An idea to make the game feel lighter

I just recently created my first 5e character for a PbP game, filled up the official character sheet, and after all the time taken I realized the following: we (gamers and designers) are still thinking too much that we should play the game exactly as in 3e/4e when it comes to the necessity of pre-calculating all stats, and it's not true!

In 5e whatever check you make is almost always in this form:

d20 + stat mod + prof bonus

There are rarely any additional bonuses on top of this formula. Not never, because some additional bonuses are still there, e.g. from Fighting Style: Archery, but they are rare.

Knowing that your prof bonus is the same for everything should make it a piece of cake to play the game without pre-calculating all weapons' total attack bonuses, saving throws, skill checks or anything else, because all you need to do is add together one stat modifier and the general prof bonus. There are only 6 stats, and there is only one proficiency bonus! Why do you really need to "precalc" a long list of skill checks, attacks for all weapons you carry, and six different saving throws? You don't! You write your 6 stat modifiers and that only prof bonus in LARGE fonts on your sheet, and add them together when you need to make a check. How long does it take to add two single-digit numbers, once you are past grammar school?

I am still thinking too much in 3e/4e terms that all those checks "might" be different, hence there's need to precalculate and track everything, and so on... Even the official 5e Character Sheet is a bad suggestion: it still shows all those lists of skills, it still shows room for all 6 different saving throws, 4 of which will have exactly the same final modifier that you already have in the box near the 6 ability scores, while the other 2 saves will simply be that number plus your current proficienct bonus. This gives everyone the wrong impression...

The whole game would feel lighter if you use a character sheet that only lists what you're proficient at, but not the stuff you aren't proficient at, and no numbers beside. You only have 4-5 skills you're proficient at, you don't need to write down the others on your character sheet because they are just the same as ability checks. There will be very little to write on that character sheet. You're good to go like this:

PROFICIENCIES (+2 bonus):

History (Int)
Insight (Wis)
Persuasion (Cha)
Survival (Wis)
...
Greataxe (Str)
Rapier (Str or Dex)
Longbow (Dex) +2 archery style
...
Strength saving throws
Intelligence saving throws

That's all you need to know. No pre-calculations. Pre-calculations don't speed up the game much anymore in 5e, compared to previous editions. If you precalculate everything, you're spending time precalculating a lot of stuff you'll never use, which will clutter your character sheet. You may sometime waste more time wading throught a cluttered character sheet, than the time to need to add 2 small numbers together. You may forget you have something useful on that character sheet, if it's crowded with too much stuff. And if you level up often, you'll have to review all precalculations more often. And also, skipping pre-calculations can perhaps halve the time it takes to create a new character.

Of course I'm not saying everybody should follow this approach. Some people will still feel "safer" with precalculations, thinking that calculating in real time is prone to errors (but OTOH, an error in precalculations is instead prone to stay there a long time...). Or you may just love to have a character sheet full of stuff. I'm just saying that this could be something interesting to think about and try sometimes

This is why I use a simple format for my characters' stat info. It's pretty spare and doesn't have a lot of graphics or fiddly bits. I can use it on forums, on blog posts, and on documents.

You can find an example here. I was able to stat out a D&D-style BBC!Porthos at both 1st and 4th level without breaking a sweat.

Afrodyte said:

This is why I use a simple format for my characters' stat info. It's pretty spare and doesn't have a lot of graphics or fiddly bits. I can use it on forums, on blog posts, and on documents.

You can find an example here. I was able to stat out a D&D-style BBC!Porthos at both 1st and 4th level without breaking a sweat.

Click to expand...

Yes, this is what I mean! You get a very compact character sheet that isn't intimidating and takes a few minutes to fill.

You could also remove the last few attack bonuses: notice that they are all either +4 or +5, depending on whether they use Dex or Str. If you substitute +4 with a simple "Dex" label and +5 with "Str", you don't have to update them when your proficiency bonus increases.

As I mentioned in the other thread about monsters, this idea reveals that something that used to be a huge pain in 3e as ability score damage, is quite a lot easier to handle now: you update only that score and its modifier, and nothing else in your character sheet.

Could you make it even simpler by doing away with the proficiency bonus entirely, just granting Advantage instead?

Quartz said:

Could you make it even simpler by doing away with the proficiency bonus entirely, just granting Advantage instead?

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Obviously you could, but it would significantly cheapen advantage and prevent the benefit from all the other things that give advantage.

To me, the feeling of simplicity in 5e isn't reflected in the character sheet, and doesn't need to be. It's in the actual gameplay. When you're playing the game, every mechanical thing you're asked to do is quick and easy and unobtrusive, and having your stat mod bonuses written next to the skill list actually helps that. Having the full skill list written down is helpful because it reminds everyone of the common gaming language used to describe various actions, and it also might help with brainstorming when players are looking for solutions.

While I fully acknowledge the fact that you can shorthand the character sheet in the way described at the top of the thread, I just don't see any benefit to doing so. I guess the feeling of "heaviness" is a personal, emotional reaction that will vary from player to player, and I don't share it. If someone at my table is so math-averse that they see this as a chore, I'll be more than happy to do it for them in less than a minute.

I don't think that really streamlines the game very much. A lot of the rules codify exactly what each skill/save does, and having to recalculate it every time seems like even more of a hassle. Example: You have to roll your wisdom save. A person with it already on their sheet glances over, says "ok +5" and rolls. A person without it on their sheet looks over at their wisdom score, then to wherever they have their proficiencies written out, then adds it together. In fact, the list of proficiencies would probably be long enough that hunting for it would be much more of a hassle than writing it out beforehand. Not sure how this would streamline it all.

Even if the calculation is simple, if I have to think about it every single time I roll dice, then the game certainly isn't going to feel lighter.

Quartz said:

Could you make it even simpler by doing away with the proficiency bonus entirely, just granting Advantage instead?

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That would change the rules of the game. I was only talking about changing the presentation on your character sheet.

SilverfireSage said:

I don't think that really streamlines the game very much. A lot of the rules codify exactly what each skill/save does, and having to recalculate it every time seems like even more of a hassle. Example: You have to roll your wisdom save. A person with it already on their sheet glances over, says "ok +5" and rolls. A person without it on their sheet looks over at their wisdom score, then to wherever they have their proficiencies written out, then adds it together. In fact, the list of proficiencies would probably be long enough that hunting for it would be much more of a hassle than writing it out beforehand. Not sure how this would streamline it all.

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The list of all skills is still much longer than the list of your proficient skills.

The problem with your example is that you don't need to know your wisdom save bonus, because a wisdom save in 5e is just a wisdom check. If you're proficient, it's a wisdom check plus your general proficiency bonus - which you don't need to even look up each time.

I have to see this work in practice, but ideally I would like to have a character sheet made of a single page, but not a cluttered one. It will be hard for spellcasters after a certain level, so for them maybe a second sheet for spells.

You are still thinking about "hunting" for information in a character sheet, I am trying to think if I can play the game with a character sheet so light that there is no hunting needed.

Li Shenron said:

That would change the rules of the game. I was only talking about changing the presentation on your character sheet.

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Fair enough.