History Main / OneStatToRuleThemAll

** In the games with attributes, Endurance is the ruling attribute. Considering that it determines your starting health, as well as your health gain per level, it is a critically important attribute for all character builds. Making Endurance one of your favored attributes during character creation is highly encouraged, even for magic-oriented characters, in order to avert becoming a SquishyWizard. Further, this makes The Lady a favored birthsign in ''Morrowind'' and ''Oblivion'', as it gives a sizeable boost to Endurance right at the start of the game.
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'', for skills, it is Alchemy. With 100 Alchemy, you can churn out healing and mana potions like noone's business, making you nigh-invincible and able to kill anything through sheer attrition. Not that you'd need to, because you can buff all your other stats easily with more potions, and make hideously powerful poisons that can do a lot of the damage for you. With ''[[GameBreaker 1000000 Alchemy]]'', you can create potions of boosted intelligence, quaff them, create greater quality potions of boosted intelligence ''because'' of the intelligence boost, and continue recursively until you have such an insane INT score you can craft universe-warping weapons and items. You essentially become TheSingularity.

* [[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue The first generation of]] ''[[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Pokémon]]'' games had the Special stat affecting both the attack power of AND defense from Special moves. In that generation, the Special stat affected some of the most powerful attacks, including all of the Psychic moves, which was particularly important given that in Gen 1. The ElementalRockPaperScissors was poorly balanced against Psychic, giving it no meaningful weaknesses either offensively ''or'' defensively (Ghost was bugged and did no damage to them instead, plus only had [[FixedDamageAttack Night Shade]] as its only decent move and was a physical type when its only would-be abusers had awful Attack, Bug had no moves good enough for the weakness to matter, Dark and Steel did not exist yet). This is why [[OlympusMons Mewtwo]] was so [[GameBreaker ludicrously broken]] in its heyday - Psychic type combined with the highest Special stat in the game. The second generation of games split this into Special Attack and Defense, and, in fourth generation, Physical and Special moves are no longer determined along rigid type lines (Hyper Beam is now a special move, for instance).

* ''VideoGame/MarioKart'':

** ''Mario Kart Wii'' and ''7'' had swung the stat the other way by making speed the most vital stat.

** ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor2'' fixed this problem by meaning damage only falls into one category, meaning that all damage received is governed by Vitality... except Vitality became the OneStatToRuleThemAll and magic-users became useless due to being even [[SquishyWizard squishier]] than usual, at least until later into the game when you've unlocked their personal demons.

* In the original ''VideoGame/{{Exile}}'' games, Strength was the OneStatToRuleThemAll because it heavily affected physical damage and Hit Points -- and, in later games, carrying capacity to boot.

* ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'': Depending on the game, your preferred character build (magic vs. strength), and to what degree you can control stat distribution, which stat is ''the'' OneStatToRuleThemAll is a your mileage may vary issue. To prevent flame wars, ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' players created a guide calculating exactly how many points of damage would be added for each point spent in the relevant stats.

** Despite the purely turn-based nature of the series, most players agree Speed is the most important stat. It determines evasion (Luck does too, but to a much smaller degree) which, in a game with FinalDeath, is ''VERY'' important. It also determines double attacks (a unit hits twice if their speed is greater than a certain amount above their opponent's) which can be the difference between finishing the enemy in one move or having to waste a second character's move to deal the final blow, which sometimes is neither possible nor practical. Furthermore, doubling works for the enemy too, meaning slow characters tend to get hit twice, which is especially bad if the unit also has low defense, [[SquishyWizard like most magic users]], and [[FromBadToWorse even worse]] if the enemy has a non-zero CriticalHit chance, as now they have two chances to get a critical instead of one (and one is [[RandomNumberGod usually bad enough]]). It gets so bad that on the [[NintendoHard higher difficulty levels]] of the latest games, MightyGlacier characters with high Defense are actually ''less'' durable than someone with worse Defense, but enough speed to avoid being doubled. (Getting hit twice for 15 damage each is worse than getting hit once for 25.) This can be zigzagged, though, as characters tend to quickly outpace the enemies, resulting in characters with high Speed having their Speed become overkill unless they're wielding the heaviest weapons.

* Even in the purely turn-based ''Franchise/FireEmblem'', most players agree Speed is the most important stat. It determines evasion (Luck does too, but to a much smaller degree) which, in a game with FinalDeath, is ''VERY'' important. It also determines double attacks (a unit hits twice if their speed is greater than a certain amount above their opponent's) which can be the difference between finishing the enemy in one move or having to waste a second character's move to deal the final blow, which sometimes is neither possible nor practical. Furthermore, doubling works for the enemy too, meaning slow characters tend to get hit twice, which is especially bad if the unit also has low defense, [[SquishyWizard like most magic users]], and [[FromBadToWorse even worse]] if the enemy has a non-zero CriticalHit chance, as now they have two chances to get a critical instead of one (and one is [[RandomNumberGod usually bad enough]]). It gets so bad that on the [[NintendoHard higher difficulty levels]] of the latest games, MightyGlacier characters with high Defense are actually ''less'' durable than someone with worse Defense, but enough speed to avoid being doubled. (Getting hit twice for 15 damage each is worse than getting hit once for 25.) This can be zigzagged, though, as characters tend to quickly outpace the enemies, resulting in characters with high Speed having their Speed become overkill unless they're wielding the heaviest weapons.
** Though it (almost) never increases with stat growth, Move is the other main stat, due to the simple sheer versatility of being able to move around quicker. Units with high Move consistently outperform units with low Move on the tier lists, and the Boots (which increase Move) are universally seen as one of the game's strongest items, to the point that [[TooAwesomeToUse you rarely get more than one pair per playthrough]]. Games with buyable Boots tend to have players sinking as much of their funds as possible into purchasing Boots by the cartload.
** This is still mostly the case in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'', but any combat involving a unit with the skill [[MinmaxersDelight Wary Fighter]] means neither unit can do a follow-up attack, reducing speed to a DumpStat.
** Defense became much more important in Radiant Dawn, when speed became much more averaged-out between classes.
** While Normal and Hard modes of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' still have Speed as the most important stat, Maddening mode devalues it by a lot, thanks to enemies having Speed stats so inflated that most of your units will never be able to double them. While it's still an important stat for not ''being'' doubled, the most important stat in Maddening is instead Strength (or Magic for mages), which directly increases the damage a unit deals with all attacks. This is incredibly valuable in a mode where your most reliable option is frequently to kill enemies in a single blow with combat arts. Speed may double a unit's damage if they're actually able to double, but since so few units can even hope to double, having any amount of increased damage is better.
*** STR and MAG are also highly coveted in Maddening due to the gameplay focus on whittling away enemy healthbars using attacks and arts that outrange their counterattacks before moving in for the kill, as Maddening difficulty enemies simply hit too hard to approach the usual way. This is especially true in the early game where most of your units are fragile enough that they can only soak two or three hits at most.

* 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.

* While in TabletopGame/{{Aberrant}}, Mega-Charisma was ungodly powerful. Legend has it that in an early con-demo, one player took every combat trait he could find, but lost instantly to a mega-charisma build in a fight after the latter player said, "Go home." The combat monster had to do exactly that. Given a bullhorn, a mega-charismatic nova could sway armies, even nations, with only a single speech. This doesn't even take into account that Charisma, and Mega-Charisma, affect a bunch of non-combat skills, and the astoundingly abusable ability to create things. Given some creative players, armies of miniature guns quickly emerge and demolish the opposition's boss/team/base/city/continent.

