A Character Sheet is a Window

That the player views the game through.

Today we are going a little off the beaten path, just a little. In a previous article I mentioned my growing issue with character sheet design, but I didn’t elaborate. So rather than continue about my version of adult pretend, I think I will discuss the character sheet.

The Purpose of a Character Sheet

To my understanding, a character record sheet, the original name, was intended for players to write down the description of their character. I don’t mean how they look and their favorite type of cookies, a full description with characteristics, metrics, and abilities. The record sheet was a reference for how the character can interact with the fictional world. How strong are they? There’s a number for that. How fast are they? Another number. With whom do they find themselves aligned? Either their alignment or allies or contacts reference would answer that question.

My first long-running campaign as a player was using D&D 1e, or the advanced rules. My GM handed out homemade character record sheets with a few boxes and a bunch of lines. We brought our own paper for taking notes, drawing dungeon layouts or wilderness paths, and eventually upgraded to laptops and voice recorders. Note taking was important, it was our character memory, just as writing down our 16 Strength is what legitimized the claim that our character was abnormally brawny. In those early editions there weren’t many abilities or features, character progression was mostly a matter of bigger numbers or more spells, or for my thieves, better chances at a variety of skills.

From there I went on to play in campaigns of D&D 3e, Vampire: the Masquerade, Star Wars (d20), and I remember the fervor of the newest 3.5e. Great times. As I moved through those games, learning new sheet after new sheet, and the game design began to incorporate more and more features and special maneuvers based on class or feat choices, each iteration would include more boxes for writing those things down.

There never seemed to be enough room. I have small handwriting, and I can cram a lot of text into a small space, but even I struggled to fit all the details of a given class feature into that box. Looking at the sheets all my friends used was, well, they either had page numbers or just the barest of important elements. At one point you could purchase the advanced character sheets, which fleshed out each class or had your character description spread out across multiple pages, each trying to solve the very obvious issues in some different way. I did appreciate larger spaces for backstory and character development, helping me to get deeper into my characters before a session started.

Then came 5e. After the debacle of 4e we were very skeptical, but a brief perusal of the books won us over. There appeared to be many improvements, as well as some nods to the previous versions that contained elements we both loved and recognized as passe. Once again, the character sheets didn’t change all that much. The header with all the smaller notes, boxes for numbers, and not much bigger boxes for features and abilities, powers and spells. Once again I resorted to detailing my features on other pages, or just filling in highlights and a page reference. Over time I started looking for better sheets online, something that would work better.

My initial investigations were due to my GMs introducing elements that required a new ability or some metric that wasn’t used in the standard rules, so I sought out sheets with those considerations in mind. But as I looked to the internet I discovered something better. Class specific sheets, form-fillable pdfs, and all manner of both decorative and efficient character record sheets. Applying my rudimentary knowledge of photoshop and GIMP, I tweaked and modified here and there, eventually coming up with some sheets for my group that would work just fine. I put gray lines in all the feature boxes to help keep notes straight, expanded their size, and rearranged the first and second pages to better fit what players most often need.

Tweaking to the Point of Eureka

I would spend the next few years trying over and over to make a better and more efficient sheet. I would look at different games, search the internet for discussions, and find myself getting deeper and deeper into the realm of formatting for pen-and-paper games. There was some discussion, but it was difficult to find. Each time I would iterate, print, make a few characters, play a few games, and always find myself coming up short. Obviously I am a novice, I am not trained in graphic design, UI/UX, or anything of the sort. Along the way though I noticed that character sheets aren’t meant to contain everything for a character. This is not a gripe about the designers and their intentions, I have nothing against anyone, I just think that our initial examples and conceptions of character sheets may have led us in the wrong direction.

I have come to the conclusion that the character sheet is the window through which a player looks to view the game in its entirety. Anything to do with the mechanics of the game that is relevant to your character should be available on your sheet, organized, easy to reference, and just as easy to alter as that character makes progress. This conclusion has even began to color some of the perspectives I encounter from the community when they discuss the complexity or ease-of-use of a particular game. Many of the games that are crunchy have similar character sheets to the ones I have been focusing on for years. And they are not enough.

