D&D General Small Print on Character Builder PDF Sheets

[Dragonhelm]

As I get older, my eyesight is not as it once was. I appreciate the character builder, but the PDF character sheet has everything in teeny tiny print.

How do you deal with that? Copy and paste into a Word doc? Something else?

 

[Quickleaf]

For DNDBeyond? I haven't seen any native options there, so you're probably looking at editing the PDF itself... that's always a bit of a p.i.t.a but you can change font size in Adobe Acrobat Pro or potentially in an online PDF editor like PDFGear.

If it's specifically form-fillable text that's too small – I dunno if DNDBeyond exports PDFs that are form-fillable or not, haven't used it in a while – then that's probably going to involve a bit more work than if it's just a "plain text" PDF (because you need to go into the Tools>Prepare Forms option in Adobe).

 

[Corinnguard]

The problem with the form-fillable character sheet PDFs for 5e is that the more text you type into, the smaller the print gets. As a result, you will find yourself zooming in and out a lot in order to read anything you put there. It's better to use the character sheets on D&D Beyond for your character. Whatever you pick for your character is auto-filled onto your character sheet and compartmentalized. And any new info you do put into doesn't cause the print to shrink.

 

[tetrasodium]

The problem with the form-fillable character sheet PDFs for 5e is that the more text you type into, the smaller the print gets. As a result, you will find yourself zooming in and out a lot in order to read anything you put there. It's better to use the character sheets on D&D Beyond for your character. Whatever you pick for your character is auto-filled onto your character sheet and compartmentalized. And any new info you do put into doesn't cause the print to shrink.

That is actually a setting on the form field in a PDF . The other printable option tend to only work well if you know exactly how long the field contents are because it locks the field length to a max N characters with a predefined fomt size.

Technically you can lock font size and make it get a scrollbar if contents exceed the box... but that really only works if you are using a laptop or tablet at the table &it works great in that use but it won't print well. I play with a laptop and usually edit the PDF to do that on a few fields instead of shrinking

 

[Corinnguard]

That is actually a setting on the form field in a PDF . The other printable option tend to only work well if you know exactly how long the field contents are because it locks the field length to a max N characters with a predefined fomt size.

Technically you can lock font size and make it get a scrollbar if contents exceed the box... but that really only works if you are using a laptop or tablet at the table &it works great in that use but it won't print well. I play with a laptop and usually edit the PDF to do that on a few fields instead of shrinking

I wish I had known this when I created my first 5e character nearly three years ago. My group is now using the 5e character sheets on D&D Beyond in our current adventure.

 

[tetrasodium]

I wish I had known this when I created my first 5e character nearly three years ago. My group is now using the 5e character sheets on D&D Beyond in our current adventure.

For most people it's still basically impossible to edit a PDF. People rarely have a PDF-i installed alongside a PDF-Viewer & A lot of the free edoitors have pretty limited functionality. I use an ancient copy of pdf-xchange from back before it followed Adobe's lead & went from a one time purchase to a silly expensive yearly license.
With the prevalence of laptops & tablets wotc really should have a form fillable version intended for printing & a form fillable one intended for viewing on a screen (perhaps with some extra fields)

 

[aco175]

As I get older, my eyesight is not as it once was. I appreciate the character builder, but the PDF character sheet has everything in teeny tiny print.

My recent problem is needing readers for seeing a menu when we are out for dinner or for reading the back of a frozen pizza box for the temp to set the stove. I swear that some of that stuff is written font size 4 or less.