* The D6 version of the ''StarWars'' roleplaying game had six stats: Dexterity, Knowledge, Mechanical, Perception, Strength, and Technical. While you should have at least one character specializing in each stat, ''all'' your characters ''must'' have an average or better Dexterity, since it is what you use to block ''any'' attacks, dodge ''any'' attacks ''and'' use ''any'' weapons!

* [=GamePro=] Magazine used four ratings for their game reviews: "Graphics", "Sound", "Controls", and "Fun Factor". While not equivalent to an "Overall" rating (elaborating as such 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 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 Bladesinger Wizard 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).

* [[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue The first generation of]] ''[[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Pokémon]]'' games had the Special stat affecting both the attack power of AND defense from Special moves. In that generation, the Special stat affected some of the most powerful attacks, including all of the Psychic moves, which was particularly important given that in Gen 1. The ElementalRockPaperScissors was poorly balanced against Psychic, giving it no meaningful weaknesses either offensively ''or'' defensively (Ghost was bugged and did no damage to them instead, plus only had [[FixedDamageAttack Night Shade]] as its only decent move and was a physical type when its only would-be abusers had awful Attack, Bug had no moves good enough for the weakness to matter, Dark and Steel did not exist yet). This is why [[OlympusMons Mewtwo]] was so [[GameBreaker ludicrously broken]] in its heyday - Psychic type combined with the highest Special stat in the game. The second generation of games split this into Special Attack and Defense, and, in fourth generation, Physical and Special moves are no longer determined along rigid type lines (Hyper Beam is now a special move, for instance).
** 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 Pokémon would always score a powerful, defenses-ignoring critical hit.
** In competitive Pokémon, Speed is considered the most important stat, as it's advantageous to be able to KO the opposing Pokémon before it can make a move. Generally, the only thing players don't make as fast as possible are [[StoneWall 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 Generation IV, a move called "Trick Room" was introduced that inverts turn order -- this means that on some Pokémon, it is more advantageous to have a low speed stat. Any Pokémon on the slow side ''needs'' a reliable healing move, no matter how much of a wall they are--fast Pokémon can defeat multiple opponents without taking damage, but slow Pokémon don't have that kind of benefit and need some way to erase the damage they'll inevitably sustain.
** Possibly even more than Speed, in competitive battles, evasion can be seen as such a GameBreaker, or something that increases the luck factor, that moves specifically raising that stat, such as Double Team and Minimize, are generally banned in unofficial matches.
** 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.
* Similarly in ''VideoGame/MonsterRancher'', 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 ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld3'', 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 ''VideoGame/Wasteland2'', high Intelligence gives you extra Skill points at every level, and you ''will'' need high {{Skill Score}}s to accomplish most things that aren't combat in this game. In combat, Awareness and Speed have the biggest effect because they decide Combat Initiative and therefore the number of turns you get ''and'' how early you'll get them.
* ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'' 's Wisdom stat is pretty much god, due to it providing the most dialogue along with experience boosts. Amusing considering that the Cleric class (the only one that can actually benefit from high wisdom) is not available to your character. Contrary to popular belief, wizards do not benefit from a high wisdom, only from intelligence.
** The higher your wisdom, the more experience you'll get. Investing in Wisdom early on can net you enough bonus experience through this and extra dialogue options to be stronger and tougher by the end of the game than if you had invested in them from the start. ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'' is one of the more balanced games though -- there are noticeable differences, but no stat is a designated DumpStat unless the player chooses it to be.
* In the original ''VideoGame/{{Exile}}'' games, Strength was the OneStatToRuleThemAll because it heavily affected physical damage and Hit Points -- and, in later games, carrying capacity to boot.

** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'', capping Haste has become trivial--and, correspondingly, it's no longer the God-stat it used to be.

*** Likewise, for ranged attacks and Weapon Skills, the most important stat is Ranged Accuracy--although Store TP is a much closer second for ranged attacks than for melee.
*** For nukes and elemental Weapon Skills, however, Magic Attack Bonus is God. It doesn't matter how slow your cast time, recast time, or magic accuracy are if you can burst Meteor or Death for 64k+ damage. By the same token, Leaden Salute, the signature move of Corsairs, is one of the most powerful WSs in the game, right next to Savage Blade and Rudra's Storm--as long as the player takes the time to stack enough MAB.

* ''VideoGame/GranblueFantasy'': Characters have two raw numerical stats, ATK and HP which represent their health and attack power respectively. There are also secondary stats (known as [=EMPs=]) represented by percentages such as Defense, Critical Hit Rate / Damage, Dodge Rate, Hostility Rate, Skill Damage, Charge Attack Damage, Stamina, Enmity, Damage Caps, Healing Caps, Debuff Success, and Debuff Resistance. While almost all of them can be boosted by [[TechPoints Extended Mastery Points]], Rings, and Weapon Skills, the Attack stat (though not the Attack EMP, which is considered absurdly wasteful outside of the main character's) is considered as the best stat to invest towards. Granblue is ideally about being able to defeat opponents and enemies in the fastest way possible ([[JustifiedTrope Justified]], as multi-player raids have a time limit, and the best way to contribute to raids is to deal as much damage as possible within a few turns.

* Playing ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron'' 2 as the Russians makes infantry and artillery techs into this. You'll never need a navy unless you're going for a full world conquest, and an air force has nothing on a pure human-wave strategy. The stronger the grunts, the more decisive the victory as a general rule.
* Even in the purely turn-based ''Franchise/FireEmblem'', most players agree Speed is the most important stat. It determines evasion (Luck does too, but to a much smaller degree) which, in a game with FinalDeath, is ''VERY'' important. It also determines double attacks (a unit hits twice if their speed is greater than a certain amount above their opponent's) which can be the difference between finishing the enemy in one move or having to waste a second charater's move to deal the final blow, which sometimes is neither possible nor practical. Furthermore, doubling works for the enemy too, meaning slow characters tend to get hit twice, which is especially bad if the unit also has low defense, [[SquishyWizard like most magic users]], and [[FromBadToWorse even worse]] if the enemy has a non-zero CriticalHit chance, as now they have two chances to get a critical instead of one (and one is [[RandomNumberGod usually bad enough]]). It gets so bad that on the [[NintendoHard higher difficulty levels]] of the latest games, MightyGlacier characters with high Defense are actually ''less'' durable than someone with worse Defense, but enough speed to avoid being doubled. (Getting hit twice for 15 damage each is worse than getting hit once for 25.) This can be zigzagged, though, as characters tend to quickly outpace the enemies, resulting in characters with high Speed having their Speed become overkill unless they're wielding the heaviest weapons.

* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'':
** For the pilots, it's Dodge. After all, it doesn't matter if you can take a hit or not if nothing ever hits you. If a mecha has an "Automatic Dodge" skill (like [[LightNovel/FullMetalPanic ECS]] or [[Manga/GetterRobo Open Get]]), then Maneuverability, which determines how often it comes out, will share time with it. Later games limit the effectiveness of this by adding the "Evasion Decay" mechanic where [[DiminishingReturnsForBalance every successful dodge makes the next less likely]], resetting only once you take a hit.
** For the Mecha, it's Mobility, which also determines not only dodging but hitting as well, for the same reasons.
** Hit is also extremely important. However, there's not much you can do outside of Strike/Focus spirit and Hit increasing parts, in most games. Recently however Hit has been upgradable in a mech. In games with the pilot point system on the other hand you can ramp up your pilot's Hit and Evade to make them much more powerful. (Or if you're talking about a tanking mecha, Defense)
** Skill in the [[VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsZ Z Series]]. Skill not only determines critical hit chance but also governs the activation many other abilities such as Counter [[note]]Chance of interrupting an enemy's attack with your counterattack first[[/note]], Attack Again [[note]]Allows the pilot to provide offensive support for himself if Skill stat is 20 or better than enemy[[/note]], Sword Cut[[note]]cut down incoming missiles or parry melee attacks[[/note]], and Shield Defense.
* In ''VideoGame/XCOMUFODefense'', psionic attacks are a GameBreaker. 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.
** ''[[VideoGame/XCOMTerrorFromTheDeep 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.
** [[VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown The 2012 Remake]] continues the trend, with ''Will'' being key to psionic troopers. A soldier's likelihood of being psionic is dependent on their Will stat, which also determines the chance of psionic attacks (such as Mindfray and Mind Control) actually working whilst ''also'' rendering the soldier more resistant to said attacks. Will is increased by ranking up but can be boosted with items, and can be permanently reduced if a soldier is critically wounded during a mission. With sufficiently high Will, a soldier can ''reliably'' Mind Control [[SmashMook Muton Berzerkers]] and Ethereals.
* BP (badge points) is by far the most useful statistic in the ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' series, and due to certain combos of badges being nearly certain {{Game Breaker}}s (The Danger and Peril Mario badge set ups for example), you could have it set up so it pretty much took the place of the other stats, or made them completely redundant as all your basic attacks, due to the certain badge combos massively boosting attack power would do like 90 odd damage per hit and one hit pretty much everything. So yeah, BP was probably this kind of stat in that series.
** 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 (including some that reduce or randomly negate damage). The aforementioned Danger/Peril Mario builds rely on this trick.

* In ''VideoGame/PuzzleQuest'', 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.
** A specific mana color counts as a class's One Stat, such as red mana for a warrior riding a spider-dragon.

** ''Disgaea 3'' revels in this trope - your attack stats, and ''maybe'' your dodge stats are the only things that matter. At the high levels, ''every'' attack is a one-hit kill, unless it is dodged. This is thanks to the fact that you can stack massive bonuses to your damage (all of your special attacks having something like +1200% damage just from their base effects, not counting additional bonuses) which apply ''before'' defense rendering defense completely pointless.

* It didn't show in normal gameplay, but Agility was by far the best stat in ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} III''. It raised attack speed and armor (plus attack power as the primary stat) while strength only affected health and intellect only affected mana and mana regeneration... which was pretty useless since spells still had cooldowns and didn't scale with anything.
** This was so significant that not only did no Agility Hero have a particularly high Agility growth (most would end up in the low 30s while other class heroes never got lower than low 40s in their main stat, and some Strength Heroes could hit as high as mid-50s before factoring in bonuses), but that in fact ''only one Agility Hero had Agility as his highest attribute'' at the end of his natural progression.
** {{Whoring}} onto Agility generally happened in ''Warcraft III'' inside custom maps where it was possible to raise any of a hero's stats significantly.
** Some custom maps tried to balance this by making agility boosts much more expensive and intelligence cheaper. The very complex ones use spells that actually scale with stats instead of fixed damage.
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' 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: In 3.3.3, Assassination Rogues valued Attack Power over everything else, while Combat Rogues used Armor Penetration and Subtlety Rogues used Agility. One of Blizzard's objectives in ''Cataclysm'' was to once again rebalance stat desirability, but even they admit that achieving a perfect balance is likely impossible.
** Patch 4.0.1, a.k.a. ''Cataclysm'', came with a more sweeping revision of the stat system that arguably averts this trope. Every class now has One Stat to Rule Them All, and regardless of spec it is their primary stat that matches their damage type (strength for some physical damage-dealers, agility for others, intellect for casters). However, the amount of those stats on items is (nearly) constant at a given item level, so maximizing your primary stat is now a no-brainer. The challenge, and customization option, comes from secondary stats: critical strike, dodge, expertise, haste, hit, mastery, parry and spirit. Everyone needs some of several of those and don't care about others. While most classes and specs have one or two secondary stats that are technically optimal, no one can completely ignore the rest due to caps, diminishing returns and similar effects.
** 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.
* The second ''VideoGame/{{Geneforge}}'' game has Parry, and it acts as an additional dodge chance coming before the standard one. Boost it to 20 (the max being 30), and against most monsters you are almost unhittable.
** For anyone who Shapes, Intelligence is a god stat, because it allows you to keep more and stronger creations in your party. In the first game, it costs the same to increase a stat no matter how many times you do, so there's almost no reason to put any points in anything other than this (and Mechanics and Leadership). In the sequels, it costs more to increase a stat the more you do, so once you get up into the range of being able to increase Intelligence by one every three levels, it's not so worth it anymore.
* This is the fate of Vitality in ''VideoGame/DiabloII''. Nearly ''every'' single character build follows this stat format:
** Strength: as little as possible to meet equipment requirements
** Dexterity: as above, or exactly enough for maximum block.
** Vitality: [=PUT EVERYTHING YOU HAVE HERE!=]
** Energy: [[DumpStat 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.
** This is why ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' has automatic stat point assignment. [[StopHavingFunGuys Many fans]] ironically consider this to reduce the importance of player skill because in ''VideoGame/DiabloII'' if you are a newbie you '''will''' put your stat points in wrong and end up with a useless character.
*** They're probably fixing some UnstableEquilibrium with this. One of ''VideoGame/DiabloII'''s newest patches, 1.13c, added in the ability to "respec" and reset attribute and skill points once per difficulty level to encourage non-MinMaxing.
* ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' does this to an even greater extreme, thanks to automatic stat assignment and the loot system that makes gear with relevant stat bonuses appear more often. Although each stat (other than Vitality) has some effect, their primary purpose is a damage multiplier. Mages and Witch Doctors use Intelligence, Demon Hunters and Monks use Dexterity, and Barbarians (and Crusaders in the ''Reaper of Souls'' expansion) use Strength. Usually, the main stat will be in the thousands at level 70, while the secondary ones lag behind in the double digits.

