INT, since I tend to prefer spell-casters. I also like to be the utility jack-of-all-trades character with lots of different intelligence-based noncombat skills, so I tend to put a lot in to skills.
But see, I came in for the Anti-this.
The entire fine line between genius and sanity thing. If I can come up with something that you don’t think about, and I can use it against you…
But now that I think about it, this does lead it self to someone that has had more real-life experience than I have had.
That was my first guess at it. Too bad BOTH of my core rule books lost the binding.
Not that I’m bitter.
Or, I could take levels in “Crack a Joke” … The DM I played with gave EXP for in-character puns.
I won that one, by a margin that wasn’t even close.
Evasion makes you auto-guard sometimes (which is better than def), and aim will randomly guard break enemies, regardless of whether you hit their weaknesses (or possibly stacking with some invisible “weakness bonus” I’m really not sure). Other counter-intuitive Tales stats: I’m not sure about Graces specifically, but in most Tales games the power of healing spells scales with the caster’s Max HP, not their Magic Atk. This is why Estelle could practically tank in Vesperia (if you gave her the right equipment).
Oh, actually Evade does even more, it also acts as a counter to aim, and prevents you from getting staggered or guard broken. It also may or may not make dodges faster. It does grant a passive damage resistance, but 1 point of evade gives a trivial amount of reduction compared to P/C.Def
Accuracy/aim also increases critical chance, and like Evade gives a small passive bonus to damage, but not as much as P/C.Atk.
Also, evade/accuracy aren’t precisely linear modifiers, whether or not they work has something to do with something like the ratio between the attacker’s accuracy and the enemy’s evasion stats,
They’re basically the most important stats because they can stunlock your enemies, prevent you from being stunlocked, crit people, make avoiding damage faster, and auto-guard to occasionally nullify damage completely.
Historically, I’ve played thieves and wizards and variations on the theme; thus, Dex and Int have always been where I’ve put my points. Both, IMO, tend to be useful generally though–Dex typically makes you harder to hit and lets you go first or more often in combat. Skill points (or the equivalent) are often tied to Int. So both good things to have.
Depends on the RPG system, really.
For example, in most Japanese RPGs, evasion, agility, dodging and so forth are completely irrelevant, because even when they don’t only offer the most token of protections bosses will have sky high attack stats and hit you anyway. In these games, and if I have a choice, I tend to focus on tanking stats - hit points, mana points, endurance, magic resist, damage & ailments soaking gear and so forth. Who cares if I only do 10 damage a turn ? I. Just. Won’t. Die. Bring on the earth shattering kabooms.
In AD&D and similar games however, my MO is to try and get my armour class in the lower stratosphere. I know it’s a losing proposition mechanics-wise (because AC becomes increasingly harder to improve, while BAB steadily improves on its own and allows a ton of stacking buffs) but goddamnit, I can try. In fact, my current character in a pen and paper *Pathfinder *campaign is a goblin monk 2/druid X who compounds a sky high dex with a high Wis, retarded natural armour stacking, rings, dodge, and as many defensive buffs as our sorceror has time to apply. So what if the Fighter outdamages me handily, the Sorcerer blasts better and has more utility spells ? When even the final boss of a dungeon has trouble landing a hit, I get to crack a smile (and no, he won’t land a spell either. Monk saves and Evasion, bitch !) 
And in White Wolf’s RPGs, can’t have enough Willpower, just like you can’t have enough Panache in 7th Sea or Void in L5R. Moar rerolls plz (and the Willpower ability to say “No. Just no.” is damn handy as well).
Oh hells yeah. First toon I created, on game release, was a Regen+Thorns Scrapper. I didn’t know anything about the game, it just sounded cool. God, was she ever overpowered. Too bad they nerfed both powersets since. It’s just not the same when you can’t solo Task Forces 
It all depends on the game and the sort of character that I want to play. If I have NPCs henchmen to carry stuff, for instance, I won’t need my strength to be as high. I’ll almost always need a high Intelligence to get the most benefit from experience, and a decent Charisma in order to convince the NPCs to do stuff or give me information. In some games Dexterity gives a great bonus, in other games it’s just about useless except in a few circumstances. It’s also going to depend on whether I know if I can boost some stats later on in the game. I know that in Fallout 1 and 2, I can boost my strength significantly later on, so I’m OK with having lower than average strength to start out with.
