History Main / OneStatToRuleThemAll

* ''VideoGame/MarioKart'' has varying examples through its history:
** One remaining stat is acceleration for Grand Prix, considering you have to recover from enemies' attacks before everything else. On the other hand, top speed is the best stat for Time Trials once you know the races perfectly.
** In ''Mario Kart DS'', acceleration was the sole defining stat for the snaking technique. The higher it was, the longer your mini-turbos lasted, which made snaking easier. This also held true for ''Double Dash!!'' since everyone went around the same speed at the max, making karts with high speed pointless and those with high acceleration better.
** ''Mario Kart Wii'' and ''7'' had swung the stat the other way by making speed the most vital stat alongside drift and mini-turbo. ''Wii'' actually makes acceleration pointless because of the stationary drift, making power vehicles true {{Lightning Bruiser}}s.

** One remaining stat is acceleration for Grand Prix, considering you have to recover from enemies' attacks before everything else.

** ''Mario Kart Wii'' and ''7'' had swung the stat the other way by making speed the most vital stat. ''Wii'' actually makes acceleration pointless because of the stationary drift, making turbo and drift specialized vehicles true {{Lightning Bruiser}}s.

*** The 200cc difficulty makes every kart indecently fast and slippy, transforming top speed into an actual ''handicap''. Handling became the most important stat since, may it be with a light or heavy character, along with acceleration and turbo boosts.

** In games that use the Press Turn system (''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne'', both volumes of ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'', ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'', and ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse''), Agility is a very important stat, but for another reason: If a character's attack misses and it's not a status or OneHitKill spell, their side will lose an additional turn. Increasing Agility means the player can minimize their turn losses while maximizing the enemy's.

** In 5th Edition, Dexterity is often complained about for being overpowered because it dictates attack accuracy and damage with ranged and finesse weapons as well as initiative, armour class, and a number of useful skills. The result is a character with far more versatility and power than any Strength-based build, as Strength only deals with attack and damage to non-finesse melee weapons and the (to be fair, very useful) Athletics skill. 5th Edition does attempt to mitigate it a little with some classes and subclasses letting the players substitute a different stat in some situations (such as the Hexblade Warlock or the Battle Smith Artificer using their primary spellcasting stat for weapon attacks) or some other way to compensate for potentially low Dexterity scores (such as the Barbarian's Danger Sense and Feral Instinct giving advantage on Dexterity Saving throws and Initiative rolls respectively).

* In the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'':
** The Celerity discipline (which boosts a vampire's speed and lets him take extra actions in a turn) can approach GameBreaker levels on a combat-oriented character. This isn't as much of a concern in a less combat-oriented campaign, though. The ObviousRulePatch introduced in ''Vampire: The Dark Ages'' has each dot of Celerity cost a blood point to use.
** 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 game book 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. Not to mention, inexperienced vampires with high Generation are [[TheHunterBecomesTheHunted Diablerie bait]].

*** Strength is also hugely beneficial for combat-orientated characters. The default Cinematic rules (which are also frequently houseruled) calculate damage using multiples of Strength, with bigger/more lethal weapons having bigger multipliers. In the hands of a character as strong as Buffy or Angel themselves, such weapons would kill most enemies in one standard hit. Strength also dictates jumping and lifting, as well as helping to calculate Hit Points and Speed.

* Damage is widely seen as the best stat in ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'', with Tears (rate of fire, [[AbnormalAmmo as most characters attack with their tears]]) coming at a close second. Speed can make going through the game more convenient, especially reaching the BossRush and/or [[BonusBoss Hush]] on time, but otherwise isn't too necessary when it comes to dodging attacks, and less-experienced players can risk running in to spikes with the stat too high. Range is usually not necessary to increase since at base level tears still travel pretty far, a lack of range only really becomes a problem with specific items that drastically decrease it, making Range Up items nearly useless in most runs. Shot Speed is outright seen as detrimental because more of it can make certain items less effective and it has no synergies by itself. Luck can be useful for certain items (with the Tough Love item, enough Luck can translate to having a permanent 3x damage multiplier) and with Lucky Pennies from ''Afterbirth'' onwards it's easier to increase than the other stats, but by itself and without any Luck-influenced items it's nothing too big. Tears/rate of fire is also useful in increasing damage per second, but unlike the Damage stat, it has a soft cap that requires certain items to exceed (one of them, Soy Milk, comes at the cost of being a huge Damage down anyway), and there's only so much rapid-fire can do when the shots in question aren't strong. But with just a few Damage upgrades, enemies that would take four hits to kill could be one-shotted and bosses go down much quicker, which adds up to a much easier and faster game in the long run, since tanky enemies and bosses become common as early as Chapter 2. Even Health becomes a non-issue with enough items that boost Damage, since the player will often be killing every enemy before they have a chance to attack, and most bosses go down in only a few seconds. To put it all in perspective, Chapter 3 or 4 with the other stats at their base levels can be managed with good enough Damage or items that otherwise increase overall DPS, while even entering Chapter 2 at base Damage could very well be a death sentence.

