One Stat to Rule Them All: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

In many tabletop RPGs, dexterity or speed is disproportionately powerful compared to the other attributes.

 

The mirror opposite of a [[Dump Stat]]. Subtrope of [[Whoring]] in that there are oftentimes perfectly playable games in there even if you don't worry about these kinds of things.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** Most classes are built around at most three ability scores, as trying to be good at everything is exceedingly difficult - you can't expect to get too many good results with random rolling, and point-buy are usually only enough to be either good at one thing or unsatisfactorily milquetoast at everything. The term MAD (Multiple Ability Dependency) is used to refer to classes that demand many good scores to be fully playable, and this is considered a liability.

** Which is why [[Master of None|bards aren't exactly popular.]]

* In ''[[Shadowrun]] 3rd Edition'' the Quickness attribute directly or indirectly governs how well you sneak around the guards, how well you shoot firearms when they spot you anyway, how fast you run when the enemy turns out to have bulletproof vests, and how well you drive your escape car when they turn out to outnumber you 15 to one. Every character who isn't a Decker (Computer Hacker) usually maxes out quickness. Quickness even adds a big bonus to the all-powerful combat pool. Even many characters in wheelchairs are commonly seen with maxed out quickness. 4th edition partially toned this down by splitting quickness off from reaction speed, but it's still important there.

* In ''[[Mekton]] Zeta'', players commonly refer to Ref(lexes) as the God Stat. All combat actions - attack, defence, initiative - were determined off this one stat. Since all the stats were assigned an equal value, however, it became stupidly easy to min-max.

** To be more specific, Min-maxers would put two points in everything (as required by the rulebook) and then dump the remaining points to the following stats in order: Ref(lexes), Int(elligence) [Skill Points, Electronic Warfare skill in Z+, and Awareness/Notice, used in some tracking rolls], Education [Skill points]. This only requires 44 points to have a max-reflex character with 30 skill points to start with, a decent amount of which will, obviously, go into reflex combat skills.

** The game is also ruled by Dexterity. Everybody who wants to be at all effective at combat needs it, because it rules ranged attacks. It being set in the modern world, guns exist and are highly effective. It's pretty hard to be effective in melee combat unless you specalize in it, and even then a good shot will be able to take you apart. On top of that, armor is rare because of the feat requirements, so it's vital to increasing your rate of survival, especially if you are playing a class that does not get armor bonuses. In addition to that, many skills which might be useful in combat in the modern world, such as Drive, Tumble, and many others, use Dex.

** In the Urban Arcana setting, Knowledge (Arcane Lore) is king. No party without it can dream of doing the ridiculously heavy duty stuff Incantations make possible. Furthermore, reasonably high Knowledge (Arcane Lore) checks can easily layer on months- or even years-long buffs that allow you crush any non-buffed opponent into the ground - including, without much interpretation, buffs to Knowledge (Arcane Lore).

** Even more so is the Generation background. Five dots at character creation will put you at 8th generation, with a higher blood pool and the ability to use more blood points per round, which will help out with healing and almost anything else you can think of. By and large, the gamebook discourages players from beginning with more than three dots of Generation, and encourages Storytellers to do the same, partially for this reason and partially because eighth-generation characters are typically old and powerful enough to actually get respect in Camarilla culture, where the players aren't supposed to.

*** Conjunction of the two allows the players to work around the [[Obvious Rule Patch]] introduced in ''Vampire: The Dark Ages'', where each dot of Celerity requires spending a Blood point to use.

** It has a merit that lets you use Strength for attack rolls now. Said merit is a notorious [[Game Breaker]].

** Socially, appearance has the same issue. The "pretty kitty" effect means that high appearance compensates for low Charisma or Manipulation ''much'' better than the other way around.

* In the [[Hero System]], Dexterity affects your ability to hit, your ability to avoid being hit, is the base stat for Speed (which is how often you act) and affects a large array of adventure-useful skills. So it costs three Character Points per point, while Intelligence is only one Character Point per point.

** In the realm of attributes, Soul is the most important to pump up. Body & Soul determine health, Mind & Soul determine energy, and all three determine combat value. Since checks based only on a single attribute are extremely rare (and the most common is Soul for defense against Soul attacks), min-maxers will always have high Soul.

* Likewise in ''the Serenity RPF'' the character with more Agility wins in combat, the character with more Willpower wins in social settings.

