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View Full Version : useable character sheets - biggest 4e promise so far?



Rex Blunder
2007-09-25, 02:31 PM
Design of the new 4E character sheets is underway. A lot of learning has gone into the initial design. The good news is that we can fit everything on one double-sided page, without making the lines and boxes so small that you can't really write in them. (source) (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=906394)

If could play, say, a 4e wizard with nothing but a single double sided piece of paper, that will probably have a bigger impact on my minute-by-minute play experience than a lot of the rule changes mentioned so far. My 3e character sheets have so many extra pages, post-its and crabbed little marginal notations on them. The "Spells" section is the biggest offender.

Basic D&D was boss. One single-sided page - and that's with an area for a character sketch or symbol, and a large area devoted to "Other Notes".

tsuyoshikentsu
2007-09-25, 04:23 PM
Sexy. :D Me likee.

I agree that this would make play easier... but remember, this also means that character generation will probably be easier as well.

Green Bean
2007-09-25, 04:32 PM
It's like the women always tell me; sometimes, smaller is better. :smalltongue:

Overlard
2007-09-25, 04:58 PM
But it's not a good sign when they're giggling at the time...

Green Bean
2007-09-25, 04:59 PM
But it's not a good sign when they're giggling at the time...

She said it was a nervous tic! :smallmad:

horseboy
2007-09-26, 04:45 PM
Kinda reminds me of the old Armory character sheet. Though, there never was enough room on those for high level casters. That or you had to have really little writing.

Lord Tataraus
2007-09-26, 04:57 PM
My question is if the sheet will include a section for a lot of spells, or only just the minimum number. That's where I'm skeptical.

Crazy_Uncle_Doug
2007-09-26, 05:09 PM
I also hark back to the good ol' days of Basic DnD, where we didn't have fancy pre-made sheets, but instead noted our characters down on a single side of college-ruled 8-1/2"x11" paper. I've also grown to like games such as Vampire or Exalted, where a character can be expressed on one single-side sheet of paper.

3.5e was in my opinion, the worst. The "official" sheets were two double-sided sheets of paper (if you weren't a caster). Worse, it lacked space for what always takes a great deal of space for a long-lived character of any class: Equipment. Toss in playing a spellcasting class, and playing 3.5e could often feel like filling out one's 1040s at the beginning of the year. Then, someone wouldn't show up for a game and we'd have to play his character ... :smallfurious:

TheOOB
2007-09-26, 05:16 PM
The character sheets I use now is four pages, yet only two of them are strictly necessary, the third page is almost entirely blank space for spells, and the fourth page is background, personality, appearance, and what not.

One of the big problems I have with the official 3e sheets is that a lot of things take up entirely too much room. Yes attributes are important, no I don't need a sixth of the page for them, a single line is fine.

Citizen Joe
2007-09-26, 05:31 PM
I'm telling you, it's gonna be one sheet and a stack of cards for special abilities/spells.

Rex Blunder
2007-09-26, 05:45 PM
I also hark back to the good ol' days of Basic DnD, where we didn't have fancy pre-made sheets, but instead noted our characters down on a single side of college-ruled 8-1/2"x11" paper.

Hey, my basic game came with a preprinted character sheet on the back of the player's book, but then, I'm a n00b -- I had the red box.

Crazy_Uncle_Doug
2007-09-26, 05:55 PM
Hey, my basic game came with a preprinted character sheet on the back of the player's book, but then, I'm a n00b -- I had the red box.

I had the "purple box" Basic version, which was essentially the same as the Red box. I think it had a character sheet, too, but we found it easier to use notebook paper.

horseboy
2007-09-26, 06:26 PM
I'm telling you, it's gonna be one sheet and a stack of cards for special abilities/spells.

Would not be surprised. The pages of those things my buddies big in LG have will fill up a 3 ring binder.

continuumc
2007-09-26, 06:58 PM
This is why my friends and I make our own character sheets. The official ones are never good. The one we use now for 3.5 is one page, double sided. Admittedly, it does not include spells. But let's face it, there is just no good way to include spells on a character sheet. Which is why I always have a spell sheet, seperate from my character sheet for spells. Though..I do kindof like the idea of making index cards for the frequently used ones....hmmm...

Starsinger
2007-09-26, 07:20 PM
But let's face it, there is just no good way to include spells on a character sheet.