** In the [[UpdatedRerelease Final Mix]] of ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'', the godstat changes, as by the time you're grinding to get ready for [[BonusBoss Organization Data and Terra]], given how that game throws [[RareCandy AP Up]] at you, you have the potential to have more AP than you will ever need. The new godstat of your three -- Attack, Defense, Magic -- depends slightly on your strategy but tends to be magic because of Reflect, which creates a BeehiveBarrier around Sora that reflects pretty much every move onto the attacker -- damage based on the strength of the original move and Sora's magic stat.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''LightNovel/BofuriIDontWantToGetHurtSoIllMaxOutMyDefense''. TheHero Maple is a newbie to gaming, so she dumps all of her stats points into her VIT stat and leaves all her other stats at zero (for reference, a zero in AGI means that a turtle is faster than she is). Then, by complete accident, she ends up acquiring skills that ''quadruple'' her already absurd VIT stat and equipment specifically tuned to pump up her VIT even higher. The result is that no player or [=NPC=] can even scratch her and due to the mechanics of the game she gains an AcquiredPoisonImmunity to poison and paralysis, covering the two most problematic status effects to her build. And her own lack of offensive stats is rendered moot by the use of skills that don't rely on her non-existent stats, such as summons, status effects, pets and transformations, all of which she gains earlier than the developers ever intended due to her unique build letting her challenge content that would be way beyond her level. Maple quickly becomes one of the most infamous players in the game ''[[AchievementsInIgnorance by complete accident]]''.

* In the Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration RPG from The Last Unicorn Games, there are fairly typical base stats: Fitness, Coordination, Intellect, Presence, and Psi. However, because this is Star Trek and technology is such an important part of the setting, Intellect is far and away the most vital stat for most characters. Using Main/TechnoBabble to figure out a way out of one's situation is almost encouraged. Presence is the second most important, as characters often find themselves in tricky diplomatic negotiations.

* ''VisualNovel/LongLiveTheQueen'': While the game is prone to suddenly requiring a so-far useless skills to be at a high level, there are a few skills that are consistently an obvious good investmet:

* In ''VideoGame/EldenRing'', Vigor is by far the most important stat to raise. Especially once you beat the ClimaxBoss and access the last third or so of the game, where a severe DifficultySpike makes everything do so much damage that having less than 40 Vigor is just asking to be one-shot by even regular enemies, and it's strongly recommended that you take it all the way to the softcap of 60. For reference, the generally agreed-upon stopping point for levelling Vigor in previous ''Souls'' games was somewhere in the 20-30 range. Also of note is that ''Elden Ring'' brought Endurance back to its former glory of raising both stamina and equip load, which caused it to be this trope in previous games, and yet it ''still'' loses out to Vigor in importance.

* In games based on the ''TabletopGame/{{Fate}}'' system (''TabletopGame/SpiritOfTheCentury'', ''TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles'' et al.), whatever a character's peak skill happens to be can be turned into this to an extent. This is because one available standard function of stunts is to allow a character to use an alternate skill instead of the usual one for some specific task (say, using Deceit instead of Empathy to figure out whether somebody is lying, Intimidation instead of Resolve to resist hostile intimidation attempts, Guns instead of Weapons to throw suitable weapons and projectiles...) and players and [[GameMaster GMs]] are always free to add ''new'' stunts at their discretion. So in principle at least it's entirely possible to build a character, player or non-, who uses his or her highest skill rating, if not all the time, then at least for most of the things he or she actually ''cares'' about.

