Open thread: what’s your dump stat?
[Warning! TVTropes!] A Dump Stat is a gaming concept: a quality in the game that you choose not to allocate any character-building resources to (and thus your character does not possess). Say, your character is a wizard, and has really low strength because you traded it for intelligence (which usually translates to spell-casting power).
Wizard, design by Hojyo Takashi, photo by Origamiancy, CC BY.
This guy’s dump stat is definitely fire resistance.
I think my dump stat is probably all-nighters. Can barely stay awake at all: certainly the amount of work produced is nowhere near worth the cost, which is basically a full-on hangover the next day regardless of use, or lack thereof, of intoxicants. And I don’t find them fun. So, I would definitely have no points in all-nighters.
How about you?
Quick note: let’s try and keep this light ok? Stuff you’re OK with being bad at, rather than stuff that tears you apart. And steer clear of “and I don’t care because [whatever skill] is universally useless anyway!”: you can be sure someone here will be into it.
This is also an open thread for any other topics of interest to you. Comment policy applies.
cadaeib:
April 14th, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Handling cats. I can be all “hey kitty, who’s a good kitty?” and it’ll be all “screw you” and climb over my lap in ways that make me fundamentally uncomfortable, skitter off, or (the worst) claw a pad out of my back pocket.
Or if we’re going with more conventional RPG stats, DEX. As my often-dropped phone can testify.
Mok:
April 14th, 2012 at 6:57 pm
Subtlety. I’m about a tactful as a nuclear war.
Ashley:
April 14th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
Time management, definitely.
confluence:
April 15th, 2012 at 12:50 am
My dump stat is definitely sport. I avoided it at school, and am consistently unable to remember any sport-related facts today. I put all that XP into cat wrangling. ;)
Raven:
April 15th, 2012 at 2:44 am
Cooking. I have caused teakettle combustion when attempting to boil water. I stuck a pancake to the ceiling when trying to flip it, only to have it drop back onto my face because I was gaping at that having happened. My housemate has taken to yelling “No!” over her shoulder without looking when I say “is it supposed to look like that?”.
S.:
April 15th, 2012 at 6:27 am
Being near jerks, if at all avoidable.
Cathy B:
April 15th, 2012 at 6:34 am
My dump stats are navigation and hand-eye coordination. It’s hard to choose at which I’m worse.
Elizabeth G.:
April 15th, 2012 at 8:20 am
My Dump Stat is makeup and hair styling. My Mom never wore makeup so at the age that some young women learn to put on makeup and style their hair I was just slapping it on and over using hairspray. I never got past that. So in Highschool I gave up. When friends are able to hold me down and apply makeup (for a wedding or something) I think I look ridiculous. I would say that the plus side is that my skin is really clear.
Zack:
April 15th, 2012 at 9:15 am
In high school, it was definitely Dexterity. My chemistry teacher wrote “Zack will be a great chemist someday if he can only stop breaking glassware” on my report card. But that went away when I relearned how long my arms were.
Nowadays, it’s either Knowledge of Current Events Not Related to Computer Security, or it’s upper body strength. (I bike a lot, but I get almost no other exercise.)
TiG:
April 15th, 2012 at 11:15 am
Cleaning, definitely. Followed closely by Laundry.
AMM:
April 15th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Keeping my mouth shut.
And (corporate) political skills in general.
Carrie:
April 15th, 2012 at 3:35 pm
History. I can only remember it in the broadest of strokes. I’m always getting events out of order or completely leaving things out. I have no idea why, but my brain just doesn’t seem to hold onto it very well.
Also, visual arts other than photography — especially drawing. I can sketch very basic diagrams/schematics, but that’s where my drawing ability ends. My painting and sculpting abilities are even more limited.
And improv theatre. I learned in high school that if I devote a lot of time and energy to researching, preparing for, and rehearsing a role, then I can act pretty well. When I took a course in Method acting, I flourished. But with improv? I freeze up. (Apropos of talking about dump stats, this is why I’m not that into D&D-type games — because they require sustained improv roleplaying, and I find that stressful.)
I’d consider these dump stats because they’re things I’m okay with being not-very-good at, so I haven’t bothered to put a lot of time and energy into improving at them. However, I’d still like to get better at them. And I love watching or listening to people who are good at them.
Caite:
April 15th, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Athletics. I fall over walking on smooth flat surfaces.
My favourite character to roleplay is incompetent at street smarts, to the extent that every time he tries to do something requiring it there are negative effects for the party (auto-botch). The best use of that was the time he tried to sell panadol to am undercover cop, under the impression that it was marijuana.
Mercury:
April 15th, 2012 at 8:08 pm
Simple math. As soon as I learn how to outsource it to my graphing calculator or Mathematica, I forget how to do it by hand. I’m currently being thwarted in Differential Equations by my inability to remember 8th grade algebra.
