How many character sheets through the life of a PC?

[Wormwood]

D&D Basic, 1e, 2e: One 'offcial' character sheet + pencil/eraser per character. Eventually, I used a piece of college ruled notebook paper.

D&D 3.5: One sheet per level, computer generated (etools, then Heroforge). 3.5 and Hero remain the only RPGs that required this step.

D&D 4e: One sheet per character + pencil/eraser. Stack of power cards. I plan to use this sheet for the character's entire career. Old school, baby.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

One per level, almost since the beginning. More, if one got messed up, which in the old days was kinda often. Not leveling as fast increased the chances for soda spillage to take one out.

Way back when, my best friend and I had a good side-business using his Dad's computer with WordStar (!) doing generic character sheets for $0.25 and custom sheets with your character's info for $1. Made enough money from the various players at our school and others to feed our addiction to Avalon Hill wargames.

 

[sjmiller]

I've only been a player sporadically over the last 10 years. When I make a character I tend to write them out longhand, designing the sheet to fit my personal needs. Of the seven characters I have made for OD&D, MegaTraveller, Lord of the Rings, and Champions during that time, I've only rewritten one of the OD&D characters. I like writing notes, comments, and whatnot on my character sheets. Sure, my handwriting can be bad, but I can read it, so it's all fine for me.

I know that back in the 80s, when I played more, I would tend to rewrite character sheets a lot, trying to tweak my layout to be the most optimal design of the group.

 

[el-remmen]

A new sheet every 2 to 3 levels as needed.

 

[FalcWP]

Between crappy handwriting and a tendency for sheets of paper in my possession to be crumbled, torn, or lost within minutes... I've switched to doing everything on my computer, and just having my laptop at the game (with a recent, printed copy of the sheet handy, just in case the laptop dies). Works well.

The few times I've used just a paper character sheet... well, I had one sheet that survived longer than the character did. Though it was a close contest... the sheet was very battered (the character, extra crispy). Had to redo one sheet three times in one semester. Lost a few others (luckily, I was still jotting down notes on them on my computer...).

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I only use one, just a basic character sheet. Some people in my group use laptops with fancy characters sheets on them (which can be modified).

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Simple question, I guess. How many times during the course of a campaign do you usually completely rewrite your PCs character sheet?

I don't, and won't, use a character sheet you write on with pens or pencils. For any game. Unless, I suppose, it were one of those games where the actual sheet was as important in play as the dice you use, or whatever (I've heard of them, but can't name names).

I greatly prefer to do up my own simple sheets, in Word or Excel (these days, OpenOffice Write or Calc), and just print a new version whenever I need one for whatever reason - lose the original, level up, get new equipment.

If I had a laptop, which I may have soon, I would probably bring that to the game and only ever print out a character sheet for the GM, if they asked for one.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

I used a single character sheet for... almost a year and a half, I think, playing once a week. I saved myself a lot of headaches by always having a spare notebook from classes long finished handy for handling loot, temporary modifiers, and so forth.

 

[Fenes]

I always make a custom char sheet on the computer so I print a new sheet each level.

I do the same. For online campaigns, I found that a wiki works well too.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

After one character dies, I erase them and start another character on the same sheet.

They die a lot. If the character is anything other than boring, they'll die soon enough.

The ones who live a long time tend to have abilities like +15AC vs a chance at an interesting character, or DR 15/- vs that monster you'd like to kill with your backup character.