Player's Character Sheet

I periodically borrow the character sheets, all pretty much done by hand, and plug them into the spreadsheet I use (HeroForge) so that I have updated copies of them. I usually find several errors on most of them, usually for skills. And the errors are usually because too few skill points have been allocated or synergy bonuses have been missed.

Quite frankly, 3E is complex enough simply with the number of things to update that errors happen A LOT.
 

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Nope

When I was DMing, I can't remember a time that I actually checked a player's character sheet. What minor tweeks/cheats/whathaveyou that can get by the "obvious in play" radar are just not worth worrying about. Players are human and humans make mistakes. As long as it doesn't ruin the fun, I honestly don't care if they bend, twist and mutilate their characters (that applies to any game I run; GURPS, I'm looooking at you!).

That said, if memory serves, my last Face-to-Face game, I assisted so much with the making of the characters, both in person and with my copy of E-tools, that any mistakes that slipped by were probably mine anyway. :heh:
 

Man in the Funny Hat said:
Aside from that renowned incident of questionable accounting practices I can say that I have never been involved in a game where a player deliberately lied about something on their character sheet.

[giggle] The funniest I can remember was when the halfling decided she needed a pony. There was a mercenary company in the town they were staying in, and some of the scouts had war-trained ponies. The halfling found one of them, and offered her a +1 short sword in exchange for a pony.

I stared at the player. "You know that's worth over two thousand gold, right?"

"Yeah, I know."

Needless to say, the mercenary jumped at the trade.

Later in the session, one of the other players asked her what she was thinking.

"Well, I had two, and I only need one..."

She had the +1 short sword written on the front of her character sheet, in the combat modifiers section, and on the back, in the equipment section. We had to gently explain to her that both entries were for the same sword...

-Hyp.
 

Edgewood said:
Do you actually go over a player's character sheet and find any glaring mistakes?
I have yet to go over another player's character sheet and not find at least one error. Usually when I find multiple errors, at least one is what I would call "glaring." For this reason, when I DM, I keep a close eye on everyone's stats. (It's something of a pain, since PCs level up pretty quickly in 3e; I'm constantly having to re-check their character sheets.) I don't believe the players are trying to cheat (well, a few are); it's just that rules mastery takes a LOT of time and effort.
 

I don't read over them in detail, but if I'm reviewing PC sheets just to get ideas for future adventures or to see if they have something they never use and might need me to remind them they have it, I might spot a mistake during my review. I'll just ask them about it at the next game to see if I overlooked something or they actually made a mistake. No big deal though. Any type of error isn't really going to be a game breaker. If they forget to add Con bonuses to HP or forget to add bonus ability scores every 4th lvl, it can easily be fixed if they finally realize it. If they never realize it...well it didn't bother them this long so it must not be a problem :p
 

Personally, unless it starts to cause probelms in game I could care less about minor errors on character sheets. The errors tend to work both ways, for and against the PCs, so it evens out. When my players level up I glance over their sheets and look for things I think they might miss, but I don't go over it with a fine tooth comb. Sometimes this means that later we discover errors.
My wife, however, constantly checks and rechecks her character sheet (in one game she is currently an 11th level High Dex Rapier Wielding fighter) and frequently changes things because she missed an applicable feat or add in the wrong number. It bothers her, and occaisionally it bothers other players (particularly when she does it in game and realizes a mistake), but she is more worried about being RIGHT than anythign else. Then we have another player who gets focused on her ability to do one thing that she forgets the other, like rolling sneak attack damage and then forgeting to add in the damage of her actual weapon. This is the first time this group has played at the midrange levels where things start to get complicated so things are bound to happen.



I am playing with friends, all of whom have such a high since of righteousness and fairness that it can be disgusting. If I was playing with people I didn't know that well, particuallarly when a game got to higher levels, I might be more inclined to audit the sheets.
 

An old friend that I ended up kicking out of my game for cheating was also cheating on his character sheet, adding equipment and when called on it, giving me a nasty "it's written on my sheet, so I have it" attitude.

Another friend couldn't stick to his feats to save his life, no matter how often I told him that he couldn't drop and switch feats every week.

As a GM, I prefer to check over character sheets every level so that, at very least, I have a handle on their skills and so forth. It not only helps me to know what they are capable of handling (so I don't throw a monster against them that will singlehandedly TPK the lot for lack of one thing) and so I can make skills checks at the right places without pausing to ask their skill levels.

As a player, I'd prefer to update my character sheet for the GM at least every other level, so that they have the same knowledge and so that they can hand it off to someone else if I am unable to make the game.
 

I used to have a player who was renowned for his inability to calculate anything on his sheet with any accuracy whatsoever. I never could understand it... he was a very intelligent guy, but he always screwed up the math, frequently in his favor... but I decided it was more a matter of wishful thinking than deliberate cheating. Nowadays, I use DM Genie... so the character sheets are updated in my computer during play, and generally reprinted at the beginning of each new session.

The only fudging I generally have to deal with is in the dice.... :\
 

I'd feel ... weird ... in any campaign where the DM decided that he needed to keep my character sheet for any reason.

I mean, it's mine. I printed it, I filled it in, I keep it updated between sessions. If he wanted a copy for some Byzantine reason, I'd probably just send him the Excel file I use to build my characters.

It's weird to see how little trust there is between players and DMs ...
 

As DM I always collect the character sheets at the end of the night. During the week between games I read over their sheets for errors, my own notes, and to see whether the encounters I have planned will be suitable for their characters.
 

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