Mym:
April 15th, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Sobriety! *hic*
…more seriously, allergy resistance. They just keep getting worse and multiplying. It’s gotten to the point where I’m considering getting a bronchodilator for when I visit my sister and her dogs.
Mary:
April 15th, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Good ol’ CON :(
quartzpebble:
April 15th, 2012 at 10:22 pm
I’d been wondering who the women are in biochemistry and chemical biology, since the gender binary fractal tends towards women the closer you get to biology. If I went by the papers we are assigned to discuss for my chemical biology class, though, I’d say there wasn’t a single female PI around. When looking around, I found a prize relatively recently put out there for women in the biomedical sciences that’s gone to some impressive scientists: http://greengardprize.rockefeller.edu/recipients/
More on the lines of organic synthesis, a recent review focused on named organic reactions discovered by and/or named after women: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ar100114m Paywalled, but if you can get to it very interesting!
Raelynne:
April 16th, 2012 at 4:43 am
Ironing. All my clothes are carefully selected to not require ironing because I loathe and detest it, and am not terribly good at it.
In D&D it would be STR (jam jars defeat me); in Savage Worlds I would absolutely have the Major Hindrance of Procrastination.
Dorothea:
April 16th, 2012 at 6:11 am
Charisma. Most definitely my dump stat. (It’d be Comeliness, but that’s several editions of DnD ago…)
Sheila Addison:
April 16th, 2012 at 8:27 am
Ooh, I forgot to allot any points to those stats either. :(
Cthandhs:
April 16th, 2012 at 10:13 am
CON, definitely CON. I swear I could catch a cold over the phone.
Elizabeth:
April 16th, 2012 at 10:50 am
Not freaking out. My first reaction to anything is OMG the world is ending. Usually only in my head, thankfully, but still.
(Yes, I am working on this in therapy.)
In related thoughts, the line between impostor syndrome and Dunning-Kruger syndrome is currently stressing me the hell out.
Jayn:
April 16th, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Neatness. I can manage some semblance of organisation, but it rarely looks organised (I honestly cannot fathom how people manage to keep things neat, without completely reorganising everything every time they go into a drawer). Even when I’m trying, everything just comes out a bit…off.
For traditional RPG stats, it’s a toss-up between STR and DEX. I’m pretty weak, even for my size, but my hand-eye co-ordination isn’t great either.
H. regalis:
April 16th, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Ability to watch television shows. I can spend hours watching movies, vlogs, and random Youtube videos; but there’s something about tv shows that just sends me out of the room. It kind of bugs me because I used to like tv shows when I was a kid, and we’re apparently in a golden age of television right now, which would be exciting to be a part of except that I’d rather gnaw my own legs off than watch any of it.
As for rpgs, CHA. Every single time.
nicole:
April 16th, 2012 at 3:27 pm
oh dear, wasn’t familiar with dunning-kruger syndrome… time to freak out :o
Mary:
April 16th, 2012 at 6:54 pm
I feel like this subthread is kind of edging into where the warning was aiming.
Lindsey Kuper:
April 16th, 2012 at 10:06 pm
Knowing where my keys, wallet, and phone are.
Koko:
April 17th, 2012 at 4:34 am
Tolerance for gender-biased nonsense. No plans to level up on that, either :D
kdmw:
April 17th, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Mine is all-nighters too! I’m a university student, and I thought I was the only one!
Annalee:
April 18th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Right now I’m going to go with CON. If the Lorax were real, he would have knocked on my door a few weeks ago to say “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. They just concluded their annual conference and have decided to try to kill you. Good luck.”
Since then, the powdery death they’ve been raining down from their deceptively-graceful boughs would make an M. Night Shyamalan movie seem like fun by comparison. Not just living in the movie, either–actually having to sit through watching it.
It’s been bad enough these past few days that I’m starting to resent paper recycling. Stupid trees–keep your gametes to yourselves, why won’t you?
Brat:
April 19th, 2012 at 4:55 pm
Organisation. I am pathologically disorganised – to the point where if it was the equivalent to an addiction, I’d be in rehab.
Also sitting still.
Eraziel:
April 27th, 2012 at 1:19 am
Organization and time management. I suck so much at both…. can’t remember how many of my papers were done rushed and last-minute and I simply cannot get myself to start learning for tests in time.
Sheila Addison:
May 9th, 2012 at 4:57 pm
For a future linkspam: http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.html
Pewter:
May 10th, 2012 at 5:48 am
I’d like to recommend this for either a future linkspam, or a guest post: https://harpysnest.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/check-mate-jaina-and-the-fall-of-theramore/