Dump Stat / Tabletop Games

• 7th Sea specifically sought to avoid this by making sure every single stat had some sort of critical effect on combat: Brawn affected your damage rolls (both ability to withstand Flesh Wounds and how much you caused when you hit), Finesse affected your chance to hit in the first place, Wits determined how hard it was to hit you, Resolve how many Dramatic Wounds you could take before being taken out, and Panache how many actions you got to make per turn. The game's 2nd edition is seen by many to have taken this even further, as the new, narrative system means there's now essentially no mechanical difference whatsoever between the stats — every stat can be used to perform any action or paired with every skill, so much as the system is concerned. The only caveat is that you get increasing penalties each time per scene you use the same one, so people can't just apply their strongest stat to everything. One should note, for many, rather than solving the problem of Dump Stats, the decision to make all stats equally important in the first edition rather hurt the game's atmosphere, since it's supposed to be about larger-than-life swashbuckling heroes, yet the rule incentivized creating characters with rather unimpressive, "solid all around" stat arrays rather than anything cool, because dumping even one would've been too disadvantageous.
• Appearance (APP) in Call of Cthulhu can end up being this depending on the GM's play style, especially in the 1st through 6th Editions of the game. It's just not all that necessary for anything meaningful from a mechanical standpoint, except perhaps bonuses or penalties to Interpersonal Skill checks. The 7th Edition rules rectify this by using APP as a measure of both appearance and personal charisma, as well as by making certain career choices depend on APP for the character's Personal Interest skill points. Even then, it's still a dump stat for the majority of players in the majority of games, because Yog-Sothoth really doesn't care how good you are at holding a conversation with it.
• "Comeliness" in Champions does little to nothing with the base rules (its effect on social skills is a invokedPopular Game Variant), and actually gives bonuses to Presence Attacks if it's low enough. Since it's also the cheapest stat in the game (1/2 point per increase), most people either sell it back to get an extra skill, or buy it up when they can't think of anything else during character creation.
  • In Sixth Edition Hero System (which is based on Champions), the Comeliness stat has been dropped — if you want looks that have an in-game effect, you buy Striking Appearance. If you don't care if your looks have any in-game effect, you can define them however you want.
  • Also in Sixth Edition, the OMCV stat (Offensive Mental Combat Value) has essentially no use whatsoever for non-mentalist characters. They still get it at its starting value of 3 for free, though, which can mean some easy free points by the simple expedient of buying it back...
• Every build in Dungeons & Dragons has at least one Dump Stat. One of the keys to good Min-Maxing is to identify your dump stats — what don't you need/want to care about? The D&D 3.5 community developed the term MAD (Multiple Ability Dependency) as a criticism of classes that couldn't effectively dump several stats, and had to spread their resources too thin to be effective at anything — a classic case of Master of None. Some notable cases of and references to Dump Stats are listed below,
  • Strength for most Arcane casters. At lower levels, anything not worth using a spell on isn't worth the damage bonuses that Strength provides to physical attacks, while at higher levels, using Polymorph to turn into a creature with high Strength is the best option if you can't use your offensive spells. The only disadvantage comes from the encumbrance rules, but spells, magic items, and pack animals provide easy ways around a low carrying capacity. Beyond that, in 3.5, if you have a good Dexterity score and a 'light weapon', you can take a feat to use your Dex modifier instead of your Strength modifier for attack rolls.
  • Charisma
    • In 3rd Edition and 3.5, Charisma was the only ability score that did not improve a secondary statistic or saving throw (such as Strength improving your melee accuracy, or Intelligence giving you more skill points per level). This makes Charisma mechanically of less use unless you have a spellcasting or class ability whose effectiveness is tied to it. The only real universal use for Charisma is for social skills, but since the Diplomacy rules in 3.5 are so ill-defined and dependent on your DM's interpretation (what exactly is the difference between "Friendly" and "Helpful"? Is your campaign entirely dungeon-crawling or do social challenges play an important role?), it can swing between a complete Dump Stat and the One Stat to Rule Them All.
    • In earlier editions, Charisma was needed to hire and keep the henchmen that were helpful for survival at lower levels — not much use after that except improving NPC relations. Usually the party needs only one charismatic negotiator. Forgotten Realms paid attention to non-hack and slash play, so there's a classic character (AD&D 1 campaign set and Gold and Glory) apparently existing just to give a decisive answer on two questions: "who needs topped out Charisma?" and "What Kind Of Lame Power Is Mindlink Anyway?". Not many adventurers get one treant, mimic, or beholder hireling...
