History Main / DumpStat

* Pitchers in baseball tend to have hitting as their dump stat as they spend virtually [[CripplingOverspecialization no time working to improve it]]. And this is justified: pro-level pitching is extremely demanding both in terms of training rigor and physical exertion, so only the most disciplined and physically resilient ballplayers can handle it at top level. This was one of the main reasons the designated hitter rule was adopted.

* Pitchers in baseball tend to have hitting as their dump stat as they spend virtually [[CripplingOverspecialization no time working to improve it]]. This was one of the main reasons the designated hitter rule was adopted.

* Similar to baseball, in professional cricket, the very best bowlers tend to be the very worst batsmen. Bowlers often become “tail enders” in the batting order where nothing is expected of them since batting is something they don’t work on. If they come out to bat, it is usually because the best batsmen in the team are already out, so they should either “hit out or get out” or sneak a single run and transfer strike to a better batsman. Australia's Shane Warne and Glenn [=McGrath=], the West Indies' Courtney Walsh, and Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan are four of the only five bowlers to take over 500 Test wickets in their international careers and are also four of the only five batsmen to have been out for a duck (zero runs) more than 30 times.[[note]] The fifth bowler to break the 500-wicket barrier, India's Anil Kumble, was out for a duck while at bat 17 times but he has a test century to his name; the fifth batsman to break the 30-duck barrier, New Zealand's Chris Martin, took 233 wickets as a bowler.[[/note]] Fast bowlers are also not expected to be the best fielders so you usually see them patrolling the boundary area, where the ability to run, cut off balls hit their way from reaching the boundary, and use their powerful arm to throw the ball back to the pitch is all that is expected of them.

* The stat only provides any benefits past a certain level of investment. If only a Luck of 6 or higher unlocks the skill that boosts your crit chance, then anything below 6 might as well be a 1. Unless the benefit or ability is universally valued, the player will probably ignore the stat entirely to focus on those more relevant to their goal.

* Referenced by name in ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'' [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0102.html #102]]. TheRant explains the idea [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0063.html even earlier]] and calls out Charisma as the useless one. Much later, Jim is [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0749.html preparing to debut his new character]]. When Chewbacca shows himself incredibly dignified, refined, and well-spoken, Jim comments that he gave his sidekick high points in all his character's dump stats. Then Jim brings out the new character, "Greedo" (a renamed version of Han Solo), and he's a horrible Italian stereotype who speaks in broken English.

** Celia seems to have dumped Wisdom, being a StupidGood GeniusDitz. She's a good lawyer, but very unfamiliar to how things work on the mortal planes as supposed to the Plane of Air (though she does point out humans don't even have an entry in the Monster Manual she could look up, despite other beings like elves and dwarves do).

* The stat scales non-linearly and gives diminishing returns after a point. If investing in health at a certain milestone can only raises your HP from 1500 to 1505, then adding EXP beyond that milestone offers no meaningful benefit.
* Weapons or other equipment scale off of specific stats. A character would want to invest their stats primarily in those that apply to their arsenal of choice to remain efficient.

Not to be confused with "the stat you dump all your points into": that's OneStatToRuleThemAll (also often referred to as the God Stat).

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'': [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-896 SCP-896]] is a fictional MMORPG where a player who creates a character with the same name as them "imprints" the avatar onto them, causing the player's real body and mind to change depending on how their avatar's stats are increased. Testing has five characters focus on five different stats, to the initial exclusion of all others, as the page says:

** In Redcloak's case, it's seemingly Strength; despite clerics in ''D&D'' [[ReligiousBruiser having pretty effective melee weapon stats]], Redcloak is a NonActionGuy with no actual WeaponOfChoice[[note]]though he does have a SignatureMove in ''[[DisintegratorRay disintegrate]]''[[/note]] who almost only attacks his enemies (from a distance, to boot) with both spellcraft and summoning {{Mooks}} to fight in his stead. Furthermore, virtually every time Redcloak has been (nearly) killed, it has been when his enemies have caught him by surprise and attacked him in close-quarters combat (i.e., the spirit of Soon Kim and O-Chul), and he has been near-powerless to fight back each time. It can also be seen as a sign of his NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist nature -- Redcloak [[StealthPun lacks a certain (moral) strength]].