* ''[[Wild Talents]]'' is... different about this trope. Those who win the [[Superpower Lottery]] are very mean indeed, but given the flexibility of superpowers, it's very likely someone can develop a counter to even complete invulnerability (the text suggests teleporting such an upstart to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which is more than possible at that power level). The real world-changers, as repeatedly pointed out in the text itself, are Hypermind, Hypercharm, and Hypercommand, as every WT setting so far averts [[Reed Richards Is Useless]] with a vengeance. To quote Greg Stolze, the guy with 10 hard dice in Disintegrate is a tough customer, but he's nowhere near as bad as the Hypercommanding politician who can [[More Than Mind Control|persuade millions to vote for him by speaking three words]].

** Also, force-sensitives ''must'' invest in the three Force stats if they want to use the Force.

** A better example for [[Star Wars]] D6 is space battles, where everything comes off Mechanical. Gunnery, evasion, pursuit, deflecting incoming fire with the shields, all require Mechanical-based skills.

* Dexterity is king in Cinematic Unisystem, the core engine of the [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]], [[Angel]], and [[Army of Darkness]] RPGs. It's used for several useful skills, initiative, attack rolls and defence rolls, as usual, but the real [[Game Breaker]] is that it sets ''the number of combat actions you get per round''.

** Of course, that's only true for non-magical characters. (Which is, admittedly, almost every character in Angel or Army Of Darkness.) In Buffy, magic wielding characters will do better with two points in Intelligence, then dropping as many points into Will as possible. This lets them cast more spells, more easily, with less chance of something going wrong - in the "summoned a demon" sense. If you can cast spells with impunity, then you can simply buff your other stats with weekly spells.

* Durability in the [[Marvel]] Universe RPG. It's your [[Hit Points]], of course, but it also provides energy, which is the fuel for all your skills and powers. Being a diceless game, having more energy is required to succeed at ''anything''. Characters have the option of using Intelligence for energy instead, which is even better.

** In game, of course, there's POW of which you need an awful lot if you're going to be a hard core wizard. Unfortunately, garnering anything more than the tiniest amounts of POW tends to result in total brain melting insanity, so its a bit tricky to min-max this one, in practise.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** And for non-special types, Speed covered this, as it didn't only influence turn order, but also Critical hit rate.Meaning that moves such as Slash used by a high-speed Pokèmon would always score a powerful, defense-ignoring critical hit.

** Similar in ''[[Monster Rancher]]'', there were six stats: Life, Power, Speed, Skill, Defense, and Intelligence. Of those, Speed referred to a monster's ability to dodge, while Skill referred to its ability to land a blow. In [[Monster Rancher]] 3, Speed and Skill were merged into a single Speed, making it vital to both dodging and hitting - breaking the balance the prior games had and making it overly important.

** In competitive Pokemon, speed is considered the most important stat, as it's advantageous to be able to KO the opposing Pokemon before it can make a move. Generally, the only thing players don't make fast as possible are [[Stone Wall|walls]]; in only a couple generations was speed really end all but players tend to max it out more than other stats anyway. A few craftier veteran players will defy this.

* In ''[[Digimon World 3]]'', speed drastically increases evasion against physical moves - which are the most common type of moves used by enemies - and, if your speed is considerably higher than the enemy's, you get to have two turns for each turn the enemy has.

* In the first two ''[[Fallout]]'' games (and ''[[Fallout Tactics]]''), Agility is one of the most useful stats because it gives you more action points, which let you attack more often, and helps with small guns, the weapons you will use for most of the game. Intelligence is of lesser but still significant importance, governing how many skill points you get per level up and giving you more conversation options.

** The entire game seems designed around core stats being useless, with the exception of STR for its role as a component in weapon skill and certain blue magic spells' damage. As far as auto-attack, equipment that reinforces haste, accuracy and raw ATK will always win. For casters, gains to individual magic skills and specific passive gains such as those present on elemental staves typically provide a greater raw boost than any amount of INT-pumping.

** With a magic block of 128, all attacks that ''can'' miss, ''will'' miss, period. 128 is actually fairly easy to pull off, at least on one character.

** Influences how often you get a pre-emptive strike (basically, you get a free turn; high agility means you get more of these)

** Influences how often you get ambushed (the enemy gets a free turn; high agility means this happens much less often)

** Influences evasion. It is possible for evasion to reach 99% in this game, and with a high enough agility rating, that can happen halfway through. Yeah, the [[Stat Grinding]] system is a pain, but with luck and/or diligence, it can be exploited. All you need is at least one character in the front row with 90+ evasion, and you are basically immortal, evading all attack directed at you while getting free turns near-constantly and capable of running from pretty much everything that's not a boss.

* In Tactical RPGs that rely on clockticks rather than alternating between teams (''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' in the former, ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' in the latter), speed is the most important stat in the game, because more speed = more turns. By the same measure, mobility related stats can be tremendously important; if you combine speed, move, and jump, the other stats don't matter: You've got someone who can strike and then retreat safely out of range before the enemy can attack.