I find that games where raw strength is the most important stat tend to bore me. Now, I can and I have played warriors in games like D&D, but in most of those games, I bring something into the campaign as well as raw strength.
**What’s your favorite RPG stat? **
The one that benefits me the most!
Luck! The best and weirdest stat! In every game luck factors into play, its always kind of mysterious what it actually does. But whatever it does, boy does it do it!
Played a one-shot in which my character gained power every time I punned or cracked a groan-worthy joke. At the end of the session, the fight against the big-bad started and I was -locked out of the room-, as the GM knew I’d grown to the point that I could squish him like a bug. Frustrating, but amusing at the same time. I sat behind the door slinging more puns just for the sake of doing so. 
(And ‘Moxie’, I believe, was a Tales from the Floating Vagabond’ stat).
I never noticed the evade/aim effects, but I didn’t play on very high difficulty either. Where did you get this info?
I think you’re wrong about the power of healing spells though. The power of healing spells in Tales games is based on the max HP of the TARGET. They’re all percent heals. I did a huge arsed comparison of every healing Arte in Tales of the Abyss, and they were all rigidly percent based - the only differences in the ‘power’ of the spell itself came from AD Skills and Fon Slot Chambers. You pretty much HAVE to do healing spells this way if you’re going to use the Tales style artes system - which is to say that there are no flat-out-upgrade Artes. If a healing spell heals for more, it costs much more MP and takes longer to cast. You never get an “upgrade” to First Aid, and if it didn’t scale, it’d be useless by endgame - or even midgame. (I still maintain that in Abyss, Tear was the best healer simply because first aid was so ridiculous from both a cast time and TP cost perspective. Sure, Natalia could heal for more at a pop, but Tear was healing for more per unit time and at a fraction of the TP cost, and had less fear of interruption because she was casting lots of little heals instead of a big long one.)
Estelle was a tank because she also had monstrous defense and all the best defensive skills. 
Depends, I always tend to minimize the utility of CON and CHA because they were last in the old D+D. I can never remember the “new” stat order. It will always be S I W D Co Ch to me.
…And now I feel I must make a character in some game who’s name is Siwd’Co’Ch.
This is the commonly accepted wisdom on the various Tales boards. They also say that it’s useful until you get to Evil/Chaos because the enemy stat scaling makes their Acc/Evade so damn high you simply can’t counter it by raising your own, but below that difficultly it easily outpaces other stats in usefulness.
EXP.
Charisma was of very limited usefulness in most of the games I played, back in the day. Constitution helped some.
And yes, S I W D Co Ch IS the proper order of states. Fighter, mage, cleric, thief…those are the main classes, and the first four stats are essential to getting those classes.
In the original In Nomine RPG (the French one, which as I understand it is a lot more tongue in cheek than its US remake), PC demons of Kobal, Demon Prince of Gallows Humour, would regain power points every time they made the DM laugh out loud.
I was pretty good at it, hence the handle :).
I’ve found that the usefulness of Charisma (and similar attributes/stats - Diplomacy, Speechcraft and so forth) depends a lot on the DM. Some DMs factor your own roleplaying in, in which case you can safely dump Cha as long as you’re personally good at acting, lying convincingly, speechifying and so forth.
An other kind of DM makes you roll the skill no matter what you’re saying or how involved you were in the speech - in which case I like to pump Cha, then have my character attempts the most ridiculous lies and verbal stunts because hey, if the DM’s going to be silly like that, I might as well be too :p.
Then again, if the adventure’s going to be “delve into these forgotten ruins” or “stop the evil overlord !”, then chances are there won’t be much talking involved.
I’ve always personally favored the “modifier” approach. A super good speech may bypass a dice roll all together, but a moderately good one may give you +5 (on top of any Cha bonuses), a bad one may give you -1 or -2 etc.