I'm going to speak from raw experience.

Even if you are intent on never rolling dice, your freeform roleplay experience must be grounded in stats. The reason is very simple. It gives you a legitimate basis for the scope of the individual you are playing, and telling yourself you can fairly arbitrate such a thing without a box bounding you in misses the point of having those stats at all. That it stops you from making a god-man is low hanging fruit. The real point is forcing you to make a creature that is INTERESTING. By having clear a clear pool of resources to pick from, you have to make specific choices and compromises. Which then reflect on who your character is. It, ironically, helps encourage more frivolous character traits as well. This person solidifies in your mind more and has actual edges and purpose.

Beyond that, even if you aren't siming every moment of the game mechanics fully, having a general understanding of what your character can physically accomplish provides opportunities of their own. Don't have a way to directly accomplish your task? Find means within your limits. Get creative. Put in the effort. Similarly, your more niche traits might actually be more useful than you think once everyone can't just fiat their competency for every task. Helps contain autism too. Because tracking damage, and having real risk of character loss, makes people hesitate to do stupid things.

I've seen literally one time where having crunchy rules wouldn't have helped a situation.