* The stat only provides any benefits past a certain level of investment. If only a Luck of 6 or higher unlocks the skill that boosts your crit chance, then anything below 6 might as well be a 1.
* The stat scales non-linearly and gives diminishing returns after a certain level of investment. If investing in points in health can only raises your HP from 1500 to 1505, then it's probably best to consider using your points in other stats.
* Weapons or other equipment scale off of specific stats meaning that a character would want to invest their stats primarily in those that apply to their arsenal of choice with remaining ones only getting the minimum amount necessary to function.

** There is a saying in engineering: “You can have it good, you can have it cheep or you can have it quick. Pick two”. The simple reality is that most projects take a lot of time and effort to complete so something will have to give. Either it will take a long time, require a lot of resources or the end result will be less than ideal.

* The stat only provides any benefits past a certain level of investment. If only a Luck of 6 or higher unlocks the skill boosts your crit chance, then anything below 6 might as well be a 1.

* Nixie the airheaded pyromaniac Tiefling Sorceress from the D&D comedy series ''WebVideo/1ForAll'' is an example played [[RuleOfFunny for comedy]]. As a sorceress, she relies on a high Charisma (which she has) and uses Intelligence as her dump stat. While that is pretty common for her build the comedy is that her Intelligence is not so much a ''dump'' stat and more a ''non-existent'' one - her Intelligence of ''0'' literally makes her as smart as the average rock and helpfully makes her immune to mind control since she lacks a mind to even target.

* The stat only provides any benefits past a certain level of investment. If a Luck of 6 or higher boosts your crit chance, then anything below 6 might as well be a 1.
%%Keeps this one AFTER the non-subjective reasons.
* It's just a stat you don't need for ''this'' character or playthrough. If MinMaxing is involved, playing twice with different styles will pay better than playing it with [[MasterOfNone average in all stats]], so one has to be sacrificed.

A Dump Stat is a phenomenon that occurs in games which involve multiple attributes for your characters and allow you to [[CharacterCustomization customize]] those attributes in some fashion. This is the stat that you put your lowest score in, or else don't spend any [[PointBuildSystem points]] on at all.

* The stat is useful in theory, but in practice its applications don't come up often. If the DM prefers to resolve social interactions based on how well ''the players'' can talk it out instead of dice rolls based on[=/=]modified by character stats, there's very little incentive for them to invest points in charisma and social skills. Conversely, a game where social skills are paramount and fights happen rarely might leave the stuff meant for physical combat collecting dust.

Sometimes, this is deliberate; the game has a class system or a limited number points to put into your character, forcing a degree of specialization. In this case, the dump stat isn't necessarily a ''bad'' stat, but is overshadowed by more suitable ones for a particular build. A warrior wielding a greataxe may find little use in a Dexterity stat, but an archer will rely on it.

Another common cause of dump stats is tweaks to the game system during testing. Initially, maybe Diplomacy was wicked awesome; however, it let a savvy player win the game in ten minutes without lifting a finger. Unfortunately, when they scaled the skill back enough to prevent that contingency, they also scaled back the completely reasonable uses of the skill to the point where it's not worth using in any situation. This occurs frequently in game testing because some powers don't scale well; putting a few points into the skill works as intended, but putting ''all'' of your points into the skill breaks the game. [[DiminishingReturnsForBalance Diminishing returns are really hard to balance]] and, honestly, how many bored players are going to choose to go through your high-octane first person shooter with maximized Basket Weaving anyway?

* Near the end of ''B-Daman Fireblast''[=/=]season 2 of ''Anime/BDamanCrossfire'', Kamon and Riki receive Ultimate upgrades of Drive Garuburn and Rising Dracyan. While Kamon's Garuburn's stats and abilities make them a MasterOfAll, Ultimate Rising Dracyan's specialty is attack, and only attack. This becomes a problem for Riki when he has to face Bakuga in the semi finals of the Phoenix Grand Prix.

