' and ''Oblivion'' (combined with the ease of lockpicking in the latter), Alteration got likewise nerfed from one of the best schools to one of the worst.
** In Oblivion, your Luck doesn't affect the loot from containers, but instead gives boosts to nearly all of your skills, meaning putting points into it helps with pretty much everything. It has a minor impact on a couple other things in the game, but the skill increase is by far the most useful, making it an incredibly useful stat when you know what it does, and a likely [[Dump Stat]] for people who don't. [http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Luck See here for details.]
** In ''[[The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim
* ''Space [[Munchkin]]'' parodies this trope with "Stat X" a mystery stat in addition to the 6 core D20 stats.
* Each stat in ''[[Arkham Horror]]'' is inversely linked with another. You can take a dump stat but it's always risky: lowering your Will gives you a better Fight but then just seeing the monster drives you insane, for example, and any stat could be called on in a random encounter. Luck of the draw and strategy factor heavily in the game. You can change stats at the start of every turn to adjust to the situation and having the right items can mitigate the risks of having a dump stat.
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* ''[[Mutants and Masterminds]]'' and ''DC Adventures'' (the 3rd edition of the game) feature this for Presence, which only has the effect of adding bonuses to three solitary Skills, all of which can be bought up for cheaper than spending points in Presence. It was already a weaker option in the 2nd Edition, and the changes in the 3rd Edition made it even worse. The Dexterity stat can also become a [[Dump Stat]] at times, as anyone who isn't a long-range fighter can just take a "0".
* INT in ''[[Dragon Quest]]''. Yes, it's useful in the early levels, but it suffers serious decay since it does not determine magic damage. (Magic damage is fixed and then multiplied by elemental resistance.) INT and its cousin, VIT, are still useful, mind: They do raise HP and MP. But after a while, that's irrelevant.
* The Charisma and Wisdom scores are typically dump stats in [[
* The defense stat in the ''[[
* Certain types of equipment in ''[[
* ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' [[Averted Trope|does away with the concept of Dump Stats]] by giving players only three stats to worry about: Hit Points, Strength, and Magic Power. Defensive boosts are only governed by special accessories that block attacks based on a percentage.
** Though the Paradigm system kinda plays it straight, basically, of the 6 Paradigms, each character has three they can use from the get-go, and it's these the game really wants you to level them in. Sure, by Chapter 10 you can start making everyone anything you want, but the non-specialized roles provide ''far'' worse gain for exponentially greater cost than the starting ones, so they essentially become Dump Paradigms. (Unless you're going for the [[Bragging Rights Reward|Max out all characters Achievement/Trophy]]) Sazh is an exception, [[Jack of All Stats|as he can be good (but not amazing) at just about anything.]]
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** The ''Chaos Rising'' expansion plays with this, however, by putting several near- or outright [[Game Breaker]] traits (we're looking at ''you'', Cluster Mines) in progression tracks of attributes you'd normally not consider putting points in (in the case of the aforementioned Cluster Mines, Cyrus' melee attack. Cyrus is one of two characters who can't even ''equip'' a melee weapon).
* In ''[[Progress Quest]]'', Strength is the only stat that affects gameplay at all (increases your carrying capacity, which means fewer trips to the store for faster leveling). The rest are completely useless.
* ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'' averts this with the main character. The Nameless One can be a fighter, thief, or mage, which means Wisdom and Charisma should be unimportant stats. However, combat is not a major focus, so Wisdom and Charisma are both extremely valuable, while Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution are fine at fairly mediocre values.
* Poor little Charisma in ''[[
** Intelligence can be an effective dump stat in ''Fallout New Vegas'' and ''Fallout 3'', as you can still easily max out your skills in the long run through skill books and leveling up through the expansions. Some NPCs will even give you extra help after seeing your [[Idiot Hero|questionable mental state]]. Woe to the player attempting this in the first two ''[[
*** It is also very dangerous to have low intellect if you don't know how to find every single book to effectively raise your skills, and in ''Fallout 3'' and ''New Vegas'' without DLC then your Max Level is way too low to get full skills in everything. Unless you just want to focus on something specific.
** Charisma is surprisingly useful in ''[[
** ''Fallout 2'' has a different [[Dump Stat]], that may come across as surprising: Endurance. Most of the skills it modifies can be increased by books or quests. The resistances it provides are rarely relevant (and reloading the game is always an option) and items exist to erase any effect that Endurance resist. It influences [[Hit Points]], but so does Strength (albeit to a lesser degree) and there's enough [[Powered Armor|good armor]] laying around that you're rarely going to take damage that isn't a freak [[One-Hit Kill]] critical, anyway.
* 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.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'', Luck is a dump stat, but not for the reason you'd expect. In terms of what it does for your characters, Luck is absolutely godly, combining the effects of two other stats (in a game that generally averts this trope) and increasing your critical hit rate to cap it all. The problem is that the developers realized this, and made the Luck stat ridiculously hard to actually put points in - while you'll have more of the spheres increasing every other stat than you know what to do with, you'll get a grand total of four spheres for Luck boosts over the course of the main game, and if you want more you'll have to kill one of the game's [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]] at the Monster Arena, for one each time. Most players just invest in the two other stats (Accuracy and Evade), since it's just so much easier to do.
* In the ''[[
* 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.
== Webcomics ==
* [[Word of God|Alt-text]] in ''[[Rusty and Co
* As the characters in ''[[The Order of the Stick
** [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0044.html Intelligence] is Thog's dump stat. Could you tell?
** Charisma is O-Chul's. {{spoiler|[[Memetic Badass|Which probably means it's in the mid-teens.]]}}
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