I think this is the one thing a spontaneous caster really has over a prepared one, the character sheet's spaces are sort of small, but a list of spells known is easy for a sorcerer to fill out.

Chronos
2007-09-26, 07:32 PM
If I'm a caster with 50 spells in my spellbook, that's going to take up enough space to write 50 spells. No amount of redesign of the sheet is going to change that. The fact that they think they can change that tells me that either they're going to drastically reduce the number of spells that casters can know, or those character sheets don't contain all the information they're supposed to (maybe offloading it onto cards or something).

Heck, it doesn't even need to be spells that take up that much space. I and some of my friends have been known to fill up an entire sheet with equipment. When you're the type to carry around sewing needles and fishing line just in case they become useful, it adds up.

Really, blank sheets are the best way to go even now, because different people will need different things. Whatever space you reserve for spells known is going to be completely wasted on a barbarian's character sheet, and if you leave enough room for all of a rogue's skills and a fighter's feats, then the fighter's going to waste skill space, and the rogue will waste feat space.

Citizen Joe
2007-09-26, 08:35 PM
We're talking about WotC here, the makers of Magic: The Gathering with its hordes of expansion packs. You'll get a bunch of cards with your spells. You'll get basic equipment and then equipment cards.

Green Bean
2007-09-26, 08:39 PM
We're talking about WotC here, the makers of Magic: The Gathering with its hordes of expansion packs. You'll get a bunch of cards with your spells. You'll get basic equipment and then equipment cards.

You mean the same way you buy chocolate bars by the litre at a gas station? :smalltongue:

Swooper
2007-09-27, 06:40 AM
If I were any good at graphics programs like PhotoShop I'd have made my own four-sheeter ages ago (I made an attempt at that, with MS Paint.. it wasn't really good). They're sort of good if you print them on A3 size paper, so that you can fold it togeather and keep all your spellsheets, memos, character sketches and stuff like that in between, and they usually leave plenty of space for fluff like character description and background.

Techonce
2007-09-27, 08:10 AM
I've tried using spell cards in the past and usually it's more of a pain than anything else. Aseperate sheet with spells on it works fine, in my opinion.

CUrrently as a DM I have created single page sheets for all monsters and NPC's. Yeah the caster one is a bit crowded, but ti works. So going double sided shouldn't be a big issue.

If you want to fit more on the sheet, then you need to remove some fo the junk. Biggest Offender:

Skills. There are a whole lot of skills and they take up a large amount of space. Less skills = more space, and I think the opinion is that it is headed this way.

I guess the problem is that generic sheets leave everyone unsatisfied. Fighters want more space for feats and less for skills, rogues are the flip of that. ANd with the new system you want an area for all of the combat meneuver, special attack information, at least for a new person, which all of us will be.

Person_Man
2007-09-27, 09:00 AM
I think there's going to reduce the skewed nature of bookkeeping in D&D.

In 3.5, most melee builds tend to have almost no bookkeeping (hit points, maybe a few limited use items), and most casters have a ton of bookkeeping (hit points, spells, spell components, limited use items).

In 4.0, every class will have at will, per encounter, and per day abilities. Presumably, melee classes will be more like Tome of Battle classes, with 1-3 maneuvers/stances per level (which can be organized on cards if you don't want to keep it all on a sheet) and casters will have fewer spells known per level, which they can use more often.

This, in my opinion, is a vast improvement on the game. However, I think that they may want to leave in a Barbarian-like class, for newer players who don't want any bookkeeping.

Morty
2007-09-27, 09:03 AM
Well, now it looks like casters will have few spells that they'll swing around more often. I find that extremely bad, but that does limit bookkeeping and could mean that spells won't need another sheet for them. Though personally, I don't see any problem with having another sheet for spells. Before I got some pre-made spell sheet, I've just written down spells myself in notebook.

ranger89
2007-09-27, 09:12 AM
I gave up on official player sheets long, long ago. After spending an hour or so meticulously copying the info from an old, beaten character's sheet to a new one only to then spell a beer on the new one within the first 2 minutes of play, I decided that (a) there has to be a better way and (b) if I'm going to design my own sheet, I might as well get techy about it. End result: my own character database that keeps track of all my characters (past and present), includes data lookups, and makes it a snap to print out a fresh copy after leveling or spilling a beer on a sheet. When 4e comes out (assuming my group migrates), I'm sure I'll create my own custom layout and add it to my DB.