* In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' (and, to a lesser extent, the original) your stats can be whatever you want... except for your AP. By the end game, it doesn't matter how high your strength or magic are. What matters is if you can equip all of your devastating finishing blows and boost the duration of your godlike alternate forms.
** 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.
** In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI'', 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 is MP, because more MP = more magical healing, and more special power moves such as Sonic Blade and Ars Arcanum. Even better, the strength of your spells was determined by your maximum MP, so you have better spells in addition to being able to cast them more often.
** For ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'', exploiting critical hits (the final blow in a combo) are the key to soloing the mission mode. Take a character with high critical stats like [[TheDragon Saïx]], equip him with the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Zero Gear]] and the Critical Sun ring, and you'll be taking off entire bars of HP per combo.
* ''VideoGame/ProgressQuest'' 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 ''[[VideoGame/BackyardSports Backyard Baseball]]''. Even the fastest runners can still easily get out if they have bad batting stats.
* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':
** In the games with attributes, Endurance is the ruling attribute. Considering that it determines your starting health, as well as your health gain per level, it is a critically important attribute for all character builds. Making Endurance one of your favored attributes during character creation is highly encouraged, even for magic-oriented characters, in order to avert becoming a SquishyWizard. Further, this makes The Lady a favored birthsign in ''Morrowind'' and ''Oblivion'', as it gives a sizeable boost to Endurance right at the start of the game.
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'', for skills, it is Alchemy. With 100 Alchemy, you can churn out healing and mana potions like noone's business, making you nigh-invincible and able to kill anything through sheer attrition. Not that you'd need to, because you can buff all your other stats easily with more potions, and make hideously powerful poisons that can do a lot of the damage for you. With ''[[GameBreaker 1000000 Alchemy]]'', you can create potions of boosted intelligence, quaff them, create greater quality potions of boosted intelligence ''because'' of the intelligence boost, and continue recursively until you have such an insane INT score you can craft universe-warping weapons and items. You essentially become TheSingularity.
*** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', this same trick can be used using Fortify Restoration potions to boost enchants of Fortify Alchemy, making the same buffs preformed with obscene precentage boosts.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'' also has Strength, even for pure magic or stealth builds, because of all the great-selling but [[CriticalEncumbranceFailure insanely heavy loot]] 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 ''VideoGame/{{Arcanum}}'' the number of attacks (influenced 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.
** Wizards could somewhat bypass this, since they could stack Dex-boosting magic provided their mental stats were high enough. Because there is a magical dagger that has a special feature of only taking 1 AP per swing, and hitting 20 points in Dex gave you a bonus 5 AP (on top of the 1 AP per 1 Dex you already gained), it allowed you to enter turn-based mode as soon as you got close to an enemy, and proceed to hit the enemy 25+ times in a row before the enemy would have a chance to counter you. This is in comparison to a normal character getting 2-3 hits in a turn (although said hits would probably be 2 or 3 times as powerful). Almost no single enemy would be able to survive that kind of beating.

* Cunning for certain Rogue builds in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins''. It is one of the slower builds, but by end game you will reach the maximum support and offensive potential of the Rogue class. This is because Cunning can be added multiple times to your weapon damage with the right talents, which Strength and Dexterity can't no matter what weapons you use. In addition, all the support abilities are Cunning based and focusing on the stat will cause you to be able to unlock or disarm anything in the game without getting the matching skills or talents like other Rogue builds would. You still require a minimal amount of Strength and Dexterity due to prerequisites for equipment and talents, but end game, the Cunning score will be about equal to all of your other stats combined.
** The most durable build is the [[{{Gamebreaker}} Arcane Warrior]] class, which [[InvokedTrope 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 [[BloodMagic Blood Mage]] dual classer). Even if you don't use the melee aspect of the Arcane Warrior class, the Magic score still affects the raw power of your spells, letting you layer on a couple of sustained defensive buffs and become a StoneWall or MightyGlacier that can tank attacks that would take out a warrior.
** In [[VideoGame/DragonAgeII the sequel]], dual-weapon rogues are just as dependent on Cunning, at least until it reaches 40, since that's the point at which your critical damage is fairly hefty and you can pick any lock and disarm any trap in the game, ''and'' it'll increase your Defence stat. With certain talents, you can add massive quantities to your raw and critical damage based on your Cunning, meaning that the only reason you'll be investing in Dexterity is to keep your hit-rate up, and there's really no incentive ''at all'' to invest in anything else unless you drastically need a few more HP.

* ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'': Endurance gives a boost to stamina for every level put into it up until it reaches forty, after which it only has the secondary effect of raising equipment load. Stamina allows for longer sprints, more attacks in a row and better blocking with less chance of being guard-broken, making putting at least thirty points into Endurance something almost every build does at some point. All other stats can be very helpful too, but depend heavily on build and playstyle, whereas decent Endurance is helpful to everyone.
* ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsI'': Endurance itself works the same as in ''Demon's Souls'', and it's actually ''even better'' because the addition of the [[ImmuneToFlinching Poise stat]] and armor upgrades increased the value of heavy armor, and thus equipment load. ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII'' have stamina and equip load dictated by different stats (Endurance and Vitality, respectively), but also made spells consume stamina just like physical attacks. While previously, pure mages were the only one who could get by with low Endurance (they could [[ArmorAndMagicDontMix wear only cloth to remain mobile]] and use all their stamina to dodge), this made Endurance a necessity for any viable build.
** ''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.
* ''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.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Gearhead}}'', a {{Roguelike}} mecha-RPG, the Reflexes ability determines almost all your mecha piloting capabilities. This is, let's reiterate, in a game based around ''being a mecha pilot''. Oh, and it helps with most of your hand-to-hand combat abilities when you're forced to fight on foot, too. Among skills, the -- what else -- Mecha Piloting skill also qualifies.
* For ''VideoGame/LaTale'', give gloves critical damage, shoes movement speed (unless you're stacking evasion, then you get both), and your weapon min/max damage. Then put stamina and/or luck on everything else. The first three are the only places you can put those enchantments on, while the extra criticals you'll deal with luck will deal far more damage than the extra damage you'll deal with strength/magic, and stamina is the only base stat to increase your survivability.
* In ''VideoGame/FlyFF'', most 1v1 classes work best with full STR, if you have enough funds. You can get DEX (for attack speed, crit rate & hit rate) from awakenings or gear bonuses, more hit rate from upgrading your gear, and you don't need much STA to take a hit. It's easier to get crit rate from awakenings (1% crit rate is 10 DEX), and you can get ICD[[note]]Increased Crit Damage[[/note]]/[=ADoCH=][[note]][[BlindIdiotTranslation Additional Damage of Critical Hits]][[/note]] (crit damage, the OSTRTA awakening for 1v1) from sets, weapons, and of course awakenings. For AreaOfEffect classes, it's either STA (for tanking) or DEX (for block rate) depending on the class (or INT for a specific elementor build); most put about 100 or so points in their [=AoE's=] damage stat then pump their STA (or vice versa), but rangers[[note]]And bow jesters, but [[ButtMonkey they're not important]].[[/note]] & blades get their AreaOfEffect damage from their DEX, so they use high block rate to compensate for low STA builds.

* In ''VideoGame/MapleStory'', 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. Eventually, the secondary stat requirement for most classes was removed entirely; the one exception to the rule is Xenon, which actually requires putting points into ''three'' different stats (STR, DEX, and LUK).
* For goalkeepers in ''VideoGame/InazumaEleven'', the Guard stat (or in ''Inazuma Eleven GO'' and ''Inazuma Eleven Strikers'', the Catch stat) and max TP are essentially all that matters. This one actually [[JustifiedTrope makes perfect sense]] (and was likely intentional) since goalkeeper is by far the most specialized position in soccer.
* ''VideoGame/MarioKart'':
** 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.
* In ''Mazes of Fate'' for the Game Boy Advance Strength was far more useful than the other stats. By maxing Strength and 2-handed weapon skill you could easily clear the first half of the game even without your party members. By the second half of the game, you would have plenty of skill points to spend on magic skills to buff yourself and completely dominate with your high Strength and {{BFS}}.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}'', Magic and Defense. The vast majority of enemies are weak to Magic, and Defense increases your chances of completely avoiding an attack. Constitution is also important for any combat build, but it's actually very difficult to have a low Constitution. You should also be dodging most attacks in the first place. To Melee-oriented builds, Prayer is also very useful. The only downside is that Magic costs a lot more because the runes needed to use it are consumables.
** In [=PvP=], the only stat that matters at lower levels is Strength, to the point where it's beneficial to use non-combat methods so your Constitution stays at the base 10 until you're ready to fight other players. Sure, you can have a hard time hitting and go down in two or three hits, but that doesn't matter when you take them down in one hit off a normally mid-game weapon that only requires 60 Strength to equip. Other stats start to matter more once you get to higher combat brackets, but Strength is the only melee skill that doesn't harm you for leveling it beyond a gear's requirements. Ranged also ends up becoming more valuable, as its attacks come out the fastest and leveling it doesn't harm your combat level like the other non-Magic combat stats do. In fact, Constitution is so heavily disliked that some players even make their accounts ''Ironmen''[[note]]Ironmen can't trade with other players, pick up any items from players they kill, and most importantly, gain zero experience from damage dealt to other players, among other things[[/note]] and instead just bring a second account to pick up the loot once it's available to everyone (which doesn't guarantee they even get it) simply so they don't ruin their base 10 HP.

