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Character Template for 6th Edition...feedback requested


fdw3773

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Hi, Everyone!

 

I've been revising/converting my 4th and 5th Edition stuff to 6th Edition as an on-again/off-again project and have trying to come up with a simplified format for characters. I modified a previous template to make it resemble what's published from Hero Designer but can fit on one page. Below is an example of a Power Girl write-up for your feedback in terms of presentation. While quite a bit resource intensive when I commit to printing, I think the final product looks sharp and more importantly, easy to follow for players showing up to my game table to play Champions since it lays out everything in a clean format.

 

Thanks for your help (in advance)! 🙂

image.thumb.png.4ff2f404989af0d116b5c1e611369b2e.png

 

 

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1 hour ago, fdw3773 said:

Hi, Everyone!

 

I've been revising/converting my 4th and 5th Edition stuff to 6th Edition as a on-again/off-again project and have trying to come up with a simplified format for characters. I modified a previous template to make it resemble what's published from Hero Designer but can fit on one page. Below is an sample of a Power Girl write-up for your feedback in terms of presentation. While quite a bit resource intensive when I commit to printing, I think the final product looks sharp and more importantly, easy to follow for players showing up to my game table to play Champions since it lays out everything in a clean format.

 

Thanks for your help (in advance)! 🙂

image.thumb.png.4ff2f404989af0d116b5c1e611369b2e.png

 

It's very clean and sharp, @fdw3773. My only recommendation would be to work on one line for Skills, one for Perks, and one for Talents. The same with Complications. What are you using to make the template?

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5 hours ago, Sketchpad said:

 

It's very clean and sharp, @fdw3773. My only recommendation would be to work on one line for Skills, one for Perks, and one for Talents. The same with Complications. What are you using to make the template?

Thanks for your feedback!  🙂 My goal is to keep everything on one page, hence the split columns and combining of skills at times, but will see how it looks after I incorporate your recommendation. I'm simply using Microsoft Word to create the template, which is easy to fill in and edit as needed.

 

Thanks again!

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9 hours ago, fdw3773 said:

My goal is to keep everything on one page, hence the split columns and combining of skills at times

 

A noble goal to be sure, but it always seems to fall apart for more complex characters with more powers or longer power writeups.  I notice you don't include her everyman skills for example.  Powergirl is relatively simple next to a version of Batman that has martial arts, a utility belt bought as a multipower, paid points for the batmobile, and a long list of skills and contacts.

How would your template work if a character had to bleed over to a 2nd page?

 

Not trying to be negative, I'm curious as I feel that my character sheets always go off the rails because the PCs have too much info to fit on one page.

 

This is one of my character sheets (Made in MS Publisher).  It manages to hold enough info for me to actually put a whole PC onto one page, but I'm the first to admit it isn't as pretty as yours.
The character is a 300 point starting Teen Champions character.

 

image.thumb.png.78706dca921fca5e5bf769fc402d6e31.png

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6 hours ago, Jhamin said:

A noble goal to be sure, but it always seems to fall apart for more complex characters with more powers or longer power writeups.  I notice you don't include her everyman skills for example.  Powergirl is relatively simple next to a version of Batman that has martial arts, a utility belt bought as a multipower, paid points for the batmobile, and a long list of skills and contacts.

How would your template work if a character had to bleed over to a 2nd page?

 

Not trying to be negative, I'm curious as I feel that my character sheets always go off the rails because the PCs have too much info to fit on one page.

 

Thanks for your feedback! Yes, a challenge is that if too much is placed on the sheet, it's a giant blob of text that no one can understand. Generally, if the character sheet data carried over to a second page, I'd simply use the second page (e.g. Powers on page one, Skills and Complications on page two) and print it front and back to keep it all on one sheet since I'm using Microsoft Word. In the case of complex characters like Batman and character write-ups in general, here are a couple of my design notes that have come from my interactions with players at the conventions:

 

1) Players aren't interested in every little detail, so I strive to keep the character sheet easy to follow. Excessive details are kept off. Based on their feedback, the excessive data was what turned most of them off from the Hero System in the past. This is why points for each individual ability or power aren't listed or the hit location chart, along with everyman skills as you mentioned. The overall point total is listed for me to gauge power level and to give incoming players a basic idea for 6th Edition (e.g. Cyclops is 400 points as a standard hero, Wolverine is about 500 points, and so on since many played 4th Edition or earlier and previously used the basic factor that 250 to 300 points was a standard hero).