If your character is meant to achieve 10^th level, where they have 5 class features, a handful of feats, and some special racial abilities or magical gifts, the character sheet should have room for every single one of those elements. If a company or an individual creates a game where all the rules and elements of a particular character are laid out to level 20, then the standard character record sheet should allow for everything about that character to be contained.

Communicating with the Sheet

When a player sits down at the start of a character, if they are planning to follow them into their highest powers, then the record sheet should represent how far along they are on their journey. If they are at 5/20 expected levels, then the sheet should be approximately 25% full. For the most renowned game of 5e, most of the time my sheet is full at 2nd-3rd level. Does that mean that I should go no farther? Did Gandalf just leap onto my gaming table and utter his famous sweaty line?

And I think this sends a message to players, much as the design and layout of the rules in the books do. All of these design elements are communicating, often subconsciously, with the people that interact with them. I think this may be having an effect, even if it is a small one, on how far campaigns are going. If a group of players is looking at their character sheets, full to the brim and requiring outside solutions to continue, this may be sending a subtle message that they shouldn’t continue. The most obvious example of subtle communication between the designers and the players to me is the mass of hit points, and the slog of higher level play, in 5e and similar games. Combat can take forever, at which point it’s just annoying. Seeing this incline of combat length definitely made me stop and look at the higher level abilities differently. Then you stack an inadequate translation device on top, and all the little problems begin to pile and form a mountain.

The Breakdown

This part is going to get into the weeds. I am actually going to pull out my character sheet design and go through it step by step to explain my thinking and the whole process. If you aren’t interested, I completely understand. Designing the character sheet over and over has given me insights into the game and its rules that I never would have discovered otherwise. To be clear, my character sheet is not the best, not even for me. It’s just the version I ended on after so many years of this process.

In this examination I will be going back and forth between the original 5e character sheet, my design, and the interesting notes or reasons along the way.

Abilities

Abilities in 5e are primarily useless. You generate them with the dice, acquire your bonus, and move on. The big box is for the modifier, the small for the score, and they don’t really change until you level up. This part is simple and doesn’t really require anything further; number goes in box.

This leads us to saving throws. You can be proficient with any ability for a saving throw. A little circle to fill in and a space for the bonus and we are all done here. This part is also simple and easy to implement.

Skills. Oh boy, skills. This was the first place that I realized that the overall game design has some blaring holes in it. What surprised me even more was that it was the character sheet design that showed me this. You can be proficient in skills, like saves, and thus a little circle allows you to fill in those relevant to your character. Easy, right? No. In the rules there are references to passive ability (skill) scores. There is only one space, so no room for a score. Then, there are features that allow a character to be an expert in a skill, doubling their proficiency bonus for those checks. This was corrected in later versions of the character sheet with a little square or diamond behind the circle that could be filled in to represent expertise, but at first I wrote it down and promptly forgot about it.

Overall, not bad. I like things alphabetical, so the abilities always drive me crazy and the skills make me warm and fuzzy. Then once I interact with the skills I get slightly annoyed. Technically, the skill is a sub-variable to the ability, so I would like them sorted by their ability. This makes error correction much faster when you have leveled up and increased your ability or gained a new feature that modifies one or more skills.

My solution was to move all of the skills and saves to below their respective abilities in rows, while each ability is its own column. Moving the abilities to column heads allowed for the sorting of many a mechanic. Saves are right below, and skills have a box for modifier and score, as well as a small circle to indicate expertise.

Ability Details

Now, you may have just read that and thought “what does that even mean?” And yeah, I was right there with you. We all probably know about carrying capacity and its implementation in 5e by now. But what do you know about jump height and distance? Oh yeah, your GM may have been solving how far you can jump with Strength checks all these years, but there is a little section in the book, away from the abilities, that details jump distance, how long you can hold your breath, and several other factors that may come up in a given game. Have you ever had a character suffocate because they failed their Con check right after dropping into the water trap? Well, if they had a good Con they can last for upwards of a few minutes (Hold Breath = 1 + Con modifier minutes).

With the abilities now sorted into columns, I can put the saves, skills, and details below them. A player now perusing their character sheet can see all the relevant details that stem from that ability. What else directly stems form abilities?