* In the ''VideoGame/MarioGolf'' series, characters with long drives tend to win out over everyone else simply because they hit the ball farther. Characters with a long drive tend to have lousy control, meaning your ball will go way off course if your timing for your swings are even slightly off, but after some practice, the weakness becomes trivial.
* ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade'' has this to an extent when it comes to the player character. Since you can get several companions with various specialties, and there is no magic, and there are 3 skills which only matter for your leader (2 of which are charisma linked), Charisma becomes the most vital attribute, and the only one that needs to be above 15 late game, since its the only attribute that affects your maximum party size. Not the case for your companions, since they do not need any CHA skills at all.
* Attack in the flash game ''The Enchanted Cave''. Since you want to survive as long as possible, you need to take as little damage as possible - and if your Attack stat is high enough, you can kill the enemies before they ever hit you. While Defense is helpful for this reason, the best defense is a good offense - you don't need Defense if you're never hit. Speed is helpful early on, but it's fairly easy later to make up for any deficit in Speed with equipment and there's no point in boosting Speed faster than the fastest enemies. Magic is [[DumpStat just useless]], since the healing spells - which are the only spells actually worth spending MP on - don't scale with it.
** In the sequel the enchantment to rule them all is MP regen. With heal it can function as a better version of HP regen while also allowing you to spam elemental attacks to kill foes faster.
* The first console RPG, a sort of SpiritualSuccessor to ''VideoGame/{{Adventure}}'' on the Atari 2600 called ''VideoGame/{{Dragonstomper}}'', has literally one stat called dexterity which is a massive catch-all LuckStat. Attack strength is determined by the LifeMeter, so it probably doesn't qualify as a true stat (although if it did qualify it would handily be the dominant stat, for obvious reasons).
* Appropriately enough, ''VideoGame/TheLordOfTheRingsOnline'' features One Stat To Rule Them All, with the twist that the one stat is different depending on character class. Broadly speaking, Might is important to melee fighters, Agility to ranged fighters, and Will to support classes. Remarkably, a class's ruling stat isn't set in stone; during the last major update the Warden (a light Tank class) was switched from Might to Agility with (relatively) little outcry from the players.
* ''VideoGame/CrystalStory II'' has speed as its god stat, as it determines how often you can make a move. It can reach a point where your characters can act two or three times before your enemies can even make their first attack.
* ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'': Before Update 11 brought Damage 2.0's revamps, Armor Piercing was the damage type you had to boost if you wanted to be relevant against higher-level enemies.
** Efficiency was one of these stats; however, as the game's expanded, more and more methods of restoring energy at a moment's notice have entered the game, to the point where the only reason to bother with it is to make sure that ability costs aren't ''too'' expensive to make use of at a moment's notice.
** For weapons, the king stat is (unsurprisingly) damage. While the physical damage mods are pretty underwhelming across the board, the raw damage mods and elemental damage mods scale very well, and the two categories boost each other multiplicatively. Multishot is a very close second for non-melee weapons, since it lets you fire multiple copies of the weapon's projectiles at once for no extra ammo, and it scales multiplicatively with both raw damage mods and elemental damage mods, but there are still a few weapons that don't necessarily use it or outright avoid it: explosive weapons can become more hazardous to the wielder, while the (Synoid) Simulor's unique mechanics end up doing better without multishot thanks to some odd interactions.
*** Thanks to the way Critical Hits work and the increasing number of ways to boost Critial Chance, Critical Chance and Critical Multiplier have outpaced Damage as the most important stat for weapons (although Damage and Multishot are still good). This is because it is possible to go over 100% Critical Chance and get double (or in some cases, triple or even quadruple) crits which allows the bonus damage from the Critical Multiplier to stack. Status has also gained promenence as various status effects can boost this damage further depending on which damage types a gun has. As of Update 27.2, Viral makes enemies more vulnerable to damage and can stack with itself, while Slash causes the damage that triggers it to be dealt again as "bleed" damage that ignores Armor. This means that even in high level areas where enemy HP and Armor can spiral out of control, a weapon with high crit stats that deals Viral and Slash damage can instantly kill weaker enemies like [[GoddamnedBats Lancers]] and inflict a brutal TimeDelayedDeath on tougher enemies like [[DemonicSpiders Corrupted Bombards]].
* ''VideoGame/DokaponKingdom'' has Speed (SP) and Hit Points (HP). SP increases hit rate and evasion rate for physical attacks in battle, as well as for field magic. A moderately high HP total can make up for a low, even almost 0 DF stat. These are also both stats that most pieces of equipment will not raise, so it can be especially important to invest in them.
* ''VideoGame/{{Solatorobo}}'': the truly important ones are Attack (how much damage an enemy takes when thrown/gets something thrown at them) and Hydraulics (how fast you can lift and toss an enemy). And even then Hydraulics is slightly better, since thrown enemies are helpless for long periods of time.
* In ''VideoGame/DragonNest'', the much-coveted Final Damage stat is an additional modifier used for your overall damage. Its power increases exponentially the more of it you stack, making it extremely powerful when amassed. Naturally, it is very difficult to come across. Entire fortunes can be made if you're lucky enough to obtain Final Damage plates and other items to sell.
** For elemental classes, or non-elemental classes using an elemental conversion gem, fire/ice/light/dark % (depending on the class) functions as a secondary OSTRTA, like a poor man's FD.
* 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.
* The Mind stat, and its substats, in Pre-Combat Upgrade VideoGame/StarWarsGalaxies. These were the only stats that could not be healed by medics or buffed by doctors and, as a result, were the target of choice in [=PvP=]. As a result, most minmaxers dropped their other stats down to their bare minimums (which made the character completely worthless if unbuffed - although, at that point in the game, no one ever willingly entered combat unbuffed) and threw every point they could into their mental stats.
* In the online games ''Caravaneer'' and ''Caravaneer 2'' agility is the only stat you really have to look for in new hires, since it determines how many actions they can take in one turn(similar to the first two Fallout games) as well as their move speed on the world map. It even replaces accuracy, since taking twice as many shots at half the hit chance is better than a few super-accurate shots.
* In ''VideoGame/LufiaTheLegendReturns'', each character has a Spiritual Force stat of a specific color which flows into other members in their row and column, providing stat boosts and affecting IP attack usage. While all S.F. colors are necessary to unlock IP attacks, only Yellow S.F. is worth raising any higher than needed. Yellow S.F. boosts Speed (as well as max MP), which determines battle order and scales much more slowly than other stats (especially Attack Power or Defense Power). It's invaluable to outspeeding enemy encounters, or turning [[MightyGlacier Rand]][[GlassCannon olph]] into a viable LightningBruiser.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Wakfu}}'', either Lock or Dodge depending on whether you are a melee or ranged character respectively.
* ''VideoGame/{{Wildstar}}'' simplified things to the point where there were only two main stats - Assault, used by ''all'' DPS, and Support, used by ''all'' Tanks/Healers.
* In the online portion of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'', strength is king. While the other stats aren't useless, strength plays a bigger role since it not only boosts your melee damage, it also increases your overall defense and makes you climb ladders faster. Since ArmorIsUseless online and getting into a gunfight is pretty much a guarantee, it pays to be able to survive a few more bullets before dying.
* In the entire ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'', Speed is the most important stat as it allows players to take more turns before the enemies do, or at least catch up to them. Strength and Arts are also important as well. Meanwhile, Defense is usually the dump stat especially on [[HarderThanHard Nightmare Mode]] because of how insane damages get.
* In ''VideoGame/ShadowrunReturns'' Quickness is king for the "Dead Man's Switch" campaign that comes with the game, at least for the player character. Quickness determines your physical agility which in turn determines how often you get hit and how fast you reload whereas Willpower determines spell accuracy and magic evasion. Seeing how nearly everyone tries to shoot you and your crew, a StreetSamurai with high quickness skill will avoid a lot of shots and dish out a world of hurt and be even better with augments that improve stats but reduces your Willpower. That being said, a mage with a lot of crowd control spells is a godsend, just not as much as a player character.
** DLC campaign Dragonfall makes Intelligence, specifically for Decking, your main stat. It isn't so much an improvement to combat as it is ''the sheer number of Decking and Intelligence checks in the game''. Your character practically needs to be a Decker to get the most out of the game.
* ''VideoGame/RainbowSkies:'' The Speed stat is very important. The game has TurnBasedCombat, and higher Speed means an earlier turn, and more turns if the difference is big enough. Having a high Strength means more powerful attacks, but that won't help very much if the enemy can get a few solid hits in before you can even assume a defensive stance.
* ''VideoGame/SpellforceIII'' falls into this. All classes need mana to use skills, which means they all need willpower (increases mana pool) and intelligence (for regeneration). On top of this, while dexterity and strength increase damage of auto-attacks, most damage skills only scale with base weapon damage and so stat influence is limited, while all classes have plenty of skills that scale with intelligence or willpower (things like taunts and group buffs).
* ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'' has the option to have random soldier stats on recruitment. In this case, no matter your class, Aim is ''king'', with Mobility a close second. After all, if you can hit the ayys and get in the best position to hit the ayys, you won't take damage (where HP comes in) or be subjected to psionic abilities (where Will matters), and an unharmed soldier doesn't panic because of low Will. Even after psionic enemies start showing up, only the squad leader needs to have high Will once you get Lead By Example.
* Out of all the Attributes in ''VideoGame/TheDivision'', Damage to Elites was by far the most useful stat in the endgame. This is because it affected the damage done by both your skils and your weapons, and in high-level Endgame Content, every single enemy would be an Elite, so it basically functioned as a straight-up damage buff in those situations. Enemy Armor Damage was a close second for the exact same reason.
* 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.
* Games like ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' and ''VideoGame/IcewindDale'', utilizing the 2nd edition of AD&D rules, have numerous stats for a character to have, depending on class, but no matter the class you pick, Dexterity is the stat to cap out as much as possible. Dexterity reduces your character's Armor Class, making them harder to hit, which is important for everyone, especially your {{Squishy Wizard}} who will begin the game with anywhere from ''4-6HP tops''. Dexterity also influences effectiveness of ranged attacks, which is also important for keeping your more fragile characters out of melee combat.

