Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
If the PCs skills matter, you have to specify how difficult various means of influencing the situation are. Those are stats.
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That looks like a motte and bailey fallacy. Yes, it's true that if the PCs are going up against an adversary, and neither victory nor defeat is certain, then there has to be some specification of how probable they are to succeed; and in functional terms that might be called "stats." But it's not necessarily the case that that specification is written down in advance; it might be just made up by the GM on the spot when it becomes necessary—that is, the character definition/writeup might not include the list of traits and numbers that is normally called "stats" in GURPS. And even if it is, it might not take the form of a stat block. I mean, for example, I could perfectly well say, "You want to fight Chingis the Barbarian? Okay, make an attack roll with a BAD of -5." That -5 wouldn't be a "stat" in the usual sense (and I might not even be rolling dice for Chingis), but it would certainly be a number defining the foe's capabilities, and I might even have written it down in advance. So would it be a "stat"? In a broad sense, possibly, but in a narrow sense, no.
And this isn't even limited to the capabilities of gods or superpowered adversaries. It could apply just as well to the random orcs or tavern brawlers the PCs run into by chance, who were never written up because the encounter wasn't planned.