* Similar to baseball, in professional cricket, the very best bowlers tend to be the very worst batsmen. Bowlers often become “tail enders” in the batting order where nothing is expected of them, since batting is something they don’t work on. If they come out to bat, it is usually because the best batsmen in the team are already out, so they should either “hit out or get out” or sneak a single run and transfer strike to a better batsman. Australia's Shane Warne and Glenn [=McGrath=], the West Indies' Courtney Walsh, and Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan are four of the only five bowlers to take over 500 Test wickets in their international careers, and are also four of the only five batsmen to have been out for a duck (zero runs) more than 30 times.[[note]] The fifth bowler to break the 500-wicket barrier, India's Anil Kumble, was out for a duck while at bat 17 times but he has a test century to his name; the fifth batsman to break the 30-duck barrier, New Zealand's Chris Martin, took 233 wickets as a bowler.[[/note]] Fast bowlers are also not expected to be the best fielders so you usually see them patrolling the boundary area, where the ability to run, cut off balls hit their way from reaching the boundary and use their powerful arm to throw the ball back to the pitch is all that is expected of them.
* In professional basketball the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_double#Quadruple-double Quadruple-double]] is one of the rarest feats of the game because it forces a player to be dominant on both offense and defense. Most elite players focus on the offensive feats of points, rebounds and assists while using defensive skills like blocks and steals as their dump stat. Likewise this is why a Quintuple-double has never been accomplished above the high school level.

* As the characters in ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' are in a RPGMechanicsVerse, they sometimes go as far as explicitly referring to Dump Stats. A running theme in the comic is that most characters would be considered poorly optimized in a real ''D&D'' campaign, and thus more often than not have bad choices of dump stats.

** Haley's is Constitution and Wisdom. She doesn't get hit often, but when she does, doesn't take much to make her fall. Fits her Rogue nature. Wisdom meanwhile shows through her poor Will saves and her questionable choices (from humorous ones such as going dungeoneering in a leather tanktop to more serious ones such as dealing with her feelings). It's implied it's the result of being reared by her dad, a well-meaning, but paranoid rogue who taught her as such to protect her (but also left her an emotional mess until she confessed to Elan).
** [[TheDitz Elan's]] is Intelligence (and to a lesser extent Wisdom), best shown in his various ditzy decisions, moments and choices (though he is still GenreSavvy due to his bardic training and has shown growing amounts of SimpleMindedWisdom). Ironically, much like Thog, he is actually the most optimized among his peers as his base Bard class and his PrestigeClass Dashing Swordsman allows him to use his monstrous Charisma to full effect.

** Durkon's is implied to be Charisma. While he also TheHeart (well, behind Elan), he's a dwarf, he's blunt, introverted, and not particularly personable, and his Turn Undead has a consistently poor success rate.
** Roy plays with this trope. On the one hand, he doesn't seem to have a dump stat; [[JackOfAllStats all his traits and stats seem to be at least above average and thus making him a very well-rounded individual]].[[note]]The only stat he hasn't directly shown to be above-average is Dexterity, and even that's never been indicated to be particularly low so either DEX is his dump stat, or he rolled ''really'' well on character creation.[[/note]] On the other hand, most of those stats aren't made full use of because he plays a straight Fighter class rather than a class that would take advantage of his LightningBruiser stats (such as a Warblade), or even a [[LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards caster class]] which would be stronger in the long run and make use of his impressive Intelligence. The latter is even {{lampshade|Hanging}}d by his father. Roy noted he chose not to be a Paladin or Cleric because of his secular worldview and he refused become a spellcaster as a way to spite his {{Jerkass}} dad and because to follow in ''his'' father's (Roy's grandfather) footsteps of being a fighter, even using the family sword.