** For defensive Pokémon the stat to rule them all is HP, more so than Defense and Special Defense. Having a low HP stat and two high defense stats will in practice be as good as a Pokémon with high HP and lower defenses, making having high HP better for a Pokémon in terms of base stat distribution. The exception to this is Guzzlord, which has the third highest HP stat in the game (behind only Chansey and Blissey), but has a pitiful base 53 in both defensive stats that render it unable to actually use that sky-high health.

* In ''WebVideo/TierZoo'', a video series that treats nature and wildlife like an MMO known as Outside and puts animals into in-universe CharacterTiers, the most powerful stat is Intelligence. This allows for both group tactics (itself an extremely good quality) and wisdom accumulation. Humans, who have high Intelligence and average speed, but rather low stats everywhere else abuse their maxed-out intelligence to simply craft items that give them extremely high stats in everything except Health. The show does make some caveats, as it notes that a few required support features are needed to get the most out of intelligence, mainly a long enough lifespan to accumulate wisdom, and the ability to use tools, and while intelligence is still extremely powerful without them, it's not absolutely broken the way it is with them. Octopuses, for example, have extremely high intelligence and and remarkable problem solving skills, and together with their camouflage abilities they have very lethal hunting and fighting skills, but since they only live for a few years, they don't get to do all that much with it. Dolphins do have a high intelligence and long lifespan, so they can do things like cooperate for more efficient hunting and group protection strategy, but without the ability to make and use tools, they have no chance of taking over the game the way that humans have.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' exemplifies the trope in several ways. Your base stats (strength, vitality, dexterity, mind, intelligence, and piety) grow as you level up and each level up; tanks will go for vitality, melee DPS will go for strength, ranged, non-magical DPS will go for dexterity, healers will go for mind piety, while DPS casters will pour points into intelligence. Gear also encourages this type of behavior since they're made specifically for classes who can take advantage of their most used stats. You're likely be yelled at by other players if you're using gear that isn't suited for your class.
*** As the game evolved, the developers have taken strides to prevent doing that anyways. Tanks now scale their damage mainly to Vitality while Healers' attacking spells scale to Mind instead of Intelligence. Most accessories are role locked now, so a Tank can't equip DPS accessories over Tank intended accessories in order to increase their DPS at the cost of survivability.

* [=GamePro=] Magazine used four ratings for their game reviews: "Graphics", "Sound", "Controls", and "Fun Factor". While not equivalent to an "Overall" rating (which was elaborated in an editorial section), "Fun Factor" [[https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/gamepro-memories-526825/ was treated as the ultimate factor in determining whether a game is worth playing]], followed by "Controls" for directly impacting the player's ability to have fun with the game.[[note]]This correlation was seen in the ratings themselves, with "Fun Factor" almost never ranking more than 0.5 points (out of 5) than "Controls".[[/note]]

* In ''WebVideo/TierZoo'', a video series that treats nature and wildlife like an MMO known as Outside and puts animals into in-universe CharacterTiers, the most powerful stat is Intelligence. This allows for both group tactics (itself an extremely good quality) and wisdom accumulation. Humans, who have high Intelligence and average speed, but rather low stats everywhere else abuse their maxed-out intelligence to simply craft items that give them extremely high stats in everything except Health.

* In ''VideoGame/EldenRing'', Vigor is by far the most important stat to raise. Especially once you beat the ClimaxBoss and access the last third or so of the game, where a severe DifficultySpike makes everything do so much damage that having less than 40 Vigor is just asking to be one-shot by even regular enemies, and it's strongly recommended that you take it all the way to the softcap of 60. For reference, the generally agreed-upon stopping point for levelling Vigor in previous ''Souls'' games was somewhere in the 20-30 range. Also of note is that ''Elden Ring'' brought Endurance back to its former glory of raising both stamina and equip load, which caused it to be this trope in previous games, and yet it ''still'' loses out to Vigor in importance. Series veterans have decried this as a ScrappyMechanic on par with ''Dark Souls II'''s Adaptability, being a stat that you are absolutely required to dump many points into just to essentially make the game playable.

** ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'' has its own stat to rule them all in the form of Adaptability, which raises Agility, which determines how many invincibility frames you get while dodge rolling. You need 96 Agility to have the same amount of i-frames as a ''Dark Souls I'' midroll, and 105 for a lightroll. So if you plan on relying mostly on dodging attacks, [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome which you probably do]], be prepared to pump many levels into Adaptability. It is for this reason that Adaptability/Agility is widely considered a ScrappyMechanic. Agility also determines the speed of certain animations such as [[HealThyself drinking estus]], drastically reducing the chance that you get interrupted while performing these animations.

