Importance of Base Stats?

[Grapes]

No need to structure your guild/stat priorities around waying. Sitting down increases stun regen, and resting increases it even more. Comfy furniture may or may not help. Wisdom is useful for perception skills and bartering, so don't forget that.

If I was going with a combat aide type character I'd definitely consider ranger over warrior, as well as assassin (though assassins aren't as useful for perception skills, oddly), burgler, or pickpocket. The downside to pickpocket is learning to hide. Burglar doesn't get scan. Merchants get a grab-bag of useful skills for the job, and can be further modified with the right subguild choice. Merchants are also much less of a grind to become useful than other classes.

If using perception/crafting/casting/grinding/bartering skills more often, wisdom is great. If crafting/stealth/stealing/might get in a fight/carrying lots of small items, agility. If need to carry lots of moderate-weight items/wear armor/want to win a fight/want to do more damage with backstab then strength. If you want more stun/faster regen/more hp/more effective use of armor (unknown if this helps or how much)/walking sneaking or running on foot outside then endurance is your pal.

All the stats are important in ways, all can be done without provided a balance at another end of the scale (for example, you can make a powerful warrior with crappy endurance and wisdom if your strength/agility are high enough to compensate), and all can be done without for the purposes of simply playing a character. If you want to maximize your "winning" potential in specific areas, then yeah, you need the stats, but nothing says you can't play a mediocre character, or even a straight up loser in all areas, and still get some fun and excitement out of the game itself. Making mistakes, failure, can be rewarding in the long term in unforseen ways.

[oggotale]

This is with respect to combat characters:
How much stats matter depends on how much everyone else thinks stats matter.

Many neat plot lines will involve other players and conflict with other players, or conflict with tailor made obstacles.
If everyone in Arm is churning out characters until they max out every stat, then even if you want to roleplay an "average" Bynner, you're still going to need those high stats unless you're okay being a "poor" Bynner.

If noone care about stats, then median stat rolls translate well into median competence characters IG.

Idk to what extent people care about stats IG (I'd be skeptical using statements on the forum as a sample because of heavy selection bias). But, based on this theory, I'd say, if you're aiming to be atleast "average", you still have to aim for atleast slighty above-median rolls (since atleast some people do seem to be care-less about making bad-roll chars survive, pushing the IG median stats above the dice-roll median).

[Nile]

Stats are overrated. I survived the Copper War and a whole bunch of sudden death scenarios with a breed ranger that had poor agility and bugger all strength. I just RP'd his fighting style being one of sitting there and waiting with a long spear, primarily defensive.

[Cerelum]

Stats, as far as I can tell, matter in the beginning when it comes to combat.

I've had a human ranger with average or poor stats, get his ass kicked by a vulture out of Chargen.

Then I've had a human ranger with pretty good stats own scrabs outta chargen.

What seems to be the deciding factors at least from my experimentation is Strength and Agility.

Strength is how hard you hit, which is pure damage per hit, like when you WOUND something to the head or whatever.

Agility is how fast you attack and how easily you dodge.

So having high strength seems to be the quickstart to being a combat type character.

Now I've also had characters that lived a long time, had shit stats but grinded through shitty skills to better skills and were deadly as fuck.

So I think ultimately, stats will keep you alive in the beginning and skills and knowledge will keep you alive in the end.