Vague Stat Values

Gaming Stats always have a way to measure how good they are compared to others in a numerical fashion since games need to calculate things with them, especially when they're Video Games, where everything is numbers.

But just because they are ranked numerically, doesn't mean they're presented numerically. That's what makes this trope. Someone or something gets a look at some gaming stats, but their values aren't numerical. If they're in a Starfish Language numbering system that doesn't count, unless the viewer thinks it's not numbers.

This is commonly done with damage descriptions of combat moves, to abstract away how the damage is calculated, and enemies are usually easy enough that it's not Rocket-Tag Gameplay, where getting the absolute most out of an attack is the thin line between winning and losing. To show how much of an effect an attack has, Shows Damage numbers along with trusting the player to remember that "this move does about 1.5 times the damage of the weaker version" is usually sufficient for a player to realize which enemies have more defenses than others.

Vague Hit Points is a Sub-Trope, for when games don't present Hit Points with precision. Compare with Idiosyncratic Combo Levels, which shows what numbers a label corresponds with/describes each number. Similar to the Absolute Comparative advertising trope, because they also use comparatives.

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Examples:

Fan Works

• Level Up (MHA): From the first chapter, when Izuku gets a look at Itsuka's stats, they're given as descriptions, instead of numbers, except for her Character Level, and her bust size, a.k.a Charisma, is in cup sizes:
  [Status: Itsuka Kendo. Lvl 7 Monk. Big Ass Fist Style
  Strength: Man-Hands
  Dexterity: Can't dodge a brick. But can punch one.
  Constitution: You'll tire out first.
  Intelligence: Smart enough to know what you really should be doing.
  Wisdom: Wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you.
  Charisma: C but currently in denial and thinks that she's still a B

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • 3rd Edition: Detect Magic, Detect Evil, and similar spells only differentiate faint, moderate, strong, overwhelming, and residual auras rather than reveal a specific Spell Level or creature level.
  • 5th edition: The Battle Master Fighter's 7th-level feature "Know Your Enemy" lets them, when not in combat, observe a character for a minute and gauge the relative values, higher, lower, or equal to the user, for 2 game statistics that the user selects out of Str, Dex, Con, AC, HP, character level, and Fighter level.
• Vampire: The Requiem: In 1st Edition, vampires can sense whether another vampire's Blood Potency score is higher or lower than theirs based on whether their instinct is to flee or attack. That urge was dropped from 2nd Edition, but vampires can still recognize each other on sight.

Video Games

• The Atelier Series:
  • Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland: Effects are described with general adjectives. For example, the tiers of HP Recovery as described in Details:
    XS: Recovers target's HP by a very small amount.
    S: Recovers target's HP by a little.
  • Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland: Traits are listed in the Library and while some have Percent-Based Values about their effects, but others don't and just use adjectives. For comparison:
    Big: Effect: Slightly raises quality or enhances effects.
    Quality S: Effect: Increases item quality by 20%.
• The Binding of Isaac: Stats are only shown as up to five tallies beside symbols in the pause menu, with more tallies equaling more of that stat. This is extremely inaccurate since the game uses decimals, internal multipliers, and numbers that go way past 5, which are not shown at all. Downplayed as of the Afterbirth+ expansion, which optionally lets you use Found HUD (an official adaptation of a mod called Missing HUD), putting accurate stats on the screen.
• Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance: Potions and Drumsticks both restore "some" Hit Points, a.k.a 70 and some value over 88 respectively, and Mana Prisms restore "some" Mana.
• Company of Heroes: Resource costs are clearly stated throughout the game series, but pretty much everything else isn't. 3 instead also clearly stated the numbers of health for all units and vehicles' armor numbers for all sides of the vehicles, but nothing further.
• Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden: The effects of the pets are described only in vague terms like "faster" and "quicker" experience gathering and water refill.
• Iji: Weaponry does precise Hit Points of damage, but that's only revealed after beating the game once. Otherwise, weapon descriptions describe their damage and Arbitrary Weapon Range with adjectives only:
  Shotgun: Function: Fires a wide, short-range pellet blast
  Machinegun: Function: Fires weak but accurate long-range bullets
  Rocket Launcher: Very powerful
• The Logomancer: There's some Percent-Based Values like Thesis dealing "20% extra verbal damage per research level", but that's about as unclear as the adjectives describing damage because there's no baseline. For example, the damage part of these skills' descriptions:
  Double Blind: Deals heavy ethos damage to all subjects.
  Null Hypothesis: Deals vast amounts of ethos damage
• Luxaren Allure: Pollyanna Cure seems to be the stronger version of Healing Optimism, due to Theme Naming and sharing the same symbol, but doesn't give precise measurements of its improvement, but it costs more than twice as much Mana:
  Healing Optimism: Restores HP to one ally.
  Pollyanna Cure: Restores more HP to one ally.
• Madou Monogatari displays none of its stat values. Instead, things like Hit Points, Mana, and attack power are determined using context clues such as Character Portrait changes and the precise wording of character descriptions.
• Okiku, Star Apprentice: The Evolving Attacks mainly change their descriptions in the adjective describing their damage/healing. For example, the Stun line at its first and last evolution:
  Stun: Light physical damage to an enemy.
  Stuns for 1 turn. [number]/5 to evolve.
   
