Homebrew Official Level Up Character Sheet (Fancy) 2023-10-12

[Morrus]

Morrus submitted a new resource:

Level Up Character Sheet (Fancy) - The character sheet from the Starter Box

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This character sheet is the one used by the Level Up: Advanced 5E Starter Box. It's not form fillable (yet). 6 pages, two of which are optional (combat maneuvers and spellcasting). Please give it a try!

This is almost final, but subject to last minute tweaks.

Q: Is it form-fillable? Not yet.

Q: Is there a printer-friendly version? Not yet.

For examples on how to fill it out see the pre-generated...

Read more about this resource...

 

[xiphumor]

I’m going to be honest here: there are several things about this I don’t like. To name just a few:

• The combat page doesn’t have your hit points or AC on it.
• The lack of a list of skills, which means that you can’t calculate the bonuses in advance, and also means that you have very little space to note expertise and specialties.
• I don’t see anywhere to mark your heritage
• The attacks section assumes you’re using attack rolls and not saving throws, and also assumes that most of those don’t have additional effects
• -Connection and Memento don’t need their own spaces. They’re important to start, but I’d rether see a more generic space for important contacts and to throw the Memento into the equipment section.

I don’t have time to do a deep dive, but @PJ Coffey has been thinking about this more lately, so I’m tagging them. But in short, the sheet might look pretty, but it doesn’t seem easy to play with, and when you’re trying to convince people that A5e isn’t super complex compared to O5e, that’s not great.

 

[Morrus]

• I don’t see anywhere to mark your heritage

Oops! I think that got accidentally dropped when Prestige was added. We'll put that right back there!

 

[Waller]

Now THAT’s a character sheet! It’s gorgeous!

I have a couple of niggles like equipment not being being enough and a couple of other things but it’s one of the best sheets for DnD I’ve seen. I’m glad publishers are realizing that graphical design is really important for the eye. It makes it so much easier to access and read. Maybe not to print though….

I’ll try it out this weekend but I think this is absolutely fantastic. Props to the designer whoever that was!

 

[Waller]

I’m going to be honest here: there are several things about this I don’t like. To name just a few:

• The combat page doesn’t have your hit points or AC on it.

Hit points aren’t just for combat.

• The lack of a list of skills, which means that you can’t calculate the bonuses in advance, and also means that you have very little space to note expertise and specialties.

Wrong game. You can’t calculate A5E skills in advance. And a list of +0s is just wasted space.

• I don’t see anywhere to mark your heritage
• The attacks section assumes you’re using attack rolls and not saving throws, and also assumes that most of those don’t have additional effects

Yeah the mission heritage is odd.

• -Connection and Memento don’t need their own spaces. They’re important to start, but I’d rether see a more generic space for important contacts and to throw the Memento into the equipment section.

Different play styles. Burying character stuff in equipment is how to ensure it never comes up in play.

I don’t have time to do a deep dive, but @PJ Coffey has been thinking about this more lately, so I’m tagging them.

I tried the H&H sheet but it’s not for me. Too cramped and crowded and texty. It’s great work though.

 

[xiphumor]

Hit points aren’t just for combat.

But they are SUPER IMPORTANT for combat.

Wrong game. You can’t calculate A5E skills in advance. And a list of +0s is just wasted space.

Every single skill has a most commonly used ability, with the exception of Intimidation, which has two (AG 408-411). There is definitely an assumed ability score for each skill. To back this assertion up, note that monster statblocks with skills have precalculated bonuses.

Yeah the mission heritage is odd.

Different play styles. Burying character stuff in equipment is how to ensure it never comes up in play.

The Narrator has the responsibility to make these important, not the player.

I tried the H&H sheet but it’s not for me. Too cramped and crowded and texty. It’s great work though.

That’s fair

 

[Morrus]

Every single skill has a most commonly used ability, with the exception of Intimidation, which has two (AG 408-411). There is definitely an assumed ability score for each skill. To back this assertion up, note that monster statblocks with skills have precalculated bonuses.

I'll just jump in to note that this is a deliberate choice. The very fact that you perceive the game still as having an assumed ability score for each skill to the extent that you feel the sheet should be designed around that assumption shows that we haven't been clear enough about their separation. Your suggestion here would unfortunately reinforce the very outlook we're trying to discourage.

The Narrator has the responsibility to make these important, not the player.

That's another thing we'd disagree on. Again, it's a deliberate choice, because we do not believe that the reposnsibilty lies solely with the Narrator, and we designed the sheet to reinforce that.

Fortunately, the beauty of the game is that there's a wide choice of material from us or third parties, and hopefully there's something for everyone! One thing is for sure, Level Up (or DnD as a whole) isn't a one-size fits all game and we definitely encourage you to use the awesome materials made by our third party community.

 

[thuter]

The very fact that you perceive the game still as having an assumed ability score for each skill to the extent that you feel the sheet should be designed around that assumption shows that we haven't been clear enough about their separation.

To be fair, my group has been playing for over a year now, and we still tie abilities to skills most of the time. It is a hard habit to get rid of

Happily waiting for a form-fillable version to see if I would use it. The current form-fillable version is not entirely to my liking either, but I'm curious to try and see how this one will work out on the table.

 

[PJ Coffey]

Hi, I don't really have an opinion on this sheet, it's very pretty but I don't think I'll use it because it doesn't do what I want it to do.

E.g.
I would, personally, put initiative on the same page as combat. Seems relevant to fights to me.

There seems to be a lot of background colour, which eats printer ink.

I would struggle to tell players where to look on each page.

It's certainly got a lot of great graphical design flourishes and as a piece of art it has its own aesthetic.

The character sheet designed by Arms is not H&H, although I really like it. However I find comments that it's too wordy and cramped to be curious. Compared to? This character sheet? The OG sheets? The D&D sheets? smh certainly I'm looking at a combined 200 downloads for the 2 Battle Ready Pre-gens I've put out which use it. Which is nice.

The purpose of the sheet I helped to design was to:

1. Make it possible to teach new players how to play A5e by having an easy to navigate form with a logical flow of information for common modes.
2. Highlight the inherent modalities of play and emphasise non-combat solutions as being on par with violent ones.
3. Take up less space on a table and not require constant flipping back and forth searching for information.

This process saw a lot of iterations and it isn't perfect, but I think that for my purposes, focused on teaching the game and pen and paper play, as described above, that it performs well.

My practical experience of using the sheets to help the random drop-ins for the game of A5e I've been running has been that it does what I want - players who did not understand the game, progress to understanding the game and then to teaching newer players the rules, correctly (!).

That is an unusual experience for me, and I'm pretty delighted with it, as I am focused on player empowerment through collaborative RAW play.

TL;DR: I've said before, I'll doubtless say again, character sheets are user interfaces. Expecting everyone to like the same user interface is an odd idea to me. Use the ones you like best!

 

[Waller]

The character sheet designed by Arms is not H&H, although I really like it. However I find comments that it's too wordy and cramped to be curious.

Sorry. It's not to my taste. But I'm glad it works for you!

TL;DR: I've said before, I'll doubtless say again, character sheets are user interfaces. Expecting everyone to like the same user interface is an odd idea to me. Use the ones you like best!

Exactly!

I really like this one, others may like other ones.

Though with folks saying that things that aren't in A5E should be on the A5E sheet (precalulated skills, a set initiative score etc.), I can't agree with. I guess everybody should just use what works for them, but I don't think adding those O5E things to an A5E sheets is the right approach.

Perhaps the issue is that A5E does require you to calulate those things on the fly rather than beforehand, and maybe that's an issue with the system itself (though I like those things about the system)? But the sheet reflects the system.