 

For example, players like to see that Superman's Fortress of Solitude is listed as a base and that Batman is a contact. But, do they care how many points are invested in the base and the notes that Batman as a contact has extremely useful skills and has significant contacts of his own? Not at all. But, are they annotated as such on Hero Designer to determine point totals? Yes.

 

Another example would be Green Lantern's Power Ring. I simply list it as "OAF - Power Ring" and one of the Complications is that it cannot directly affect anything yellow instead of listing every detail such as, "OAF, Extremely Difficult to Replace, etc." even though I checked those blocks when using Hero Designer.

 

2) In the case of Batman, his vehicle fleet are separate write-ups and I described the most common gadgets he's used in cartoons/animated and live action films, video games, and some of the comics I previously collected. Does it reflect every gadget he's ever used? Unfortunately, no. But, can players of different game experience levels readily get a feel of Batman and go from there? Yes.  

 

Here's a recent version of Batman I did for 6th Edition:

image.thumb.png.5685dd242b767bd578160ccf4527061e.png 

 

 

 

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

Here's an updated version of the character template I developed earlier. Since it's intended for players to show up at a convention and begin from the start, some basic guidelines I followed were to incorporate between three to five of the main skills, talents, and perks for a character and to focus mostly on powers and hand-to-hand combat skills when possible. While it is not as detailed as other write-ups, a player can readily play the character and have a good idea of the powers and abilities. 🙂

 

image.thumb.png.db211b03a860b651e7d8a386b7d580b4.png

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4 hours ago, fdw3773 said:

Here's an updated version of the character template I developed earlier. Since it's intended for players to show up at a convention and begin from the start, some basic guidelines I followed were to incorporate between three to five of the main skills, talents, and perks for a character and to focus mostly on powers and hand-to-hand combat skills when possible. While it is not as detailed as other write-ups, a player can readily play the character and have a good idea of the powers and abilities. 🙂

 

I really like this!  Is there any chance you could share the template?

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15 hours ago, Derek Hiemforth said:

 

I really like this!  Is there any chance you could share the template?

Thanks! Yes, I will make the template available shortly and have the link posted on this thread. It's on Microsoft Word, making it easy to type in, edit, and print.

15 hours ago, steriaca said:

Maybe they are. Injustice perhaps (the DC fighter developed by NeverRealm Studios for WB...NeverRealm took over Mortal Kombat after WB closed Midway Games down.)

The Superman image was taken from the DC vs. Mortal Kombat video game. I adapt from images from various video game screen shots and promos.

20 hours ago, Tjack said:


   Nice character pics.  Where did they come from?

In this case, it was from DC vs. Mortal Kombat. I've adapted other superhero images from DC Injustice, Batman: Arkham Knight, and other video game promos.

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1 hour ago, Amorkca said:

Perhaps this is a dumb question but...

 

Do I need to copy paste into this template? Or is there a way to send information from Hero Designer into it?

 

I don't see a RTF format option within HD.  Or I'm just blind...

 

It's not a Hero Designer template. It's a blank Word document, like a blank character record sheet. So yes, you have to write in it, or copy-paste into it, etc.

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1 hour ago, dmjalund said:

can one create a pdf that can be used as a hero designer template?

 

Well, it would need to be the other way around.  Hero Designer would need to create the PDF (by exporting the proper output). There used to be one, but at some point, a Java change broke it. I don't know if the change only broke that specific one, or if it would no longer even be possible to write one that worked.

 

But it sounds like you're asking if you could have a PDF with blanks that Hero Designer could fill in, and no, I'm fairly certain that's not possible.

 

 

It's obviously more work to create a character sheet in Word instead of just having Hero Designer output one, but I have to say, I love how customizable it is.  Here's another sheet for Black Widow with more tweaks as I continue to play around with it.  :) 

Black_Widow_6E_1-Col2.png

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Another version I've toyed with was to adapt the character sheet template from how Silver Age Sentinels formatted its characters where one column was the image and background and all of the statistics were on the other column. I had done it previously for 5th Edition, and it came pretty well for 6th Edition also.

 

If there's interest, I will post it as a download. 🙂

 

image.thumb.png.353dc313c470914b674fba5176eb052a.png

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2 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I still want a 4th Edition Style , 3 column sheet with no picture, for 6e.

You mean like Champions: The New Millennium? It used a three-column format. Or, what I would refer to as the "Classic Champions" format...that was something I tinkered with once. The draft is attached for you to download and modify as you see fit. 🙂

ClassicCharacterTemplate6E.docx

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