** In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'', Speed was not merely the best stat, it was the ''ONLY'' stat that mattered for most character builds. Thanks to entirely useful [[Useless Useful Spell]] being so dominant, all that really mattered was getting off your [[Game Breaker]] mass debilitator/instant kill attack before the enemy could launch their attacks.

** "Tactics Ogre" is almost certainly the poster boy for this version of the trope. Through abuse of a certain ability, you can create characters with 1 speed. If you're unfamiliar with the speed system; there's 1,000 ticks per turn and you get a number of turns = 1,000/your speed. Note that without abusing the aforementioned ability, even a super-well-made Ninja ends up with speed in the 300's or so. Meaning a character with 1 speed gets about 300 turns before a *Ninja* acts. So yeah...

** In ''[[Phantom Brave]]'', the discrepancy between high-speed and low-speed units is very noticeable. The high-speed units may even clear the board before the low-speed units get a turn. And did we mention there are some attacks that use the speed stat to calculate damage?

** However, enemies that scale to your stats can 1-hit you if your Muscle(determines your HP) is too low. In practice, this rarely happens, as many foes will link their attack to your Moxie (defensive), whereas their defense will match your Muscle (attack) stat, give or take a few points.

* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' has two (or three) of these:

** For the Mecha, it's Mobility, which also determines not only dodging but hitting as well, for the same reasons.

*** Though in some of the games (which ones larger depends on what damage formula is used) you can go the other way if you take a [[Super Robot Genre|Super Robot]]+pilot and [[Whoring|pour so much into the robot's armor and the pilot's defense]] that nothing but bosses even make them flinch.

*** Taken to ridiculous extremes in ''Super Robot Wars K'', where stat bonuses to a pilot were fixed. Focus everything on one pilot and his/her mecha, and you will be ''yawning'' your way through the final boss because, at best on even a ''critical'' hit, he'll only do [[Nigh Invulnerable|10 points of damage]] to your mech (which always has at least a few thousand hit points to chew through).

* In ''[[X-COM]]: UFO Defense'', psionic attacks are a [[Game Breaker]]. The Psi Strength stat determines how good a particular soldier is at psionic attacks and how well he resists them. It is also the only stat that cannot be trained and almost all trainable stats (Throwing and Shooting accuracy and Bravery being the major exceptions) can be trained by attempting psionic attacks. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

** ''Terror From The Deep'' was similar, although the enemies were so much nastier it slightly ameliorated this. In both cases, there was a lot of work involved in getting a squad of soldiers with high Psi Strength ''and'' good combat skills. Getting a squadful of Psionic commandos generally required hiring and firing dozens of soldiers every month, and was critical to victory at higher difficulty levels.

** Adding to this, you gain 3 BP per level up. If you wanted 5 HP instead, there are badges that will give you the same amount of HP for... 3 BP. So long as you had a spare HP or FP badge, you could NEVER go wrong picking BP.

*** If you wanted to break the game even further, you could visit an NPC that lets you raise a stat while lowering another. Naturally, by lowering your HP to be at only 5 points while raising your BP, Mario would be in the Danger status in the start of every battle and get super powered up from every badge that gives him a boost while his HP is low.

* The Mario & Luigi games diminish your returns if you keep choosing the same stat to give bonus points to, and all the stats have their advantages. Still, it's fun to put as much as possible into the 'stache rating and get nearly continuous Lucky hits (and, in the first two games, some very deep discounts in the stores).

** Dex moves up to God Stat in the sequel, which gives you access to Finesse feats letting you use whichever is higher out of Dexterity and Strength to affect accuracy, or better, lets you make good use of blasters, a [[Game Breaker]] when crafted well.

** An alternative build in the sequel involves playing a male character to get the Handmaiden to join you, and learning Battle Precognition- which adds your Wisdom to your AC. At this point, start spamming Force powers- Wisdom is now governing save DCs, difficulty to hit you and your stock of Force points, meaning you're unlikely to ever need to do anything as crass as fire a blaster.

* In ''[[Puzzle Quest]]'', a high Battle stat will allow you to mow through most enemies with ease. The game itself tries to offset this by giving the magic user classes (Wizard and Druid) much higher point costs to raise their Battle levels. (3pts per level, and you only get 4pts per level up). THAT is offset by a point-buy system that allows you to purchase permanent stat boosts.

** This game's [[Game Breaker]] entry lists several builds where a specific mana color counts as that class's One Stat, such as red mana for a warrior riding a spider-dragon.