  • In 4th Edition, the three defenses (Fortitude, Reflex, and Will) are each based on the higher of two stats; Str/Con, Dex/Int, and Wis/Cha, respectively. This means that each character has three Dump Stats, as the lower of each pair can be as low as you want without making a difference (except constitution, which still affects Hit Points). Some stats still consistently show up as Dump Stats for builds not based around them:
    • Strength. The builds that can take advantage of a good Strength bonus (pretty much any melee class that isn't based on one of the other attributes) generally need it, leaving the survivability-boosting Constitution a better choice for those that don't.
    • Intelligence. Dexterity grants an initiative bonus and Dex-based skills are necessary for survival in a dungeon, while Arcana is the only major skill that gets bonuses from Intelligence, making Dex a much better choice for classes not based on Int. (Note that Int and Dex both apply to AC, whichever is higher, but if you're wearing heavy armor, neither apply. Sometimes you can dump both if you don't mind a low Reflex defense or are using a shield, since shields also boost your reflex defense.)
    • Charisma and Wisdom. Aside from the bonus to Will defense and class-specific abilities, these stats are mainly useful for skills that someone in the party needs to have, but not everyone. As such, builds that aren't based around Cha or Wis can afford to dump one of them. If the class you've chosen needs neither, it's usually a better choice to dump Charisma, as the important Perception skill keys off of Wisdom.
    • 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 attempts to avert this by changing the way skills are conceptualised, giving every ability score its own skill modifier and saving throw. A variant rule in the Player's Handbook even encourages players to use their skill proficiency on non-standard ability scores, such as a Dexterity-based Performance check for an acrobatic display. Some ability scores are far more likely to come into play than others, such as Intelligence. With skill points replaced with a flat proficiency bonus, Intelligence no longer influences any skills by default except Investigation and knowledge skills. Only the Wizard and two specific subclasses (the Eldritch Knight Fighter and Arcane Trickster Rogue) and the Artificer as of the release of the 5th Edition Eberron sourcebook get any use out of Intelligence beyond those 5 skills. And while some saves are more common than others, there's a way to target the save of any Dumped stat, so an aggressive DM can abuse it; dump Strength and you'll be thrown around the battlefield like a muppet, low Intelligence will get you psychically mauled, and a lack of the ever-sacrificed Charisma can get you into Demonic Possession, near-exorcised by skilled clerics or outright thrown out of reality.
• 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, which has no use at all. House rules can save other stats — something so simple as a "Luck Save" will convince Player Characters not to skimp on anything. 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 character's 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 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 human brain somewhere inside it had to start out as one of the most empathic people on the planet. Conversely, Attractiveness and Movement Allowance (MA) were not only of little use, but could be replaced wholesale with biosculpting or cybernetic legs respectively. With most stats you were either stuck with your starting score or could only modify it to your starting score plus a few points, but Attractiveness could be raised to a maximum of 12 whether it started at 1 or 10 (you paid by the point, so it did cost a litte more if you started ugly) and anyone could buy a pair of cyberlegs that set their MA at 16 (out of a human maximum of 10) regardless of how fast they were with their organic legs. So, yes, it was a game of lightning fast sharpshooter supermodels with personalities like The Terminator who started life as glacial sharpshooter trolls with the compassion of Mother Theresa.
• Enforced for the Tech-Priests in Dark Heresy, who quite simply cannot improve their Fellowship stat (unless they take a certain career choice on creation), and who have upgrades available that automatically reduce it.
• The Witcher: Game of Imagination has Movement. The only thing it's used for is measuring how long a distance a character can travel during a single round of a fight (which is irrevelant, as sooner or later you will end up in melee distance or you can just sprint to get close fast), and while travelling the world (which is irrevelant, as when riding or traveling by any other means than on foot you use the Movement of your mount or vehicle). And it doesn't even make that much of a difference regardless of how high Movement is. Experienced players usually opt to derive it from different stats to save on points.
• In Eon, the attribute Bildning, roughly translated to Education, is often treated as a Dump Stat. 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.
• GURPS carefully avoids a universal dump stat, mainly by using optional traits for things that are mandatory in other games. However, many character designs benefit from picking a dump stat, e.g. A brilliant telekinetic can afford to drop his ST down pretty low in order to get points to enhance his powers instead. Additionally, although the game lacks an official Charisma stat, many players tend to saddle themselves with social problems for more points, turning social skills into a Dump "Stat". This pattern can get players in a lot of trouble, however, if they are in a situation where they need to pump NPCs for info: just because you can kill someone with your brain doesn't mean you can scare people to get the info you need.
