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Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2018 2:57 am
by quillius
Hey there,

Long time Earthdawn player/GM -- first time poster. I have been thinking about creating a new 4th edition character sheet for my players. They all currently keep one of the stock character sheets, but then resort to a blank sheet of paper/high-quality notebook/back of envelope to track damage, status, money, spells in matrix, etc. Outside of doing tricks like putting plastic over the part of your sheet where you record current damage, it just seems too hard to keep a character sheet neat when you're constantly erasing and re-writing.

So my plan is as follows:

Sheet (A) with all the essential stats for quick reference (attributes, defense, weapon/attack rolls, talents, common spells, etc.)
Sheet (B) with lots of empty space to keep a tally of current status: damage, inventory, wounds, spell matrices, etc.
Sheet (C) with all the stuff you don't need to reference quite so often (character description/backstory, thread items, full grimoire)

Sheet B is transient, and can be swapped in for a new one with minimal effort (I guess copying over the inventory is the only annoying thing). Most of the time (certainly in combat!), players will only need to use sheets A and B. Due to lack of space, I'll probably need three versions:

Version 1: Magicians (since sheet A will have spells)
Version 2: Beastmaster/Cavalryman (sheet A will have animal/mount quick stats)
Version 3: Everyone else

My question for you all is: is there a particular feature that you wish an Earthdawn character sheet would have? Particularly when it comes to usability?

As an example -- I'm planning to add a row for attack/damage rolls with particular weapons. This is inspired by the 2nd Step program http://www.secondstep.dk, which prints this out; it makes it so nice to have attack and damage rolls for each weapon right there. I also plan to have a spot to record the actual dice you roll for each step (we play with the variant where you just subtract/add from the roll rather than adjusting steps all the time!)

Appreciate any suggestions.

Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2018 3:37 am
by FrozenVomit
1st suggestion Boxes.

I never know why I have 14 MD! I always need to recalculate everything. Did I add my new armor to that number? Why 14 when base is 10? Did I add my new circle bonuses?

I like boxes. Ex: MD base+cir+armor+magic item -curse(whatever)=14 Now I see!

2nd suggestion Spell!

Why only 10 lines? More place please!

3th Enough line in talents section to go at least circle 9.

Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2018 3:55 am
by Slimcreeper
I always like spell pages with enough room to write a little description. I'd rather make notes than look it up in game.

Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2018 1:36 pm
by etherial
Slimcreeper wrote:
Tue Oct 16, 2018 3:55 am
I always like spell pages with enough room to write a little description. I'd rather make notes than look it up in game.
Speaking of looking it up in game, I always like to see space for page numbers for Skills, Talents, Knacks, and Spells. Because you *are* gonna have to look it up every once in a while.

Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2018 2:15 am
by quillius
Good stuff, thanks! It is a difficult tension between putting everything in: descriptions, page numbers, boxes for all the calculations! and fitting it on a reasonable number of sheets. I'm pretty committed to just having one main sheet, so we'll see what we can do. I already know I'm not planning to really tailor it for characters beyond level 8 and/or multi-class. So I'll have enough space for 22 (or whatever it is) talents.

Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2018 1:49 am
by quillius
Okay, well it's sort of rough still (not everything is aligned or laid out the best), but here's the general approach I'm taking. This would be the main reference sheet for a non-spellcaster/non-animal-companioning adept. Things that change (inventory, damage, wounds, current karma, etc.) and things that don't need frequent access (physical description, personality, thread/pattern items and whatnot) would be separate (not-yet-started) sheets.

The goal is to highlight critical stats and background the calculation/bookkeeping stuff that you only need when you're updating the sheet.

Unfortunately, putting in space for all the talents and skills you might reasonably have up through circle eight leaves almost no space for even a small spell or animal companion stat-box. I might need more sheets for them after-all, or else relegate "unimportant" talent/skills to the third backup sheet.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mx073ya8135i4 ... t.pdf?dl=0

Feedback welcome.

Oh, and it's not form-fillable yet, either.

Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2018 5:05 pm
by FrozenVomit
Thanks! A nice sheet.

I wanted to build a new sheet but I wont be able to build one like that.

I'll use it right away and gives you feeback.

Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 1:47 am
by quillius
Any feedback is much appreciated!

I made up a one-page sheet for NPCs using the same design motifs and used it in our last session. In fact, we had a guest who played as one of the NPCs, so she gave some feedback too. The big thing is probably to make the headers on the talents and weapon tables a bit darker, since they are too hard to read.

Posting a version here in case anyone is interested. It's also not (yet) form-fillable.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fbdot5jn36atz ... C.pdf?dl=0

Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2018 6:08 pm
by Lursi
Is there a date for a fillable and storeable charactersheet?

I mean this (paid) product was delivered unfinished in a rush.

When you ask money for a character sheet be ready for some expectations, otherwise make it free.

Best regards,
Lars

Re: 4ed Character Sheet

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2018 3:04 am
by Telarus
As the layout monkey on that job, 'fillable' was not part of the job specs. Yes, this was entirely due to the timing of getting print products out. Also I believe it (English version) was not advertised as fillable... I'll see about an eta.