* High performance vehicles typically use driver comfort, ride quality, interior luxury and cargo space as their dump stats. Sometimes justified in the pursuit of higher performance and saving weight, but sometimes not where the modifications are a form of performance theatre to make the driver ''feel'' that they are going faster. The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron Bugatti Veyron]] goes the opposite way; it's an ''extremely'' luxurious vehicle, with all the creature comforts you'd expect from a less sporty vehicle, good insulation, ride stability, etc, while retaining a massively powerful engine. It sacrifices weight and handling instead: the car weights about 2 tons. As a result, the Veyron was soundly beaten by lighter vehicles like the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_991#911_GT3 Porsche 911 GT3]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Corvette_(C6)#ZR1 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1]] at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, despite its positively ''ludicrous'' acceleration and record-setting top speed.
* Aesthetics, a.k.a. Fit and Finish, tend to be the dump stat for military weapons [[EmergencyWeapon built during time of war]]. Sometimes the low stat only [[BoringButPractical affects appearance]], other times it results in poor ergonomics or low mean time between failure. This was {{lampshaded}} by the Webley company during World War II with their Mk IV revolvers, which were stamped with "WAR FINISH" to make sure that no-one would think the painted-on finish and visible tool marks were the norm for a Webley product.

* Your classic battleship was a compromise between Armor, Firepower and Speed. Being warships, firepower as a dump stat was never a consideration. Speed was invariably the dump stat, ensuring battleships could take as much as they could dish out. Battlecruisers were an offshoot of battleships designed to have armor as a dump stat relying on their speed to stay away from what their guns couldn't outrange. As cruiser-killers and scouts, this was an effective (though very expensive) solution, but it didn't go so well when they were shoved into the line of battle and expected to stay there. Which sadly proved an almost irresistible temptation to admirals due to their battleship-like firepower.
* [[TankGoodness Tanks]] are similarly designed with a compromise between Armor, Firepower and Mobility. (Which encompasses ability to handle rough terrain as well as just straight-line speed.) While not all tanks have a dump stat (depending on the particular tank's role, being [[JackOfAllStats merely decent in all areas]] might be considered acceptable), heavy tanks invariably have speed as their dump stat while light tanks inevitably dump armor and often firepower as well. Dump stats tend to be even more exaggerated with tank destroyers ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin which specialize solely in taking out other tanks]]); firepower is always emphasized, and either mobility or armor gets dumped almost to nonexistence.
** Since WWII the vast majority of armies have opted for the JackOfAllStats approach and settled for a fairly homogenous definition of "main battle tank": Something with as much armor as possible on a roughly 50-ton vehicle, a 120-125 mm gun, and an all-terrain speed of 40-60 kph. The new dump stat has become the general category of "crew comfort", since the only way to make a vehicle both heavily armoured AND light weight, is to reduce overall vehicle size. The Soviet Union embraced this approach, first reducing interior space with sloped and rounded armour and then reducing interior space further with even '''thicker''' sloped and rounded armour and low profile designs. Western tanks, that included crew comfort in their JackOfAllStats approach, are almost hotels by comparison.

*** Before the development of the Main Battle Tank concept, tank development went through a couple of periods of different plays in dump stats. First was the Heavy Tank, which as the name suggests was a big tank with [[MightyGlacier heavy armor, a big gun, and low speed]]. However, two things happened that rendered the idea obsolete -- first was the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which gave off bursts of lethal radiation that really didn't care how heavily armored a tank was. The second was the proliferation of anti-tank missiles, especially infantry-portable and helicopter gunship carried ones. At that point, it was decided that ArmorIsUseless and thus the generation of tanks built at that point were GlassCannon {{Fragile Speedster}}s who had enough armor to protect from machine guns but defended more on speed and being able to shoot first for protection. This was followed by the development of new armor types, like Chobham and Reactive armor, which are much more effective against such weapons while keeping weight more reasonable than simple steel armor, so armoring up tanks was once again seen as feasible.