  • In GURPS 4ed games where the party have access to firearms, strength is only useful up to the minimum needed to effectively use your weapon. 11 is enough to use nearly anything. Light machine-guns or very heavy magnum handguns may require as much as 13, but any more than that is a waste if it's a point short of 20, where things like heavy machine-guns become possible. (While HP is also based off of strength, almost any firearm is capable of dealing enough damage to kill you instantly, and so HT, used to save against death, becomes a far bigger deal.)
  • Also, HP can be bought independently of strength, or sold back for points to below what the character's strength would imply, and so is really only based on strength in name only. However, the core rules do recommend allowing HP to only be bought up +30% of its default ST-based value for "normal" human(oid) characters.
• In Ironclaw and Myriad Song the usual dump stat is Species/Legacy. Body is needed for melee combat and resisting damage, Speed is needed for ranged combat and dodging, Mind is used for most skills and spells, Will is the most commonly used resistance dice after Body, while Career and Species/Legacy both apply a bonus to three skills depending on Splat, and the latter is also used for Natural Weapons (usually not as good as artificial ones). However, many players, especially in Ironclaw, choose their race for aesthetics and base their build around their Career, with the exception of Atavists who need a minimum Species dice of d8 and have many Gifts that enhance their natural weapons, they tend to dump their Career.
• Space Munchkin parodies this trope with "Stat X" a mystery stat in addition to the 6 core D20 stats. The Game Master is, however, advised to make Stat X count for something awesome if someone actually bothers to put a high score in it.
• Mutants & 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".
• Star Wars: Saga Edition runs off an adapted version of the d20 system seen in Dungeons & Dragons. However, unusually for d20, the dump stat in Star Wars is generally seen to be Strength. It affects only three skills (jump, climb, and swim), none of which are common in the setting, and the only other thing it affects are carrying capacity (which can be easily offset by buying a cheap hoversled) and melee attacks (a rarity in a setting generally focused on range combat). Even dedicated melee builds can use strength as a dump stat, thanks to an array of feats and talents that allow you to use a different stat in its stead.
• The World of Darkness games make players decide on a Dump Stat Category due to being a Point Build System - you choose one category to get the most points for, one for the middle amount and one for the least. Mental Attributes are the most common choice; while you want to be able to put up a fight and be smooth, you can get by with one dot for each stat in Mental (you start with one automatically and two dots are the human average).
  • Or, if you're playing the Old World of Darkness, put most of your mental attributes in Perception (being able to spot what's trying to kill you can come in handy) or Wits so that you can attack sooner rather than later and make others suffer due to wound penalties for their rolls, and don't bother with Intelligence unless you're playing a character specialized in knowledge/occult skills.
  • 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 maneuvering can determine the course of whole cities, mind control the Big Bad, call in 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 Old World of Darkness and New, Werewolf and Hunter value physical stats more, Mage and Vampire value mental and social more, and the other games can go either way.
  • Regardless of game or character build, the single most useless Attribute in the entire World of Darkness is Appearance. It might make roleplaying sense for a character to be strikingly beautiful or hideously ugly, but Appearance offers next to nothing mechanically in return for the expense of maxing it out, since it is paired with the fewest Abilities and magical talents for dice rolls. This is the reason why Chronicles of Darkness dropped it as a main Attribute and made it into the optional merit "Striking Looks" instead. This change was brought into the World of Darkness as well in the fifth edition.
• Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG, 1001-1500:
  1047. If my troll is the smartest character in the party, the entire party is vetoed.
  1097. Even if he used INT as a dump stat, I don't have to carve 'this end towards enemy' on the barbarian's axe blade.^note Of course, D&D barbarians traditionally start off illiterate anyway...
• No Werebeast in Bleak World needs poison, not even Werecockroaches.
• In BattleTech, players will often dump ammo capacity, since many players play one-off matches rather than campaigns. For its RPG spinoff Mechwarrior, many power-players will dump the Social Standing or Charisma stats, preferring to sink their points into attributes that improve their direct combat abilities, leaving the more nuanced politics of the setting to others.
• First edition Scion takes it a step further by explicitly giving you a dump category in addition to dump stats within each category. Its nine attributes are divided into Physical, Mental, and Social, and upon character creation you get to put eight points into one category of your choice, six points into another, and only four points into the third. Those points then have to be divided among the three stats within each category (and you can't divide eight or four evenly by three, so something's gotta go). When you upgrade to Demigod and then again to God, you get another set of points (four, three, and two) to divide among the three categories, though you can choose different priorities than you did at character creation.

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