What program to use to create character sheets?

Like the title says.

I only know of MS Excel, but are there any better programs?

Thanks!

Depends on what you want. I use Scribus because I'm not going for any autocalc...just creating a form for my players to use.

Yeah. What kind of functionality do you want the sheet to have? That's what really determines what you should use.

I want sheets for DM use, that don't require printing, So I'm going with the complex route of making a Visual Basic character sheet program. If you don't want to be that in-depth about it, Word or Excel work just fine.

A lot of people seem to use Excel. I'd think, if you know how to use it, that's probably the most straightforward option. If you don't need autocalc or anything of that nature, hell, you could even use Paint/Photoshop/The Gimp/whatever image editing program you wanted. There's also Microsoft Publisher from MS Office, or some equivalent program (I'm not really sure what's out there). Hell, any word processor would work. Really you could use whatever you wanted, though if you want auto-calculation that's a bit tougher (not that you can't just convert it to pdf and do it from there with some PDF editor or another).

Back in 3.5 I made two character sheets. One was for the purpose of being printed out and used. One was for use on the computer. I made the printable one in paint (yes, I'm crazy) and the other one in excel. The excel character sheet had multiple tabs organized very well over time, along with auto-calculating everything from power points, to multiclassed BAB to penalties due to negative levels.

In 4e, I haven't found a need to make one on a computer yet, but I do have one that I made printable. I also made it in paint. Both of the printable ones were converted to pdf.

I've never met anyone else who uses paint like I do, but I played with it a ton as a kid. I'm more comfortable using it than the multiple layers of a more advanced program. In fact, I haven't ever figured out how to change just a few pixels on a specific layer of a more advanced program. I guess if I knew how to do that I'd be able to use them, but the essentials that paint does so well for me, are lost on me in other photo programs such as adobe photoshop.

I've uploaded the 4e character sheet I made as example of what I made in paint through extracting images from other things. Shado's character sheet was a source of a lot of the art or my sheet, as shado extracted the art from the PHB somehow. Like I said though, I'm crazy. I wouldn't recommend paint, it just happens to be the thing I know how to use the best.

Out of interest, what's the consensus on the legality of fan-made 4e character editors/sheets?

If they include the details of feats, the exact text (and flavor text) of powers etc., are they ok by WotC?

I don't think it's technically legal, but I highly doubt WotC is going to go out of their way and sue you for damages or something over a character sheet. In 99% of cases I'm sure people will have a copy of the PHB anyway. The character sheets available really are no substitute for having a PHB. Pirated copies of the PHB are probably a much bigger concern of theirs, though the majority of regular D&D players probably have a hard copy and not just an illegal PDF.

RobRendell said:

Out of interest, what's the consensus on the legality of fan-made 4e character editors/sheets?

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I don't understand the question. There's something missing to make that question make sense. It's possible you might have meant one of the following:

• What's the consensus on what you think the legality of fan-made 4e character sheets is?
• What's the consensus on what you think should be legal regarding fan-made 4e character sheets?
• What is the legality of fan-made 4e character sheets?

The legality of it is not an opinion; not something that you can have a consensus on. The law just is, whether or not people have an opinion about it.

That being said, you can make 4e compatible character sheets that don't break any copy right or trademark law (Yes, I just said it's legal if you don't break any laws). For specifics you should see a lawyer, but in general you can't include a trademark such as the D&D logo without mentioning who owns that trademark. I am not very versed in copy right law, so I don't know about how much information on feats you can include, but you can make auto-calculating character sheets as copy right laws don't protect the mechanics of a game, just the text of a book.

Almost any printable character sheet that contains text only will be legal because it won't have a database of powers, but rather columns that can be filled in and it's titled something called "powers." Simply being compatible with 4e is not illegal.

Sphyre said:

The legality of it is not an opinion; not something that you can have a consensus on. The law just is, whether or not people have an opinion about it.

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Fair call. I guess I was coming from the angle that this question has come up before, and I was wondering if there was a consensus on the discussions. I phrased it in such terms because I felt that the chances of a lawyer wading in with a definitive answer were slim.

Sphyre said:

Almost any printable character sheet that contains text only will be legal because it won't have a database of powers, but rather columns that can be filled in and it's titled something called "powers." Simply being compatible with 4e is not illegal.

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But, hypothetically speaking, say someone had written an HTML/CSS/Javascript 4e automated printable editable character sheet, and put it up in some obscure corner of the web. In said hypothetical sheet, you could select, say, "Twin Strike" from a drop down, and the full text of the Ranger power Twin Strike is inserted into the sheet, with the flavour text, Hit and Damage lines, etc., verbatim from the PHB. In other words, the sheet is backed up by a database of powers.

And say that the someone in question didn't want to be Cease and Desisted by WotC and have to throw away all that work, and thus had only shared the link with their local gaming group. Are they justified in their paranoia?

I really doubt they'd attack you legally. Hell, you can easily find pre-filled-out resources for power cards (particularly the MSE sets). I stand by my original statement that it's pretty much worthless without a handbook in the first place. Worst case, you drop it from the public distribution and... still use it within your local game group anyway.