* ''Webcomic/{{Yamara}}'' explores this concept in the context of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'':
--> '''Blag:''' Cause ya see, girlie, nobody cares if ya got an 18 Intelligence. Nobody'd care if you were one o' th' lucky broads with a 18 '''Wisdom!''' All that counts is a nice, round 18--\\
([[http://yamara.com/comics/all-18s/ see the right answer]])
* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'':
** Shown by ''[[TheDitz Elan]]'', of all people. His 18 Charisma is the best for his Bardic abilities, even more after getting a level in the PrestigeClass Dashing Swordsman, which allows him to use Charisma for his rolls in combat. Ironically, this means that he has the best build of the entire Order.
** Similarly, [[DumbMuscle Thog]] argues he's smarter than Roy because his build is better optimized, not wasting his stats in things like Intelligence which has virtually no mechanical benefit for Fighters. Roy proves him wrong.

* ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater'' parodies this [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2002/06/12/episode-160-back-together-again/ here]] when Red Mage suggests turning "Pick Pockets" into a SemanticSuperpower. Given Thief's [[ImpossibleTheft later feats]], he may have taken Red Mage's advice.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{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.
* 4th Edition ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' has Agility. To make it clear, Agility is the base attribute for EVERY combat skill, with one exception (Dodge, which, to be fair, is pretty important). What this means is that having a high Agility makes you equally capable with melee weapons, guns, grenades, heavy weapons, vehicle-mounted weapons, your fists... You get the idea. Since it's much easier to increase your skill ratings than to increase your attributes, a combat character can just start with a high Agility (Augmented by one of the exceedingly cheap Agility-boosting implants) and spend a few skills points and — voila! Instant combat master.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Mekton}} Zeta'', players commonly refer to Ref(lexes) as the God Stat. All combat actions — attack, defense, initiative — were determined off this one stat. Since all the stats were assigned an equal value, however, it became stupidly easy to min-max. 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.
* ''TabletopGame/D20Modern'':
** The game is ruled by Dexterity. Everybody who wants to be at all effective at combat needs it, because it rules ranged attacks. Because D20 Modern is set in the modern world, guns exist and are highly effective. It's pretty hard to be effective in melee combat unless you specialize in it, and even then a good bullet or shotgun blast will be able to bring you down because of the Massive Damage rules making you highly vulnerable even at higher levels. On top of that, armor is rare because of the feat requirements, so Dexterity is vital to increasing your rate of survival, especially if you play 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 to crush any non-buffed opponent into the ground — including, without much interpretation, buffs to Knowledge (Arcane Lore).
* In ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} 3e'', both Dexterity and Intelligence gave more bang for the buck than Strength and Health. Come 4e, they're both still more useful, but now they cost twice as much as well... and people ''still'' think they're overpowered.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Witchcraft}}'' had all the good physical skills use Dexterity. And nearly all the supernatural powers run on Willpower.
* 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]].
* In ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension'', Arete determines how powerful ''all'' your magical abilities are.
* In ''TabletopGame/GeniusTheTransgression'', Intelligence rules normal application, ''all'' of Wonder creation, most Wonder use [[note]]Basic levels of [[PsychicPowers Epikrato]], non-urgent [[OpenHeartDentistry Exelixi]], ''all'' Metatropi transformations and [[DoomsdayDevice Katastrofi artillery]][[/note]] and most Genius-specific rolls. Also, don't treat mental skills as a DumpStat unless you are TooDumbToLive[[note]]They are required for Wonder construction; no dots in the required skill results quite often in bad things happening[[/note]]. [[JustifiedTrope It is about]] [[MadScientist Mad]] ''[[MadScientist Scientists]]'', [[JustifiedTrope after all]].

