Character Sheet Suggestion

[raihje]

Right now, theoretically any player can use any bane/boon + weapons. Even if they don't, as they level they'll potentially have a pretty long list of actions. The 3 Defenses could be one line at the top, with just a bit of text in the box saying Fortitude (or whatever) + Armour + Shield + ____ I don't think it's necessary to write down the same attribute value more than once on the sheet. Hit Points, Speed, Legend Pts, and Wealth could be the next line with Actions having more real estate beneath that to make more efficient use of space. The Feats/Perks looks alright, since Feats are obtained slower and by lv10 they likely still won't fill all those lines unless they aren't taking multiple tiers. It's artfully displayed at the moment and it looks good, but in my opinion if it was more space efficient it'd save players from needing more than the one sheet for basic information and maybe one additional piece of lined paper / whatever for backstory, description, etc.

[thefailking]

yet totally but I can envision the character sheet being much more simplified for example the cogent role play system is super simple and I can imagine open legend having a similar sheet like the one in cogent.

[brianfeister]

Hey @raihje that's a bit tough to grok from a text-based explanation. Can you please arrange that visually, to the best of your ability. It's hard to process otherwise, especially for me, being a very visual person moreso than verbal.

[thefailking]

this is what it looks like for those who haven't seen cogent character sheets before

[DukeAnax]

This is an example of the direction in which it could be optimised without taking much from the visual.

[brianfeister]

Alrighty. I'm not quite satisfied with these options, however, they are a big help in communicating what you folks are looking for. Thanks!

[brianfeister]

I'll try to come up with a new proposal and post it here.

[raihje]

I think the keywords are space efficient. The image above speaks for itself, but I would put the three defense types next to each other at the top. Scale hitpoints down (since it really will only hold 2, 2 digit numbers) so that the hitpoints and defense types form a clean "line".
Wealth, Legend Points, and Speed can each be small (height wise) and make their own "line" beneath the defense types and hit points. In my opinion this would look much cleaner, and give more room for the stuff that really takes up space like actions, potentially inventory.
EDIT: So I tinkered in GIMP for a minute just cutting and pasting things around and that's what I came up with. Obviously scaling bitmap peices isn't going to look good but this keeps the overall art style and gives you room for more actions - to me, it's less wasted space and has the potential to look a lot nicer / more organized.

You could also add a bit more room for perks/flaws with this if you wanted, if it's likely the DM will award them beyond the 2 your start with. I'd suggest prioritizing actions though.

[jjnich]

I like the idea of having inventory on the sheet. It should have 20 lines though (as you can hold a max of 20 items).

[brianfeister]

Indeed. I'm pretty sure this is going to become 2 pages, as much as I wanted to avoid it.

[Groumy]

Question, to create a little more real estate on the sheet, do we really need a box to keep track how much point were invested on every ability ?

I mean it's kind of an easy to get information, it's in the rules in a neat table and it's an information that doesn't help at all when you actually play. It just help to create the character.

I know it's not a lot of extra space but it's a start.

[raihje]

You could also put HP as a smaller thing underneath the attributes flag, then move speed wealth and legend points to where hitpoints currently is.
The total points will always be your level * 3 + 6. It's super simple to do in your head, and as you level up or get xp it'll be easy to just figure out on the fly, since your XP/Level is written on the sheet already. Points spent makes some sense, but you could do an attribute points / feat points line in the description. I'll see if I can come up with a decent image example.
This could obviously look a lot better than what I put here, with matching fonts, etc.. but I think it's a good start towards reducing wasted space. Either that, or just put actions and feats on the first page with the attributes, and put inventory/bio/expanded description on the second page.

One other option would be to cut the definitions out of the squares, make them just large enough for "Evasion" for example, and an underline area to write in. Leave the "definitions" of these traits at the bottom in a small line of text separated by dots. (Check out World of Darkness Character Sheets for an example)

Lastly, although this may not be desired, cutting the deco border out and pushings things closer would obviously net you more space for content.

Ultimately the sheet just needs enough for attributes, the die bonus from those attributes (cost is easy to figure out) room for 20 items, 10 feats or so, 2 or 3 spots each for perks & flaws, and then the rest dedicated to actions if you want it single page. Hit points and defenses can be smaller, along with wealth and legend points.

[raihje]

@brianfeister @istabosz @DukeAnax Here is my idea for the layout. I put this together in LibreOffice, which I'm not particularly good at using, but this is just so you guys can visualize the layout I have in mind. I left open space for styling / shuffling stuff. It's set to US Letter, which is what I imagine the majority of people will be printing with. It's got a quarter inch margin and space between the columns.
I used a monospace font just to make it easier to line things up properly since I didn't want to rehash it in Gimp or Inkscape for something I could just do with underlines since this is more of a mock up.
Link to PDF

edit: Updated with room for Perks and Flaws, 5 each so there's room for the DM to award them throughout a campaign. There's 16 lines for actions, and so far everything fits fairly neatly on a US Letter sized page with quarter inch margins/spacing, with room for some styles / decorative borders / better fonts / whatever.

The new sheet has room for more stuff across the board.
Current Sheet / Proposed Layout.
11 Actions / 16 Actions
14 Feats / 16 Feats
4 Perks / 5 Perks
2 Flaws / 5 Flaws
12 Items / 20 Items
The other sheet tracks cost per attribute, but imo the math is super simple and after the initial
character creation you're really just adding to total points spent (and making sure it's less than the 3/xp total) So I did away with that column in favour of just tracking total and total used.

Let me know what you think, and how it can be improved. If we can settle on a layout we like, We can make it pretty for people and set a standard.

[brianfeister]

I see what you mean. I think we could probably go 50/50 on feats vs. Inventory, since inventory starts big but doesn't change and feats can get pretty long. I appreciate the proposal, I'll see what I can do about revising the sheet. No need to trouble yourself too much, I think you've given me plenty to go off of.

[raihje]

As long as the Inventory has 20 slots, it can be shrunk down I guess. It's not like most items have particularly long names, but it could come in handy for writing their properties.
Oh, I derped and made the inventory too large. I'll edit the PDF for the feats/inventory.

Ok. Link and comment above is updated with the new space info and 50/50 space for inventory and feats at the bottom. Accidentally gave Inventory 25 slots in the first draft. Now there's room for 20 items/16 feats.

updated sheet one last time, for larger defense value & Legend Points / Wealth Level writing area, got rid of table borders to clean up the overall look. @brianfeister What do you think of this? I hope it's not too cramped ^^" It's a bit of a pain to make all the lines the same size, while having the same amount of room to write, sorry it still looks sloppy lol. On the finished sheet the feat lines and inventory lines can be justified/on the same "line" and perks/flaws lines can be the same size as the action lines.

[ucffool]

Also, in reference to @raihje 's beautiful sheet, two things:

1. Current hit points is usually the most changed box on the page and thus why it is usually a bit larger.
2. The style is perfect for fantasy, but since we are aiming not to be exclusionary to other genres, it'd be awesome if the final version (layout) had different flourishes/styling for other genres. Little thing that would make a ton of folks happy.