* All [[Nippon Ichi]] games so far have suffered from this on the higher levels. Early in the game (The first couple of hundred levels), all stats are important. But at the end of the game, all that matters is whatever stat you attack with. Playing defense becomes futile, since any attack that hits you WILL kill you, and unless you're using specific abilities to boost dodge, no amount of Speed will give you any kind of decent chance to dodge. ATK, SPD, HIT, INT, and RES are the stats that matter depending on your weapon/class, and it is rare for more than one to matter for a given character.

** Hell, Gun users will ever only need but one stat: Hit. That lets them do insane, critical damage that always hits on any enemy, bar ones with huge Speed or Defense, from a distance.

*** In ''Phantom Brave'', Speed ''is'' a damage stat, although only for a limited number of relatively unusual abilities, which mostly revolve around the "trolly" and "weed" (the plant, not the drug) weapons. The same goes for every stat: INT and ATK (which are only for attack) certainly have the most attacks that use them, but ''every stat'' has some attacks whose damage is based on it. Including HP, which can be slightly problematic without the right skills on the character (mainly because the damage is calculated on ''current'' HP rather than ''max'' HP, making skills that use it almost useless if you're getting battered).

*** Speed was so important that some weapons were actively unusable (e.g. crystals, signs, and rocks) because they gave huge speed penalties. In the early game, you can get by thanks to the defense bonuses, but by higher levels, the penalties become ''crippling''.

** ''[[Disgaea]]'' weapon damage is based off a given stat based on the form of attack, and each weapon is based in one of a given number of setups. Character base stats don't do too much compared to equipment stats and aptitudes, however.

*** Swords, Spears, and Axes are pure ATK. It's not uncommon to see a character stack Gladiators in one of these and cap off attributes for a Yoshitsuna, Baal Sword, or whatev' and then apply an augmenting dual-stat specialist to optimize the performance once it's mastered. The same applies to Monster weapons with a physical lean.

*** Bows are ATK/HIT hybrids, but tend to be treated as inferior to guns, which were pure HIT until Absence of Justice made them HIT/SPD hybrids. Further explanation is unnecessary; just look above.

*** Staves and magic Monster weapons use ATK to determine damage when you swing them; the typical player will not max ATK, and instead pour everything into INT, which determines damage from spells and the magic abilities the monsters using these weapons utilize anyway. Clerics will focus on RES development, but that is for using their Heal spells on Reverse Damage panels; as stated before, everything end- and post-game is dodge or die.

** Weapons that use two stats are considered inferior to weapons that use one stat because of the system for using specialists to maximize an item. 8 specialists boosting one stat or 8 specialists getting averaged (halved) between two stats and coming out equivalent to 4 specialists? You decide.

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' goes through iterations of stat balance with each major patch, resulting in a very active [[Metagame]] as players use complex spreadsheets and simulators to determine optimal stats even before the changes hit live realms. An effect of this is that most classes and specs have one or two ''absolutely'' optimal stats, with others needed only enough to balance things out. Examples: As of 3.3.3, Assassination Rogues value Attack Power over everything else, while Combat Rogues use Armor Penetration and Subtlety Rogues use Agility. One of Blizzard's objectives in ''Cataclysm'' is to once again rebalance stat desirability, but even they admit that achieving a perfect balance is likely impossible.

** Slightly interesting as many classes and specs deal with limitations that change the metagame when reached. For instance, hit rating is far and away the best secondary stat for spellcasters until they reach 17% hit chance increase (up to 8% are covered by talents and debuffs), at which point it becomes worthless to increase further.

** The notable aversions to this trend are healers and tanks, where it's much less clear what the best stat is. Tanks have to balance stacking Stamina (to improve their maximum health and thus their resistance to spike damage) with avoidance/mitigation (to decrease the average amount of damage they take) and threat (to help keep enemies from running off and killing the damage-dealers). Healers, on the other hand, have to balance throughput (given by Intelligence and most secondary stats) with regeneration (given by Spirit, and a bit by Int as well, which increases how long they can last in a fight). However, the notable exception to these aversions is the druid class. Druid tanks are advised to simply stack Agility on any fight that doesn't specifically call for a big health pool (Agility gives all of avoidance, mitigation, and threat, making it a no-brainer). And due to a quirk of their mechanics, druid healers care about Intelligence more than anything, as not only is it far and away the best throughput stat, but it also increases their longevity better than anything else.

** Energy: [[Dump Stat|never put anything into this.]] (Even when playing a sorceress!)

** Strength is outdone by skill- and equipment-based damage boosts. The attack rating (accuracy) from Dexterity can easily be found elsewhere or is simply irrelevant. The same can be said for the mana gained from Energy. Thus, with enemies having high damage, Vitality is the only thing really worth investing in.