* ''TabletopGame/{{Scion}}'': While Dexterity is almost always a very useful stat, improving your attack, defense, ability to do damage, and initiative as well as a lot of useful skills, this disparity reaches ridiculous proportions in ''TabletopGame/{{Scion}}'', as Epic Attributes provide much greater benefits than normal ones.
** In a sense, every Epic Attribute in Scion was the [[JustForPun (aptly named, in this case)]] God Stat in relation to every none-epic one. This might very well have been intentional, except that the mechanical execution tended to make the in-game effects... wonky, to put lightly. Each dot in an Epic Attribute added a number of automatic successes (which could be thought of as the equivalent of 3 dots in a regular attribute) ''equal to its level, cumulatively''. That means that the number of extra successes one gains from Epic Attributes goes from 1 for the first dot to 2 for the second to 4 for the third, then to 7 for the fourth, 11 for the fifth and quickly building up into utter ridiculousness (at the 10 dot level, a character got ''42'' automatic successes for every use of the attribute, before even rolling). This was all fine and dandy, especially in the lower rungs, except that in practice what it meant was that past a certain point a character with even ''1'' dot higher in an Epic Attribute would pretty much always defeat one with a lower rating, no matter what. Since dexterity still governed all combat, that meant that by the time the Band hit Legend 4 everyone without a maxed out Epic Dexterity was just about as good as a liability the moment combat started. Meanwhile, since the only way to make non-combat tasks challenging for a ludicrously capable character was to give them stupendous difficulty ratings, any late-game character who wasn't specifically specialized at doing anything couldn't ever hope to accomplish any task beyond their narrow area of expertise. A subset of the issue was that with guns: since unlike bows and melee weapons guns did ''not'' benefit from the wielder having higher stats for the purposes of damage, they became essentially worthless past Legend 4 since any enemy the Band couldn't curbstomp would likely be completely immune to them. [[StoryAndGameplaySegregation All this while the fluff keeps insisting guns are useful and assigning characters legendary guns in lieu of other Relics.]] This has been significantly toned down for the 2nd edition, which removed all non-physical Epic Attributes and turned them into Purview rather than giving them special mechanical effects - someone with Epic Strength can now use it to pull off a lot more impressive strength based stunts, but not actually get dozens of automatic successes for every damage roll.
* While in TabletopGame/{{Aberrant}}, Mega-Charisma was ungodly powerful. Legend has it that in an early con-demo, one player took every combat trait he could find, but lost instantly to a mega-charisma build in a fight after the latter player said, "Go home." The combat monster had to do exactly that. Given a bullhorn, a mega-charismatic nova could sway armies, even nations, with only a single speech. This doesn't even take into account that Charisma, and Mega-Charisma, affect a bunch of non-combat skills, and the astoundingly abusable ability to create things. Given some creative players, armies of miniature guns quickly emerge and demolish the opposition's boss/team/base/city/continent.
* In the ''TabletopGame/HeroSystem'', 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 Sixth Edition, 'figured' characteristics as such no longer exist (the stats are still there, but are bought up or down separately from fixed base values). Dexterity is still ''good'' -- it determines initiative, after all, especially in that all-important first phase where everybody who isn't caught flat-footed gets to act once before taking a free recovery, and it still has a number of important skills riding on it. But it's no longer the god stat, and its cost has correspondingly dropped to two character points per +1.
** In superheroic campaigns at least Strength can also have aspects of this. It gives you the ability to inflict damage in hand-to-hand combat ''or'' (via suitable thrown objects) at range, adds to the damage of any actual hand-to-hand attack ''powers'' your character may have, has the obvious benefits high strength implies for such purposes as lifting heavy objects or wrestling...all for the same basic five character points per die of damage as the attack-only, no-free-adds (if ranged by default) Blast power. The "brick" archetype is one long-standing favorite in this system for a reason.

* ''TabletopGame/BigEyesSmallMouth'' operates on Guardians of Order's Tri-Stat System, which uses three base stats: Body, Mind, and Soul. These are used to calculate derived stats like Hit Points (Body and Soul), Energy Points (Mind and Soul), and Combat Value (all three). Soul is by far the most important of the three base stats since it's used to calculate ''all'' of these derived values, meaning a high Soul stat is indespensible regardless of character type or game genre. In addition, Soul checks to defend against certain attacks are the most common single-attribute checks in a system where most checks are based on multiple attributes.
* Likewise in the ''Serenity RPG'' the character with more Agility wins in combat, the character with more Willpower wins in social settings.
* In ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'', ''TabletopGame/DarkHeresy'' and ''TabletopGame/RogueTrader'', Willpower (WP) is the stat of choice, as it defends you against fear effects (distressingly common), insanity points (also distressingly common) and other negative mental effects. Almost every stat in the game can be partially compensated for with the right equipment or traits, but while a poor toughness or wounds statistic means you're more likely to die after two hits instead of three, and poor weapon skill will mean it will take you an extra round to kill that goblin, a single bad willpower roll can put your character not only out of the fight but ''out of the campaign'' in ways that [[OneUp Fate Points]] can't save you from.
* ''TabletopGame/WildTalents'' is... different about this trope. Those who win the SuperPowerLottery 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 ReedRichardsIsUseless 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 [[MoreThanMindControl persuade millions to vote for him by speaking three words]].
* The D6 version of the ''StarWars'' roleplaying game had six stats: Dexterity, Knowledge, Mechanical, Perception, Strength, and Technical. While you should have at least one character specializing in each stat, ''all'' your characters ''must'' have an average or better Dexterity, since it is what you use to block ''any'' attacks, dodge ''any'' attacks ''and'' use ''any'' weapons!
* Cinematic UsefulNotes/{{Unisystem}}, the core engine of the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', ''Series/{{Angel}}'', and ''[[Franchise/EvilDead Army of Darkness]]'' [=RPGs=].
** Dexterity is king for nonmagic characters. It's used for several useful skills, initiative, attack rolls and defense rolls, as usual, but the real GameBreaker is that it sets ''the number of combat actions you get per round''.
*** 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.
** 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.

** Third Edition replaces Realm and Spirit with new stats, Treasure and Persona. Treasure is basically the stat that governs all the cool artifacts, gadgets and servants gods have, things that don't really fit under Domain. Persona governs the ''definition'' of the concept you're god of; if, for example, you're a love goddess, and one of your properties is 'Love hurts', you can make anything hurt like love - or make love stop hurting.

