don't you need obedience for those events to trigger?
You do. And there is a sort of grinding element to those. But it's not really a big deal as all you have to do is just play the game and have normal interactions with the characters for those to level up.
No, no story event requires stats. You may lose or miss out on things, but you will never be locked out of story by stats. The game doesn't say something like "I need to raise her obedience" for story except in very rare cases
, probably less than 3 in the entire game unless I removed those. First one that came to mind was Lin's virginity event but the bondage was removed from that a long time ago.
According to one guide I saw, you need a 20 obedience with her for one of the 20+ events, but you get a bunch in the story, so not having a 20 by then would be really hard.
Whatever you read probably told you to get it because you would see extra content. It's completely optional and the game never asks you to raise it to that point for story. It's not necessary what so ever to play it or continue the story.
doesn't seem that way. the fact that the game lets you grind away those stats can leave confusion.
It tells you this at the very beginning of the game. Stats are
NOT required to play the story what so ever. To play story, look and wait for "* Talk *" events, or for them to randomly appear.
The code for story events to appear is simple. In layman's terms, the game looks at the current friendship number and makes sure about 1 - 4 days have passed in game. For the vast majority of story events, that's it. (Oh, and it will often look for the time of day) Sometimes it also makes sure other characters are at a certain part in their story too.