MUSH Survival Guide: Statting

Chapter 1: Bare Bones Minimum- wherein Mushing is talked about in comparison to other mediums, and clients are listed.

Chapter 2: How Do I Shot Mush?- wherein basic mechanics of communication are described.

Chapter 3: Can I Haz Character Nao?- Wherein you find how to be a good guest, survive the horrors(?) of the application process, and how to construct a well-rounded character for MUSHing purposes.

Chapter 4: Everyone was Kung-Fu Fighting with Headgods???- You're here!

Everyone was Kung-Fu Fighting with Headgods???

With the advent of csys 2.0, players now have the power to decide what their stats are. Of course, this also means having to delve into a totally new system without any previous experience, which can be overwhelming. Even while I say this, believe me when I also say this system is much more user-friendly than what was before, when it was ye olde staff statting everything.

While there is a concise set of pages to help get you going, this page will (over?)explain just how to get your character up and running.

Teach me, Sensei!!

The first thing I'd recommend is reading all the pages you find when you type in +info, or, at the very least, reading them as you go along. It may be overwhelming at first, but it'll go over the basics, while I will go over the ways I do things.

Okay, first, we're going to begin by typing in +start. It should say:

STATS: You start stats for Beatbox MacGuffin.

Now, remember what the +info general file says: even if you leave the room or type +finish, you'll not lose your progress, nor will your old stats be overwritten.

Stats, Stats, Stats

If you've read +info step1, you'll have looked over what I'm about to go through.

Now, here's the trick I use to make things easier. Open this link to the handy dandy PersonaMush csys statter 2.0. You can use this to redistribute stats of your character and his/her persona, as well as check to make sure the balance between the two stats is not too massive, all without having to type in commands if you decide to change numbers around.

How do you figure out how to balance around your stats? Remember, this is a reflection of your character's normal abilities- if they're good at track, you may reflect this with a higher agility score. Intelligent? Maybe they have a higher magic score. Work all day on a farm? They might have higher vitality. There's no rhyme or reason to it, but try to treat it as you would how a character looks or acts, rather than try to make the best battle character ever.

HPweight and SPweight are just that: they add weights to your HP and SP so that they're weighed equally. Thus, you could have someone with has stats that lean a certain way, and have their hp and sp lean a completely different way. By the way: your SP will look low in comparison to HP even if you put 3 points into your spweight. That's just how it's balanced now.

The same process you used to determine your stats for your character can go for your persona. What are the characteristics that make them unique? What did they do? What are they known for? Use these to inform how your persona shapes out.

Now, here's an example build:

Here's a trick: notice how each stat is either odd/odd or even/even between user and persona? This allows for points to not be lost in the averaging process. If you see a '.5' at the end of the average for a stat, that's a point that could be lost just to math. It may be a little troublesome, but it makes everything line up just right.

Now, here's how I'd enter that:

self str=15
self mag=18
self agi=18
self vit=12
self luk=15
self statgrowth=Luck
self hpweight=2
self spweight=2
persona str=49
persona mag=50
persona agi=50
persona vit=52
persona luk=31

Statgrowth is where you generally want your character to pack an extra punch, but it doesn't have to be their highest state. For Beatbox, I chose luck, because he sometimes gets the benefit of the doubt at times.

Elements

Following along with +info step2, we're going to look at the elements your persona will be strong or weak to. Generally, you will have 4 strengths and 2 weaknesses. How you decide them can be arbitrary, but, to serve as an example, I'm going to pull out the being we wish could be a persona: Nyancat.

Nyancat lives in space, which is dark yet filled with the light of stars and radiation. Also, he resists the pull of planets. Thus he must be strong against dark, light, nuclear, and gravity. His insides are gooey when cooked in a toaster and give easily to the toothy maw of humans, so he must be weak to fire and pierce.

.... It really can be that nonsensical sometimes.

Thus, for Nyancat the persona, I would put:

persona elements=dark-strong|light-strong|nuclear-strong|gravity-strong|fire-weak|pierce-weak

That's it! Your persona's strengths and weaknesses are set!

Abilities

Now, for ability types, as described in +info step3. For this I will also use Nyancat. Now, for abilities you have the choice of two options:

• 2 High level ability sets.
• 1 High, 2 standard ability sets.

Much like how you decided your persona's stats and elemental strengths and weaknesses, your abilities can reflect your persona's history, personality, abilities, and/or qualities. For Nyancat, since he makes everyone happy, he gets high statbonus. Also, due to the unusual makeup of space, he gets high nuclear. Here is how it'll be entered:

persona abl`groups=high statbonus|high nuclear

Discretionary Abilities

These abilities are individual ones not already in one of your ability lists. Think of these as your chance to further customize your persona; it'll be what makes them different from another persona with the same ability lists. Generally, everyone can have two standard level and two high level abilities. Use +rankcheck to check what level an ability is.

For Nyancat, I will first go to this list to get a listing of all the abilities I can have, including the ones that can only be used as discretionary abilities. Since Nyancat wants to bring happiness, I will give him Media and Diarama which are standard level healing spells. I will also give him Meteor Clash, a high rank Almighty spell, to continue with the space theme, as well as Makarakarn, so he may shield his many fans from the effects of radiation.

It will be entered like this:

persona abl`list=Diarama|Media|Meteor Clash|Makarakarn

To be continued....