* Ironically ''[[Diablo III]]'' got "Damage" stat, which is a mix of weapon damage, attack speed, crit rate, crit damage and damage stat (varies per class). Every offensive skill use Damage stat as base multiplier so everyone stacks +damage or +main stat items on themselves. Closely followed by vitality which provides health.

* Dexterity (again) in ''[[Ragnarok Online]]''. Melee fighters need Dex to hit enemies. Ranged fighters need Dex to hit enemies and do damage. Casters need high Dex to reduce the game's long, interruptable cast times.

** Vitality arguably is a more important stat in "War of Eternium", the game's version of Guild vs Guild PVP. Since the majority of damage dealt by players is "healable" with the liberal use of health pots of some form, the only danger to well-equipped (serious) WOE PVP players are one hit KO skills, which are naturally easier to survive with more health (governed by Vitality). Dexterity isn't quite so useful in WOE, as the ability for players to dodge attacks is highly nerfed in that mode, and casting classes can generally team up with Bards/Clowns who have a buff that reduces cast time.

** In the original ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' AP wasn't quite so important, as there ''were'' no godlike alternate forms and only one devastating finishing blow. The real god stat in the game was MP, because more MP = more magical healing. Even better, the strength of your spells was determined by your maximum MP, so now you have better spells in addition to being able to cast them more often.

*** ''And'' it powered your special combat moves such as the Arcanum multi-attack.

* ''[[Progress Quest]]'' has strength, which affects your carrying capacity, and thus how often your character has to go back to town. As progress quest is a 'zero player RPG,' this is the only effect any stat has on the so-called 'gameplay.'

* Batting in ''[[Backyard Sports|Backyard Baseball]]''. Even the fastest runners can still easily get out if they have bad batting stats.

* ''[[The Elder Scrolls|Oblivion]]'' can well play out this way, depending on your character class. However, in later levels Strength became all-important, even for pure magic or stealth builds, because of all the great-selling but [[Critical Encumbrance Failure|insanely heavy swag]] you'd start to find. Custom Feather potions can be use as an alternative however. Also, you can drop the heaviest item on the ground and abuse the physics engine by simply dragging it to the door, picking it up to rezone, then dropping the other side if necessary. But then, that would be cheating!

 

* In ''[[Arcanum]]'' the number of attacks (influcenced by dex) is more important than damage, part of what makes balanced swords so broken. Dex also affects a very large number of skills, making it even more important.

** The most durable build is the [[Game Breaker|Arcane Warrior]] class, which [[Invoked Trope|invokes]] this trope as one of its class features: your Magic score is used to determine what armor you can wear and (indirectly) how much melee damage you deal, instead of your Strength. This effectively renders Strength and Dexterity redundant for your build - leaving only Willpower (for normal spells) or Constitution (as a [[Blood Magic|Blood Mage]] dual classer). However, as the arcane warrior is just a stunted damage dealer that can take an ungodly amount of damage, he is the worst tank, as he has a hard time holding the enemies and is doomed to watch the enemies pummel his friends.

* ''[[Trickster Online]]'' gives us the four types. Each of the four types has one stat that you're expected to put all your points into for non-PVP play.

** Magic types: MA (Magic Attack). Damage dealt from Spell skills. Seriously, this is the only stat that makes a difference in a Magic Type's lethality.

** Sense types: Okay, there's a bit of a split here:

*** All other Sense Type players: DA (Detect Ability) not only improves the chances of a guaranteed Hit/Miss from Drilling (A guaranteed Miss means that's one more use of your drill), but also improves the damage dealt from Thrown Items.

** Charm Types: HV (Dodging Ability, or Nimbleness or Flexibility or whatever). Increases chances of avoiding damage altogether, and improves damage dealt by skills.

** The same applies to ''[[Dark Souls]]''.

* Durability in ''WWE Day Of Reckoning 2''. Did not apply in the first game and while no stats are useless in 2, durability needs the most investment before it stops being a visible weakness. Injury resistance, resistance to tapping out and stamina loss are tied to durability.

* In ''[[Maple Story]]'', every job has use for only two stats, one being more important than the other. For example, Warriors only use STR and DEX, and STR is really all they need. It raises pretty much everything, EXCEPT accuracy and requirements to use some equipments. This is why the other stat is important. Some people however choose to forgo the second stat and raise the primary one, while using scrolls to give equipment the secondary stat, therefore allowing them to wield higher leveled equipment.

 

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== [[Web Original]] ==

 

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[[Category:One Stat To Rule Them All]]