* Similarly to the above, the [[Film/TheMatrix Matrix]] RPG [[http://www.scribd.com/doc/14108115/MatrixRPG There Is No Spoon]] has a Matrix stat which is rolled pretty much constantly, and trumps mundane skill. There are other things to spend character points on, but the game admits flat-out that Matrix is the god stat.
* 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.
* The ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' RPG inspired a cartoon praising the benefits of movement speed... a stereotypical TwoFistedTales burly hero is trying (and failing) to escape from a [[CosmicHorror cloud of tentacles]] whilst a little old lady on a wheelchair is vanishing into the distance at high speed. There's a lesson to be learned there somewhere.
** 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 practice.
*** There's of course another practical reason for high POW - POW is the stat that gives your character their [[SanityMeter starting Sanity]], so a higher POW means a ''slightly'' better chance that you ''won't'' go shrieking into insanity first thing from seeing a Deep One. It also means that character will last longer mentally speaking, so long as they don't do anything to [[TemptingFate tempt fate]] or [[BrokeYourArmPunchingOutCthulhu try to fight the horrors head on]].
* In ''Bushido'' -- a ''D&D''-like game set in feudal Japan -- all skills are determined by adding stats together. For example, leaping and climbing ("Karumijutsu") is Deftness plus Will; strategy ("Senjo-Jutsu") is Wit plus Will; most fighting skills are Strength plus Deftness plus Will; overland speed ("Hayagakejutsu") is Health plus Will; horsemanship ("Bajutsu") is Will plus Will... starting to see a pattern?
* Early editions of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsTheDragoning'' had Dexterity as the God Stat -- it controlled to-hit, ranged damage, static defense, and move speed. It's still one of the more important stats, but not as much as it used to be.
* In ''TabletopGame/ApocalypseWorld'' Cool and Sharp both have this reputation. The other three stats apply to fairly specific situations (Hard is for hurting or threatening people, Hot is for persuading people, and Weird is for going on bizarre psychic dream-quests), while Sharp gives you bonuses to any other roll as long as you do as the MC tells you, and Cool is for almost everything else. Given the broad applications that implies, a decent Cool stat can be VERY important.
** To a lesser extent, one can build one's character to make this the case for whichever stat they prefer, so that they (for example) roll against Weird whenever they would normally roll Cool.
* 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.
** Fate Accelerated, the system's "lite" equivalent, replaces all skills with six "Approaches" - Carefully, Cleverly, Flashily, Forcefully, Quickly and Sneakily. The idea is that you always use the Approach that best fits the description of the action you're performing, as you're performing it... the problem is that, as many have pointed out, the correct action in almost every situation, ''basically by definition'', could be described as Clever. Someone who's maximized Cleverly, thus, will be able to always use it and thus always roll at their best.
* For the longest time in the ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' RPG spinoff ''Mechwarrior,'' Intuition, and to a lesser extent Reflexes controlled a ''lot'' of skill rolls. It didn't help that players who wanted to play Mechwarriors (and this was most players, naturally) needed both of their INT and REF rating scoring at least 4 or better to qualify as a Mechwarrior, in a game where having a 6 in a stat was considered an exceptionally high rating. This lasted up through 2nd Edition supplemental, and echoes of it still appear in 3rd edition and beyond.
* ''TabletopGame/StarWarsSagaEdition'' is fairly balanced on the stats front, but Dexterity is often viewed as disproportionately important. It determines how accurate you are with ranged weapons (which is most of them, unless you have a melee-specific build) and how good you are at avoiding both melee and ranged attacks. In addition, dexterity is the governing stat for more skills than any other, including some of the most useful ones (namely Initiative, Pilot, and Stealth). It's not impossible to build a character without focusing on dexterity (certain Jedi and Noble builds can get away with it), but a character with a low DEX stat has some significant built-in pitfalls that need to be dealt with or worked around.
* In ''TabletopGame/BleakWorld'' it depends on your race, but there always is one. For PunyHumans the best stat is funding which evens the odds of any battle with the ability to buy a private army equipped with chainsaws and [=RPGs=]. For [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Vampires]] the best stat is generally considered to be shapeshifting (for Nosferatu fog builds and Primal dragon builds). Witches have Entropy which gives more HP, [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Aliens]] have devastation which can allow the ability to summon the whole martian fleet, the [[GoneHorriblyWrong Experiments]] have disguise so that they can actually accomplish things without an angry mob queuing up to chase them, Hold is the most important for ghosts as it allows them to [[UnwinnableByDesign actually win the game]]. Mummies require Eternity as it not only increases their HP but also their [[CastFromLifespan mana abilities and rewards]]. Princesses need servants if they have any hope of fighting [[EldritchAbomination The Darkness]]. Finally the [[OurGiantsAreBigger Jotun]] should take a lot of points in Craft in order to build their GiantMecha.
* 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.

** 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 Bladesinger Wizard 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)

* Even in the purely turn-based ''Franchise/FireEmblem'', most players agree Speed is the most important stat. It determines evasion (Luck does too, but to a much smaller degree) which, in a game with FinalDeath, is ''VERY'' important. It also determines double attacks (a unit hit twice if their speed is more than a certain amount above their opponent's) which can be the difference between finishing the enemy in one move or having to waste a second charater's move to deal the final blow, which sometimes isn't possible or practical. Furthermore, doubling works for the enemy too, meaning slow characters tend to get hit twice, which is especially bad if the unit also has low defense, [[SquishyWizard like most magic users]], and [[FromBadToWorse even worse]] if the enemy has a non-zero CriticalHit chance, as now they have two chances to get a critical instead of one (and one is [[RandomNumberGod usually bad enough]]). It gets so bad that on the [[NintendoHard higher difficulty levels]] of the latest games, MightyGlacier characters with high Defense are actually ''less'' durable than someone with worse Defense, but enough speed to avoid being doubled. (Getting hit twice for 15 damage each is worse than getting hit once for 25.) This can be zigzagged, though, as characters tend to quickly outpace the enemies, resulting in characters with high Speed having their Speed become overkill unless they're wielding the heaviest weapons.

** For all editions, Constitution is a downplayed example. While it doesn't help you win fights, [[BoringButPractical it does help you]] ''survive'' them by giving extra HitPoints and better saving throws. Most classes don't strictly ''need'' Constitution (except maybe the Barbarian class since that use the constitution modifier in the unarmored defense stat), but none of them want to dump it.

** 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.

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

** In 3rd Edition, as well as spin-off {{TabletopGame/Pathfinder}}, Dexterity determines when you act in combat, your reflex defense, several good physical skills, accuracy with ranged weapons, and light-armor-high-dex tends to give ''better'' defenses than heavy-armor-low-dex. In addition it can be made to determine your accuracy for melee weapons as well.

** 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 Bladesinger Wizard 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)
** For all editions, constitution is a downplayed example. While it doesn't help you win fights, [[BoringButPractical it does help you ''survive'' them]] by giving extra hitpoints and better saving throws. Most classes don't strictly NEED constitution (except maybe the Barbarian class since that use the constitution modifier in the unarmored defense stat), but none of them want to dump it.

* In ''TabletopGame/D20Modern'':
** The game is ruled by Dexterity. Everybody who wants to be at all effective at combat needs it, because it rules ranged attacks. because D20 Modern is set in the modern world, guns exist and are highly effective. It's pretty hard to be effective in melee combat unless you specialize in it, and even then a good bullet or shotgun blast will be able to bring you down because of the Massive Damage rules making you highly vulnerable even at higher levels. On top of that, armor is rare because of the feat requirements, so Dexterity is vital to increasing your rate of survival, especially if you play 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.

--> '''Blag:''' Cause ya see, girlie, nobody cares if ya got an 18 Intelligence. Nobody'd care if you were one o' th' lucky broads with a 18 '''Wisdom!''' All that counts is a nice, round 18--
--> ([[http://yamara.com/comics/all-18s/ see the right answer]])

* 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 first console RPG, a sort of SpiritualSuccessor to ''VideoGame/{{Adventure}}'' on the Atari 2600 called ''VideoGame/{{Dragonstomper}}, has literally one stat called dexterity which is a massive catch-all LuckStat. Attack strength is determined by the LifeMeter, so it probably doesn't qualify as a true stat (although if it did qualify it would handily be the dominant stat, for obvious reasons).

* The first console RPG, a sort of SpiritualSuccessor to ''VideoGame/{{Adventure}}'' on the Atari 2600 called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonstomper Dragonstomper]], has literally one stat called dexterity which is a massive catch-all LuckStat. Attack strength is determined by the LifeMeter, so it probably doesn't qualify as a true stat (although if it did qualify it would handily be the dominant stat, for obvious reasons).

** For all editions, constitution is a downplayed example. While it doesn't help you win fights, [[BoringButPractical it does help you ''survive'' them]]] by giving extra hitpoints and better saving throws. Most classes don't strictly NEED constitution, but none of them want to dump it.

* ''VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal'' has a variation: One Secondary Stat to Rule Them All. Every class has different primary stats that deal with their specialities and for raising their talent points, but everyone needs Con. Everyone. Since later on enemies can do a lot of damage, especially with spike damage, HP and resistance (which Con gives small bonus to) becomes massively important for your character to survive.