* Following World War II, warship armour became such a dump stat that the entire stat was basically dumped; modern torpedoes relied on breaking a ship's keel by exploding beneath the ship and no armour could prevent it, and the demise of gun battles between ships due to the ascendance of the aircraft carrier, missiles, and precision munitions meant you didn't need armour to deal with heavy shells any more, and while theoretically you could armour against the warheads carried by aircraft and missiles, that just slows you down making you an easier target for the One Shot Kill torpedo.
* Laptop manufacturers rarely put much resources into the webcam. Since nobody uses a laptop camera for vacation photos, selfies, etc., there's no real demand to make one good. In fact, most laptop webcams are used primarily for business video conferencing, where anything above 720p 30fps would be considered a waste of bandwidth.

* High performance vehicles typically use driver comfort, ride quality, interior luxury and cargo space as their dump stats. Sometimes justified in the pursuit of higher performance and saving weight, but sometimes not where the modifications are a form of performance theatre to make the driver ''feel'' that they are going faster. The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron Bugatti Veyron]] goes the opposite way; it's an ''extremely'' luxurious vehicle, with all the creature comforts you'd expect from a less sporty vehicle, good insulation, ride stability, etc, while retaining a massively powerful engine. It sacrifices weight and handling instead : the car weights about 2 tons. As a result, the Veyron was soundly beaten by lighter vehicles like the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_991#911_GT3 Porsche 911 GT3]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Corvette_(C6)#ZR1 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1]] at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, despite its positively ''ludicrous'' acceleration and record-setting top speed.

* Similar to baseball, in professional cricket, the very best bowlers tend to be the very worst batsmen. Australia's Shane Warne and Glenn [=McGrath=], the West Indies' Courtney Walsh, and Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan are four of the only five bowlers to take over 500 Test wickets in their international careers, and are also four of the only five batsmen to have been out for a duck (zero runs) more than 30 times.[[note]] The fifth bowler to break the 500-wicket barrier, India's Anil Kumble, was out for a duck while at bat 17 times; the fifth batsman to break the 30-duck barrier, New Zealand's Chris Martin, took 233 wickets as a bowler.[[/note]]

* In Cricket, bowlers often become “tail enders” in the batting order where nothing is expected of them, since batting is something they don’t work on. If they come out to bat, it is usually because the best batsmen in the team are already out, so they should either “hit out or get out” or sneak a single run and transfer strike to a better batsman. Fast bowlers are also not expected to be the best fielders so you usually see them patrolling the boundary area, where the ability to run, cut off balls hit their way from reaching the boundary and use their powerful arm to throw the ball back to the pitch.

* Pitchers in baseball tend to have hitting as their dump stat as they spend virtually [[CripplingOverspecialization no time working to improve it]]. The American League overcomes this problem by use of the Designated Hitter, a man who bats instead of the pitcher but doesn't field (the National League isn't allowed to do this, and even the American League team can't if they're playing against a National League team).

* [[WordOfGod Alt-text]] in ''Webcomic/RustyAndCo'' suggests Madeline the Paladin's [[http://rustyandco.com/comic/level2/level-2-3/ choice of dump stat]] has made her... [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} a little gullible]].

* Referenced by name in ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'' [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0102.html #102]]. TheRant explains the idea [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0063.html even earlier]] and calls out Charisma as the useless one. Much later, Jim is [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0749.html preparing to debut his new character]]. When Chewbacca shows himself incredibly dignified, refined, and well-spoken, Jim comments that he gave his sidekick high points in all his character's dump stats. Then Jim brings out the new character, "Greedo" (a renamed version of Han Solo), and he's a horrible Italian stereotype who speaks in broken English.
* Stat Dump haunts protagonist in ''Webcomic/{{Crawlers}}'' on the page titled [[http://crawlers.thecomicseries.com/comics/24 Skills You'll Never Use]].
* In ''Webcomic/KnightsOfBuenaVista'', Mary is shocked that Bill focused on charisma for his character.
* Secret from ''Webcomic/KeychainOfCreation'' has [[http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0001.html only 2 in Stamina]].
* ''Webcomic/AvengersAdventure'': Tony's is established to be his Wisdom score, resulting in frequently low Perception rolls and, in at least one instance, a negative result on a Heal check.

[[quoteright:340:[[Webcomic/{{Epictail}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2009-04-24-dumpstat_141.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:340:Who needs Charisma for smashing orcs?]]