I pretty much agree with Nik's statement, with the caveat that Fate is actually rather useful. It seems to be the stat that's rolled for injuries you might avoid through sheer luck. Remember STEPHEN HAWKING standing untouched in the middle of an explosion? That's what I think Fate allows you to do. Also, I'd point out that our system is more balanced than many, thanks to the rule that
any skill with -2 will probably instakill you if you roll it.
@Xantalos
As Sean said, you died because you had
multiple terrible rolls. And a foolish action. The best that could have gone for you was for you to realize 'oh, I'm stuck flying away at a high velocity, there's nothing I can do'.
Really, the only unavoidable roll was the AUX roll. And you were pretty much warned about aux being necessary when you signed up for an EVA mission.
while having negative medical and being in a position without medics with, say, a broken arm, well...
Remember what happened to Spazyaks last character?
Spazyak was being an idiot there. He intentionally used MED, despite it not
possibly working out for him. You can dump a stat, but you have to remember not to use it. Even then, he rolled exceptionally poorly to permakill himself. It was much more likely for him to simply murder himself in a reversable fashion.
Intu comes into play like at mission 19, I would say at least 1+ would be a good investment, as it would also help you out if someone was creeping up behind you, for example,
The problem is, even a
good intu stat is difficult to use well. On M19, three people rolled well, got a warning, and didn't heed that warning because it wasn't actually intuitive.
It's really really rare for enemies to sneak up on us.
and negative Aux is a bad choice for a full combat guy just because you want a battle-suit, or assault-suit, or whatever those young whippersnappers are calling it today.
Eh, sure. Every single skill is potentially a dump stat, so aux being less of one doesn't mean much.
And charisma could also be used to help explain things to other teammates without others noticing, right?
What? You mean like the situation on the boarding mission, where Flint was trying to quicktalk a guard sod while impersonating a crewmember? It's extraordinarily rare for us to even get the
chance to do that, and even then it's an easy situation to avoid if you have a penalty.
It's only a useful stat for ampers who want to MC enemies, and career blops people. Even in the latter case, it's not a requirement, because jobs likely to require talking can just be assigned to more suitable people.
Oh, also, if you check
my character's stats, the only stats I have a -2 in are strength, handi, con, and uncon. Aside from strength (which I mitigate by having sods possess my body), all of those are entirely avoidable. There's other dump stats (Like Gen.Know, intuition, and dexterity), but I didn't give them -2 because PW has already personally threatened me many time more than the average player, and those rolls aren't guaranteed to be avoidable. Med would be dumped too, but Saint is a doctor in his backstory, and I just couldn't justify changing that.
...I wish I could swap that +1 from Fate to Endurance, though. Oh well.