How many pages does it take to keep track of your PC's abilities?

[Driddle]

With all the available feats and alternate abilities and special stuff via prestige classes -- plus extras provided by a character's gear itself -- how many pages does it take for you to keep track of all the bonuses and penalties and special circumstances necessary to play your PC to its fullest?

The pre-combat manuever recitation alone can take several minutes: "Let's see, I've got these bonuses for my sub-race, but a penalty for my attribute, but another bonus for my familiar and that thingy I'm wearing, and then there's that other thingy I'm wearing -- but is it officially 'night' yet? -- but I'm not sure whether they still stack ... I almost forgot those skill synergies! Sheesh, which ones apply in this situation? ... And my teammate is flanking, and if I follow up with this feat after that feat I'm protected from some energy or another -- except under a few certain conditions, which I'll outline now..."

 

[Crothian]

I can fit it on one if I wanted to, but I like to have notes and things spread on papers so I can flip through things attached to a clip board.

 

[Psion]

With all the available feats and alternate abilities and special stuff via prestige classes -- plus extras provided by a character's gear itself -- how many pages does it take for you to keep track of all the bonuses and penalties and special circumstances necessary to play your PC to its fullest?

There could be 10 thousand feats and prcs out there, but my character still only has (currently) 2 or 3 feats and 1 prc. How many are available has nothing to do with how many I have.

For the record, I have a 2 sided char sheet, + 1 spellbook page, 1 familiar page (of which I use one corner of one side), and one contacts page. All feats and class abilities are on the front side of the char sheet.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

1 page if I'm a non-caster guy (non combat gear on back).
2-4 (summoners need extra pages) pages if I'm a caster.

Possibly +1 page if I'm high-epic level.

And thats if I'm using note book paper, I don't use actual character sheets.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Generally, in the past when I've played the current version, I've used the character generator software and that always spat out four pages. There's a few different output options (battle-block, which is nigh-unreadable as far as keeping track of things outside of combat, stat-block, and just the vanilla output), but the default export was for the four-pager.

Or maybe it was three; dunno. I've seen six and eight page character archaics though.

Ultimately I think it's up to what, beyond numbers, the player wants on his sheet versus what he'll keep in his head, to wit: for AD&D you can have a single piece of paper or a single-sided preprinted character sheet or on the other end of the spectrum, TSR #9029 PERMANENT CHARACTER RECORD FOLDER which has a four-page heavy paper "permanent" character record sheet and a number of perforated sheets in the middle to track progression through an adventure.

I think that holds true from edition to edition (although the lightest character sheets I've seen for any D&D are - no surprise - for the 1974 edition of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, prior to the release of supplements and expansions.

 

[Quasqueton]

1 page. And that includes a character image (sometimes), spells (if a caster), and equipment list.

Quasqueton

 

[Bacris]

I usually have 3 pages, as I like to have fully-documented abilities, spells, powers, as opposed to just names (for example, instead of simply Weapon Focus (shoe), I'd have Weapon Focus (shoe) - +1 on attack rolls with shoe)

Although I've also gone the route of spells / powers being on index cards for ease of flipping through.

 

[Grymar]

Low level characters I'll often just type up a stat-block. Sometimes I'll go for the whole character sheet route, which tends to be four pages.

Of course spell casters will have additional pages for notes, spells, and summoned beasties.

 

[WayneLigon]

One page, really, since I have all the combat related stuff on the first sheet. The second is just for writing down what feats I have, treasure, XP, etc.

I write out all my stuff beforehand so all I need to know is what condition is prevailing. Adds for weapons, strength, are all added in previously so I just need to look at that number beside the weapon name to know what to add to my die roll. Likewise if I have a 13 Str and I'm weilding a +1 flaming long sword, I know my damage is 1d8+2+1d6, so that goes into the damage blank.

If I have a set of common occurances, I make a note out to the side. When I was playing a barbarian, I had a note as to what my stats were when raging, thus my hit points and AC change, my to-hit numbers, etc. It's not hard to have all that stuff figured out in advance, then adjust for a buffing spell or effect.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

One double sided sheet. But then, I only use the PHB and have very rarely had a character with a double digit level.