  Petrify: Severe physical damage to an enemy.
  Stuns for 4 turns.
• Persona: Attacks have a numerical Power statistic that factors into the damage formulas to determine how much damage they do, but the descriptions for attacks only vaguely refer to them as "light/moderate/heavy/severe [type] damage"
• Pokémon: From Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! and onwards, there's a feature that works similarly to the Generation III+ games' "stats judge" character that describes the "individual values" that vary between individual members of a species, in vague terms like "decent", "above-average" and "very good", with "fantastic" being the best value - 1 and "best" being literally the best possible value.
• The first three Premier Manager games gave you numeric values for your players' stats, but everything else (overall squad strengths, staff members' abilities, other teams' players) was ranked on a scale that went "Fair", "Good", "V. Good", "Superb", "Outstanding", and finally "World Class". The first three were subdivided into five ranks denoted by stars, so you could tell that a Good **** player was better than a Good *** player, but not by how much.
• The Sealed Ampoule: The attack skills don't describe exactly how much damage they will deal, but recovery skills give precise numbers. For example:
  Secret Alchemy Strike: Deal heavy damage to a single enemy with a strong alchemical reaction. MP Consumed: 24
  Philosopher's Smash: Deal heavy damage to all surrounding enemies. MP Consumed: 74
• The Shantae series:
  • In Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and Shantae and the Seven Sirens, the precise range of the Power-Up Magnet passive effect, "Attract" and its stronger versions are unstated:
    Attract: Automatically draws in nearby Gems and Hearts!
    Super Attract: Automatically draws in Gems and Hearts from a greater distance!
    Max Attract: Automatically draws in Gems and Hearts from a significant distance!
  • Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: The Revive Dance restores "some" health while its stronger version, Super Revive Dance, restores all health.
• In Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind, the clan's preference for tradition/innovation influences several stat checks, especially those pertaining to allying with the Rams and winning the game. The bad news is that the game does not tell you this, or even that the preference is a stat. The good news is that an adviser on the overall clan screen will always mention what the clan currently prefers.
• Sunset Overdrive: Chances of effects activating are mentioned, but not precise percentages or fractions. For example, Burn, Baby:
  Lvl. 1: Kills with this weapon have a chance of creating an area of effect blast that sets enemies on fire.
  Lvl. 2: Kills with this weapon have a greater chance of creating an area of effect blast that set^sic enemies on fire than the standard Burn, Baby Amp.
• The Other: Airi's Adventure: Some skills have adjectives to describe the effects, but skills descriptions don't come with precise numerical stats:
  Slash: Strong attack to one enemy.
  Heal I: Heal a small amount of one ally's HP.
• Prayer of the Faithless: Status Infliction Attacks note the chance that the status will be inflicted, with just verbal descriptions of Low or Med(ium), or it's guaranteed.
• RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore: MP and HP decrease items have vague size names, but fixed values, like Medium MP Increase being +20 and then there's the "Large".
• Titan Quest: The player character starts with an Attack Speed stat of 100%, the speed of their bare fists. Weapons all have an Attack Speed stat, which seems to the comparison of the attack speed after equipping the weapon, compared to what it was like initially. For example, Maces have an Attack Speed of Slow, and using them gives sets the Attack Speed to be under 100%, while Short Swords are Fast and give an Attack Speed above 100%.
• Transistor: The Turn() Planning Cost meter is eaten up by moves which have fixed, specified, costs but only the code says how big the meter is.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: There's multiple adjectives, but no precise numbers used to describe the amount of Hit Points healed by healing magic. Given that such spells appeared to be Tiered by Name due to higher levels adding prefixes and higher Mana requirement to another spell, implying the tiers being: "some", "moderate", and "major":
  Vitalize: All allies recover some life.
  Revitalize: All allies recover moderate life.
  
  Heal: One ally recovers moderate life.
  Holy Heal: One ally recovers major life and is cured of all status effects.
• Warcraft III: Units' movement and attack speeds are listed in a range from Very Slow/Slow/Average/Fast/Very Fast, where each label itself covers a range of speeds. And the text color changes from white to green or red if the current value is due to a buff or debuff, respectively. Armor and weapon types also accurately describe their effectiveness against other ones when there are actual modifiers against them, but do not state the numerical modifiers - you'd have to check a guide know exactly what it means when Normal attacks say "Normal attacks do extra damage against Medium armor, and reduced damage to Fortified armor."
• Workshop In The Ironwood Grove: Some of the Tiered by Name spells label damage as just "weak" or "stronger". For example, Nell's:
  Starlight I: A non-elemental spell that attacks with light.
  Starlight II: A stronger spell that attacks with light.
  Luna I: A weak spell that ignores magical defense.
  Luna II: A stronger spell that ignores magical defense.

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