So, I'm reminded when there's a game that, let's say, has a skill system that goes from 0 to 100. Let's say you have some skills that do not utilize all 100 of those points because those skills only come in handy every 25 points. You have 70 in Lockpicking? I hope you only like picking locks at 50 because no one made any in the range of 51-74. It doesn't even have to be a granular 100, it could be 10 levels, but you only unlock things at very specific intervals. You unlock perks at level 2 and 4 but not 3. 3 in this case is useless, it doesn't even give you a passive bonus.

I'm looking at you Fallout 3/NV and Wasteland 2.

Any other RPGs/-like games where there's stuff where you go for broke or don't bother at all?

Many games, in fact. In Outer Worlds you have a similar skill system to Fallout, in Kingdoms of Amalur you get nothing for skill levels in abilities that have no bonus (or very little). In fact a few of those only serve to unlock higher levels in the skills.

In D&D some ability levels don't actually add any bonuses to skills or combat.

AD&D also has this issue, where there might be little or no difference between an ability score of 7 versus 15.

Then again, AD&D also has the issue where intelligence only serves to provide a limit on what spells the character can ever get access to (and I consider permanently limiting a character based on a roll at the start of the game to be bad design), and where charisma lacks a mechanical effect. (Wisdom still at least provides bonus spells, though I still don't like needing high wisdom to learn higher level spells.)

Fortunately, the creators of 3rd Edition D&D saw that the gaps in the ability score system were bad design (though, unfortunately, they kept the ability score requirements for higher level spells).

I could also mention the skill system of Dragon Quest 8 and later games, where you only learn skills at specific values. The system would have been not as bad if they made it so that, instead of spending individual points, you instead spent enough to unlock the next skill or none at all (and, of course, they let you save skill points instead of spending them right away; DQ8 PS2 required that you spend all skill points as soon as you get them). (Also, DQ8 really could have used a respec option, which unfortunately, the game rather lacks. There's additionally the issue that some of the skills from DQ6 and DQ7 that are absent in DQ8 were strategically interesting and should have been retained; the skills that let a character take damage for allies are among them.)

Edit: By "AD&D" I am referring only to the editions that were actually called that, though pre-AD&D versions of D&D likely had similar gaps. Also, I forgot to mention that Wizardry and Bard's Tale are like this; you also see this in Might & Magic, but only at higher ability scores, so it's often worth investing a little into improving a character's weaker stats.

Drox Operative comes to mind. The skill to increase ship size takes several skill points to increase and every skill point in between is pretty much wasted. And additionally higher ship size steps need more points than you get with a level up.

D&D makes sense because you don't want huge amounts of extra work for people. 4e showed us it slows to a crawl when there's too much math and too many things going on.

For video games though, the systems SHOULD provide some benefit regardless what the value is. Although i'm guessing from the Lockpicking notes it's about the perks that are unlocked, while the skill level itself should increase success based on it's value and some luck.

I suppose dead gaps are a bit smaller in Herosystem. Herosystem you have pips (+1) half dice (1/2) half plus pip (1/2+1) dice-neg pip (1d6-1, note that 1/2+1 and 1d6-1 are considered the same power level) and a whole dice (1d6). This is calculated based on the value you have, and 5 points translates to 1d6 (with advantages, lethal damage and other things the value changes and instead you refer to DC's and adjust to the real dice count after)

Strength is listed as 10=2d6, 13=2 1/2 d6, 15=3d6. So there's not dead values for 11,12,14, but minmaxing can include raising or lowering a few points to shave and save points for other powers. Mhmm... Actually that combined mod for Drox was pretty good, raised experience means when you start a new game you'll jump 20 something levels at once and you'll be less grinding and more building something you want to play.

Otherwise yeah 5-10 points to upgrade a ship, which is bigger, slower, generally not much better except it MAY open up new slots for you to put equipment in. But having 3-4 types that means you need a lot of upgrades to get a new weapon slot for example vs a ship slot or an officer.

Most of the Elder Scrolls series games.

In Morrowind/Oblivion:
HP gain per level = CON / 10 rounded down.

In Daggerfall HP gain was a random roll based on your class + (CON - 50) / 10 rounded - most of the other attributes worked like this with only the multiples of 10 being significant. But at least it was explicit in character generation (you could adjust your stats and see how they affected modifiers)

edit: attributes not skills, also forgot just how freaky Daggerfall's level system was.

Its annoying when the stats are fixed but if you can reallocate stats, its a good balancing mechanism in games.

Alot of games have soft caps where if you want to make a decent build, you want to allocate stats accordingly so you get more bang for your buck.

The problem does arise if you cannot reallocate stats and you are stuck with a poor build where you over/under-invested in certain stats or skills which results in a sub-optimal character.

"Soft caps". Nioh 1+2, despite being pretty damned good games, have a ton of undocumented [except by community] soft caps where, after a certain point, there's no reason -- or significantly reduced reason -- to put anything into a skill unless your weapon is one that scales off that.

At a certain point, your "carry capacity" stop meaningfully increasing, so much for wanting to build for heavy armors.
At a certain point, you're not getting any more magic/ninja/samurai skill tree points or capacity, maybe just more power -- so it's not worth more points there.

And so on.

See also the related "diminishing returns" systems.

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On the D&D discussion, many newer d20-derivative games get rid of "ability scores" and just give directly "ability bonus", since you could gain an ability score without the bonus changing (They change every-other). Also, one of the goals of Pathfinder 1st edition over D&D3 was to reduce "dead levels", so you almost always get something neat -- not just skill points and hit points -- at each level. There are occasionally still level where less happens (usually for caster classes, which have a high baseline power to begin with), but it's not like 3e where you could go a whole bunch of levels without much of anything other than "what everyone else got except my numbers were a tad bigger".

Unless that stat happens to be Luck, which actually does have a measurable effect, at least in Arena (haven't tested Daggerfall).

(Incidentally, in Oblivion, the Luck stat was given a concrete effect; it now boosts the effective level of your skills, similarly to how Fortify Skill works in that game. I don't think it's worth boosting Luck at level up (unless you don't have at least 3 decent stat multipliers for that level), but Fortify Luck enchantments are quite useful on equipment, especially if you can raise the effective value of a magic skill to 100, as that drastically reduces the cost of spells.)

Also, anyone know whether Luck is worth investing in in Battlespire?

(By the way, Avernum 1-3 (but not Escape from the Pit and later remakes) made Luck really good in large amounts; 19 Luck means a 95% chance of surviving any damage that would normally be fatal; it would be like if you could only be killed if the attacker rolled a natural 20.)

I remember hating that lockpicking system, I think they also had the same system in place for terminal hacking, though that didn't come up as much.

I loathed the lock picking system in Oblivion for sure. Another Viva La Dirt League sketch on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YVRfrhJBbU

I hate this too, unless it's clearly stated in advance.

The Bethesda systems could easily be fixed so that the lockpicks become more durable as you climb the levels. So a level 26 and 49 might be able to pick exactly the same locks, but a level 49 might do it in one.

Ultimate annoyance with this is when you reach a level cap and have an odd number ability score in a game like Neverwinter Nights or Pathfinder. Completely useless ability point. Granted you can plan around this with a main character, but with a companion? No dice.

Not completely. Carrying capacity still goes up for every single point into strength. Your holding breath and negative hitpoint limit go up with every constitution. And the others still apply padding for when that stat is damaged/drained.