Want opinions on my Character Sheet!!

[ToddSchumacher]

I've been toying with the Idea of offering Illustrated Character sheets like the ones produced by Toni DiTerlizzi and Arnie Swekel (and others). I have a preview here:

http://www.toddschumacher.com/Todds_3.5_Sheet.pdf

I'd welcome any opinons on things I've forgotten...things you think I should change...things I don't need...ect.

Thanks.

 

[Alhazred]

I like it. It's easy to read, easy on the eyes and easy to locate whatever it is you're looking for at any given moment. I especially like the artwork. There are two suggests I'd offer. First, you might consider adding a space to record gems. Second, perhaps another space or two for misc bonuses to skills - I like to record bonuses and penalties separately so as to keep better track of which numbers stack and which don't.

Good job.

 

[Imperialus]

I like it. Doesn't look like much is left out. Alhazred's suggestion for multiple misc columns is good. I've never had much use for little boxes for recording gems though. I tend to just write them down on my equipment list anyhow. It beats trying to cram a half dozen different gems of different GP values into a tiny little box.

A larger box for XP records is another suggestion. With the smaller spaces I find that after a dozen sessions or so there are holes wearing through the paper from being erased so many times.

On a similar note a small box next to the HP box for your HP total would probably be helpful as well.

That's all I noticed. Overall a great sheet, detailed without being cluttered or having superfluous information like genealogy or an entire blank sheet of paper with "Character History" written across the top (I can type that up in Word well enough myself thanks ). The artwork adds a really nice touch. It would be nice to at some point in the future see a few other sheets with a variety of artwork on them to fit different character types even if just broad archetypes.

 

[ToddSchumacher]

The art in the sheet is just a placeholder...a bit of old art I just stuck in there for now. The Idea is that I'm going to do a whole range of archetypes and sell the PDF of the sheets on RPGNow. Right now the Sheet is barebones....and I want to make sure that its functional before I go any further.

 

[Bauglir]

That looks very good - it's nice and clean, and pretty comprehensive.

It looks like you've got an errant '+' in the misc section of the AC line?

Something I've always wanted to see in a character sheet is a table of equipment worn, broken down by item slots i.e. Head, Cloak, Left Ring, Right Ring, etc...

 

[JoeGKushner]

Okay, here are some things I'd like to see. I'd like to see things line up a bit more and more white space on the first information sets. For example, have level under player perhaps and gender under class and next level under gender. Looks a little jarry that way.

One thing I'd love to see in a character sheet is a section like that for equipment, but for levels. You could have something like this:
Level Class Total Levels Skill Points Hit Dice
1 Fighter 1 (2*4) d10
2 Rogue 1 8 d6
3 Fighter 2/1 2 d10
4 Rogue 2/2 8 d6
5 Fighter 3/2 2 d10

I'd also like to see a table for experience points with date, amount earned, and total amount.

I'd also like to see a table that expands the skill section and provides a level breakdown.
Skill Key Ability 1st 2nd 3rd 4th
Appraise INT

As you can tell, I have players who are either stupid or cheaters and a character sheet designed to help them track their levels, especially their multi-class levels, would be fantastic.

 

[Negative Zero]

very nice, a few comments <EDIT> ok, so the few turned out to be more than a few! lol </EDIT>:

your sheet seems to assume that the character will only have one class. multiclassing is a little difficult to record. also, the thickness of your text box borders makes for a bit of a clunky look. thinner borders would give it a cleaner more elegant look, at least in my opinion.

i really like the splitting of the combat and skill info, although some skill are still sueful in combat, putting additional spaces to copy them, (e.g. movement skills like tumble and jump; combat maneuver skills like bluff, sense motive and intimidate) might be worth a look.

also, room for more than one type of ammunition might be useful (regular and special arrows for instance). rather than putting an entry after every weapon, two entires after two might be worth considering.

you have a LOT of space for languages. most characters will only have a few, and those with several can always put more than one per line. using some of that space to add more lines for Knowledge, craft, perform and/or profession skills might be a more efficient use of space.

the shading on the spell pages seems a little too light i barely noticed it on the pdf, and it's not really apparent printed out either, which defeats its purpose. make it a little darker. also, thinning the borders on these tables will go a long way toward keeping the sheet neat and clean looking, especially when the writing goes in. using different sized borders would also help to more clearly distinguish the columns. (so would spacing the actual tables, rather than using a thich border.)

finally, if you're going to sell it, then you might want to make it form fillable and auto calculating. all in all i really like the layout.

~NegZ

<EDIT>
i find that the best way to record HPs is to have a small space for max HPs and lots of room for its ever dwindling current value in the case of your sheet a small box in the upper left corner would do nicely. it's a lot easier on the sheet if you don't have to erase one area everytime you take a hit.
</EDIT>

 

[JoeGKushner]

<EDIT>
i find that the best way to record HPs is to have a small space for max HPs and lots of room for its ever dwindling current value in the case of your sheet it might look like:
_______________
| | |
|____ | |
| |
| |
| |
|______________|

where the small box in the upper left corner is used for max HPs.
</EDIT>

You know, now that you mention hit point record keeping, my players once again show stupidity. A place to record the hit points rolled at that level, for wights, wraiths, and vampires, would probably be a good thing too.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

You could re-introduce the "total melee bonus" and "total ranged bonus" they did away with on 3.5 sheets.

Also, make sure that you have spell pages etc. different for the classes: sorcerers don't need domain slot, for example.

And I second the "paperdoll" break-up of items worn.

 

[ToddSchumacher]

New version is up:

http://www.toddschumacher.com/Todds_3.5_Sheet.pdf

I'd like to thank you all for the suggestions, they were very helpful. I'm not going to include them all, however. I gave myself a mandate of only one page, front and back, and one spell sheet for classes that use spells. As intersting some of the suggestions made are, they would probably increase the pages or decrease the readability trying to fit it in. I also want to make the sheets as generic and customizable as possable.