* In the ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' series, the [[FragileSpeedster speedier, quick-attacking]] characters rule the competitive scene, as they have the ability to output damage more efficiently than every other character does. It's taken UpToEleven with Meta Knight in ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl Brawl]]'', who has the distinction of being the only character who can combo with the minimal hitstun, making him formally banned at many tournaments.

* Parodied in ''[[http://web.archive.org/web/20051024220642/http://www.unclebear.com/downloads/badtudes.pdf Bad Attitudes..]]'' an Action Movie RPG. The only stat is Attitude, which is initiative, HitPoints, and points to spend on the important skills (shooting, hand-to-hand, driving, not falling, and picking up girls/guys). The only other skill, despite being an all-encompassing knowledge skill, is called Basically Worthless Stuff. There are three 'classes', Regular Folk, Sidekicks, and Action Heroes, with progressively-higher Attitude scores. Action Heroes can only buy the five action skills; Regular Folk can only buy Basically Worthless Stuff. Damage is also class-based. Essentially, everyone should be playing a brainless Action Hero.

'''Majide:''' '''Unfortunately I'm [[TastesLikeDiabetes much too kawaii!!]]'''\\

* PlayedForLaughs in ''LightNovel/BofuriIDontWantToGetHurtSoIllMaxOutMyDefense''. TheHero Maple is a newbie to gaming, so she dumps all of her stats points into her VIT stat and leaves all her other stats at zero (for reference, a zero in AGI means that a turtle is faster than she is). Then, by complete accident, she ends up acquiring skills that ''quadruple'' her her already absurd VIT stat and equipment specifically tuned to pump up her VIT even higher. The result is that no player or [=NPC=] can even scratch her and due to the mechanics of the game she gains an AcquiredPoisonImmunity to poison and paralysis, covering the two most problematic status effects to her build. And her own lack of offensive stats is rendered moot by the use of skills that don't rely on her non-existent stats, such as summons, status effects, pets and transformations, all of which she gains earlier than the developers ever intended due to her unique build letting her challenge content that would be way beyond her level. Maple quickly becomes one of the most infamous players in the game ''[[AchievementsInIgnorance by complete accident]]''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}''
** Arcane is among the most incredibly useful stats to raise and to base a character build around. Most stats raise only one thing (Strength raises strength weapon adjustment, skill raises skill weapon adjustment, etc.), but Arcane raises elemental weapon damage (and all enemies have an elemental weakness), increases the attack damage of most attack items (like firebombs), grants access to the use of magical items, and raises item drop rates. Long story short, even if your build is strength or skill based, many advise raising your arcane during your second playthrough so you can make the best use of all of your items, and broaden your arsenal so that you're up for the challenge. ''The Old Hunters'' DLC introduces the Kos Parasite, a peculiar weapon that turns you into a [[HumanoidAbomination Lumenwood Kin]] and it ''only'' scales with Arcane. In other words, if your primary weapon is the Kos Parasite, you don't even need to raise any other stat at all.
** Skill is the second most useful stat since visceral attack damage scales with it. It also scales with the Thrust damage of your currently equipped weapon. If you happen to have all 3 Clawmark runes attuned and are holding a weapon that deals Thrust damage (preferably bolstered with Adept Blood Gems) and also has at least halfway decent Skill scaling, every single visceral attack is a OneHitKill, a potential GameBreaker for [=PvP=].
** Bloodtinge is either this ''or'' a DumpStat, no in-between, depending on whether or not you want to use one of the three melee weapons that scale off it, all of which are quite powerful at high Bloodtinge. Otherwise, all it does is increase the damage of your guns. Since guns are pretty much only used for parrying and don't do much damage to begin with, increasing that damage doesn't really amount to much. The three guns that ''are'' for dealing big damage (the [[ArmCannon Cannon, Church Cannon]], and [[GatlingGood Gatling Gun]]) don't even have Bloodtinge scaling, so it's no good for those either.
** While not as deadly as the three above, Strength is the stat for Saw Cleaver and Hunter Axe, the starter weapons which also happen to be DiscOneNuke, if you invested Strength heavily, you can utilise the aforementioned Cannon/Church Cannon and Gatling Gun as well, the latter of which is capable of gunning down the TrueFinalBoss without even a slice.

->''"I put all my skill points into 'Knowledge - Game Master'."''