Attack Statistics

The most crucial metrics of this game are those surrounding the attack mechanisms. In 5e there are two classes of weapons that govern most characters ability to whittle away the mountain of HP; simple and martial. It wasn’t until I started this section that I realized how absolutely annoyed I was at this approach. After having read the books for years it all made perfect sense to me and although I thought it overly simplistic, it was fine. Then I dove into the sheet design with those rules.

Attack rolls are based on either Strength or Dexterity, depending on the weapon and your features. You can attack with a simple weapon using Strength, or a martial weapon using Dexterity. In each column for those abilities I put boxes for simple and martial attack bonuses. Initially, I put the Strength bonuses under a new heading, “Melee Weapons.” But, there are certain ranged weapons you can use Strength with, primarily thrown weapons (even though Strength is more applicable to bows and Dexterity to melee, but that’s a whole other rant). Then, I put Ranged Weapons under Dexterity, even though you can use Dexterity with certain finesse weapons. I designed this sheet and this new organization system and I found myself confused, regularly, on which one to use when I am making an attack. The fault here may rest on me, I will take that responsibility, but I am not so sure.

Also for years I was doing a homebrew of 5e where I separated the weapons into broader categories so that characters could further specialize in which weapons they used and how skill in one member of a category roughly translated to the rest in that grouping. If you know how to use a sword then you can use bladed weapons with the same efficacy. Arbalist, Archery, Blades, Polearmes, Bludgeons, Implements, Whips, and Volley. The fighter would have access to more and be able to gain expertise in these weapon skills, an idea I still love to this day and think I would implement if I ever play 5e again. Sorting things out this way made the new sheet much easier, but it would take homebrew redesign. I was playing in standard games run by other GMs, so I had to make sure the sheet worked for RAW.

I never could figure out how to improve this section so I just left it, and shake my head every time I try to figure it out at the table. Bad design to be sure. But it made me think of how the proficiency system overall may be so simplified for ease of play that it works against an approachable character sheet design. The rules in the book aren’t meshing well with the rules on the papers that players interact with the most.

Below the attack bonuses I put a set of boxes for listing which weapons or groups you are proficient with. All the relevant information in one place and easy to find. Then I put in boxes for individual attacks, melee, ranged, checkboxes for simple, martial, magic, throw, finesse, circles to be filled in if the weapon is versatile, areas for damage and type of damage (even though type is NEVER RELEVANT!), heavy, light, loading, a space for ammo and circles to erase as ammo is lost, range, and the final notes area for special weapons.

The goal was to cover all of the relevant details that players see but do not have spaces for. If the book includes details that the character sheet does not, why would the player not skip those details altogether? The sheet is their primary interaction point, and I think they will defer to it before the book.

Armor Class

This section was another head scratcher. There are multiple elements that are involved in your AC that are just left off of the original sheet. Factors include Dex modifier, armor, maximum Dex modifier (determined by armor), type of armor, and the restrictions that come from the armor. The best way I could figure out to organize this section was to once again create a column for all of the details, with the final AC at the top and each factor descending in relevance. A notable point, the SRD has all the relevant notes about AC except for one. Without armor on, your AC is equal to your Dexterity modifier + 10, which is noted in the introduction of the PHB, and missing entirely from the SRD.

If It’s Not on the Sheet, does it Exist?

Here is where I discovered something else. If a player wants to interact with the world, their first response is often to look at the sheet. Therefore it is good design to include factors that are relevant, even if they are not always present or actionable. As players gain experience they look less and less at their sheet, but this is only because they have taken that information into their mind and need to reference the hard copy less. So I put the AC bonuses for cover right in the AC section. When a player looks at their AC in a tough fight, they will be reminded that taking cover is a good thing, a beneficial decision that could save them in a pinch. If your mage is wearing a skimpy robe, he should hide behind a rock because dragon’s breath stings.

This realization led me to putting everything I could find onto the sheet, in the hopes that letting the players know they have options outside their feats and abilities would help them during play. Cover in the AC section, jump distance in the Strength column, different speeds in the Dexterity column and the Speed row, next to the skills. I even outlined the levels of exhaustion under a Conditions section in the Constitution column, below Physical Limits and Resistances and above Hit Points.

Constitution

Normally this would fall under the Abilities section above, but Constitution has a lot of mechanics working from it, or that are at least related to it. Which is weird given that the PHB says no skills come from it, only HP, and then it’s left in the dust. Physical Limits, details, include how long you can hold your breath, starve, or suffocate. Your Hit Points, as indicated earlier, but also your temporary HP, and anything that affects your health, like Conditions, and Exhaustion. If your HP tracks your health, wouldn’t you look in this column for how well you resist harms? So in this column are your Resistances, which many are granted by race and class features. Heavily encumbered is listed here, with its effects, as well as under your Dexterity column next to your Speed. Hit Dice, with boxes for totals and circles to fill in so you can erase or mark as you use them.

It was during this section that I realized Hit Dice could have been used for so much more. I think they started to be used as a resource in later class designs, but I think it really was a missed opportunity. Given that a character only regains hit dice after a long rest, class features and abilities could have used Hit Dice instead of the long/short rest mechanics. I haven’t dived too deeply into this one, but most likely I will at a later date. Needless to say, the Constitution column turned out rather robust despite not having any skills.

Proficiencies & Senses

I used the open space in the Wisdom column to have boxes for your proficiencies, specifically those regarding armor, weapon groups, unarmed strikes, and ritual casting. There are also skill-like boxes for tools, instruments, and vehicles. The darkvision (which nearly every race has) is segmented into the Perception skill with a box for range. We look to Perception often, and now we can put our perceptive ability there.

Further down is a box for Proficiency Bonus, followed by actions, bonus actions, and reactions. I like these boxes, which I got from other sheet designs, because its a quick reference for what I can do in a given amount of time. It’s quick and easy and should cut down on time when making decisions, hopefully.

This is a sheet I started making for a friend’s game, a 5e Cyberpunk, where much of my new design started.

Features

The lower part of the sheet is filled with feature boxes. Checkboxes allow for noting whether it comes from a class, race, or feat, and whether it is a feature or something else entirely. There is a uses box with a circle to fill for short or long rests, and a chain of circles to indicate those used.

The Folding Sheet

I cannot remember which game I saw had folding character sheets, but I really liked it. Especially as I was considering adding the more obscure social rules in the core books into the design to remind players that these other elements can be mechanical in nature. So I used a folding design that allowed me to separate the social, combat, and stuff sections of a character sheet entirely.

On the front page is the typical character description, with columns for Charisma and Intelligence, the most common social abilities that are rarely used in combat. Around the Cha column were spaces for the traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, where they will catch the players eye when they go to do something sociable. The Int column includes languages, racial traits, and at the bottom a spot for money, because coin acts as a grease on certain palms.

The Cha column is finished with a few boxes for Renown. This whole section was built in the hopes that players would see it and engage in the social elements more. They can earn a higher status score for engaging with the organizations of the world and potentially turn those numbers into cool things, favors, even quests. Put it there so the players will see it and want to interact with it.

The Stuff in the Back

The back page is all about your gear. Not your weapons and armor, but all the rest of the stuff. With it all in one place all you have to when you are looking for that rope or candle is to flip the sheet over. I even put grayed text in some of the lines with checkboxes for some of the most basic gear, clothing, weapons, etc. so you can track their weight easily. Other sections include exploration necessary gear, torches with how long they last (another obscure rule), water skins and how much they hold, tinderboxes, and all the rest. There are a few columns for pouches, and some entries for magic items.

The cards for my Mystic class abilities.

Conclusions

The character sheet I ended up building is far from perfect, but it suits the purpose of bringing the rules that are regularly interacted with to the fore by putting them directly into the hands of the players. I have come to think that if the sheet doesn’t have a place for it, it must not be a part of the game. Out of sight out of mind is known because it is so relevant. It’s how we are wired.

Something I think that could help all of this is a set of cards. In previous posts I have proclaimed the ultimate utility of the playing card, but this exploration of the character sheet really instilled that idea into my mind. If the players have a handful of generic action cards, not only are they easy to decipher, having all the relevant rules on the card in their hand, but they can also be adapted to make an initiative system more interesting and fraught with important decisions. Cards for character features also make it easier for players to engage with what their character can do.

There is an added bonus to cards. They are easier to hold in your hand than a sheet, which has to lay on a table, and when the cards are in your hands, its harder for your phone to be there.