New Deluxe Character Sheet - Thoughts?

[Trechriron10]

TreChriron's HERO 6e Deluxe Character Sheet.

 

Looking for input! I want to make sure it's somewhat usable before I make a form fill version.

 

------ From the Description ----

This is a 3 page character sheet I whipped up for HERO 6th Edition. Here is a summary of the pages;

 

1. Profile - characteristics, movement, senses, points, perks and talents and finally complications.
2. All skills and powers / equipment.
3. Combat profile - vitals tracking, to-hit chart, defenses, combat values, references and maneuvers.

 

Design goals;

 

I wanted a sheet that was more "newb" friendly. So I tried to include the full names of characteristics with abbreviations. I also wanted it to be easier on ink, hence the various watermarks.

I also like my personal info at the top of the first sheet. I feel this approach makes it easier to use.

 

• During social or interpersonal scenes, you can have sheet 1 and sheet 2 face up.
• During combat, you can have sheets 2 and 3 face up.

 

This allows for 2 sheets face up side-by-side depending on the focus of the "scene".

 

[Doc Democracy]

I have very specific things I look for in a character sheet.

 

I think this is a very utilitarian sheet.  I think it exposes all of the necessary information in a decently accessible way (I think it is incredibly difficult to do a lot better than that level with HERO).  It is clean and reasonably easy on the eye with a lot of white space.  Personally, I would have a lot of the lines printed much more faintly on the sheet - too many visible lines spoil the flow of the sections in the sheet.

 

It comes over as being designed for non-superhero due to the number of options included (such as locations and Armour DCV modifiers).    If I was to use it for superheroes there are a few things I would discard.

 

I like powers being an essentially lined page - you never know what will go in there.

 

It completely lacks any sense of being written for a particular game or campaign though.  When I go to the trouble of designing a character sheet I tend to customise to the campaign I am running, including some image that evokes the background and appropriate fonts - that is a really fiddly exercise and I know that it is not what most GMs might want.  This sheet does not seek to achieve that but I thought I would express my hobby horse when the opportunity presented itself! 🙂

 

Doc

[Duke Bushido]

I like the layout.  The disads se Rion seems insufficient, though. 

 

However, I still work off 2e sheets, so pretty much anything on the scale of what you've done seems luxurious. 

[Trechriron10]

@Doc Democracy - I was going for a generic multi-purpose character sheet. I wanted it to be more newb friendly. Maybe I will create a layer where you can toggle the lines?

 

@Duke Bushido - You feel the Complications section needs to be larger? 

[Duke Bushido]

I don't know how your games work, of course, but in our supers games, we typically have about 100 pts worth. 

[Trechriron10]

If I make it larger, I have to move it to page 2, likely replacing some skill / power lines. Of course, that would put that section on par with the official sheet in size... I could make it two columns in that case.

Then I could replace the block on page 1 with more notes...

[Doc Democracy]

I dont think you need more space, if you introduced a break in the lines so that it was two columns you would double the available lines to 18 and even Duke should be able to use that.  The lines are currently about 2/3 of a page wide, 1/3 of a page per column should be more than enough.

[Duke Bushido]

Yep. 

 

That would work quite nicely, actually.

 

 

[drunkonduty]

I like it.

I like that it's generic.

I like that page 3 is basically a combat cheat sheet.

I'll happily use it.

 

Personally I'd take off the space you've allowed for costs to be recorded. I consider that all part of character design and I don't see a need for it on a play sheet. But I suspect I'm in a minority on this point.

[Lee]

I may have found a tiny typo. On the third page, under the Brace maneuver, the Effects column says:

 

-2 OCV vc R Mod.

 

Should that be:

 

-2 OCV vs R Mod.

 

?

 

Lee

[Trechriron10]

8 minutes ago, Lee said:

I may have found a tiny typo.   ...

 

Ding Ding WINNER!  That is indeed a typo. I shall fix it when I fix the complications columns.

[Duke Bushido]

On 7/22/2019 at 4:54 AM, Doc Democracy said:

It completely lacks any sense of being written for a particular game or campaign though.  

 

I have a soft solution for that; something we (the regulars) kind of let drop by the wayside, but I did it again for the youth group, just to let them have that little extra bit of participation. 

 

Many, many moons ago I got into the habit of scanning the logos from the books.  As new editions and new genre books came out, I just kept doing in, in spite of not using them anymore. 

 

Open the genre file, pick the edition  you like best (or just the logo you like best, period) and drop it onto the sheet.  Do it small, if you just have a place for that sort of thing on your sheet (the way the ones in the book do), or do it as a larger, page-filling colored (if that's not a distraction to you, of course) watermark.

 

It dresses the page up and kind of pins the character to a specific theme. 

 

It's not a perfect solution (a file of genre-appropriate custom characteristics is, though), but it's just one of those little fun things you like to do now and again. 

[Trechriron10]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

I have a soft solution for that; something we (the regulars) ...

 

That would require a blank spot and I feel like the "official" HERO logo is a better "selling point"? Again, a veteran can probably navigate the official character sheet including all the acronyms with aplomb. This is really designed for the newbs, the con games, the demos and one shots where the target players are not particularly experienced. Yet. 🙂

[PhilFleischmann]

Looks very good for a general-purpose character sheet.  As a general rule, I prefer more customized, specialized character sheets.  But this one is very good for those who don't.  Very readable and clear.

 

I would second Doc Democracy's suggestion to make the lines in the various sections a light or medium gray instead of the same black color as the text and section division lines.

[Trechriron10]

@PhilFleischmann and @Doc Democracy -Thank you for your suggestion! I like the lines so I'm going to keep them, I want them to contrast with the watermarks.

 

Version 1.0.1 is up!  Made the two corrections.

[Duke Bushido]

12 hours ago, Trechriron10 said:

 

That would require a blank spot

 

Not for the "watermark" option; no. 

 

And don't get me wrong:  I love the sheet; I've already printed a couple just to see how they feel in use;  I was offering the suggestion to Doc, who seemed to want something a bit more specific for the game at hand. 

 

12 hours ago, Trechriron10 said:

and I feel like the "official" HERO logo is a better "selling point"?

 

Tomato, pineapple..... 

 

I get where you're coming from, and don't have  problem with what you've done.  I rather like it. 

12 hours ago, Trechriron10 said:

Again, a veteran can probably navigate the official character sheet including all the acronyms with aplomb.

 

Yes,  but I never did like them, as they are just another barrier to teaching, as you pointed out.  That's the best thing about your sheet, honestly, at least to me. 

 

12 hours ago, Trechriron10 said:

 

 

This is really designed for the newbs, the con games, the demos and one shots where the target players are not particularly experienced. Yet. 

🙂

 

And I expect it will shine in precisely those areas. 

[Tech]

I like the layout, although personally I avoid more than 2 pages for any character (not including history of character). Still I like it.l

[Duke Bushido]

5 hours ago, Tech said:

I like the layout, although personally I avoid more than 2 pages for any character (not including history of character). Still I like it.l

 

 

An often-overlooked benefit to the 3-sheet... uhmmm... "sheet"....  is that it takes only minimal reducing to print them all on tabloid stock.  If you can find a printer who carries tabloid-sized card stock, you can make a rather nice "folio" for your character, inside which you might keep other records (investigations, clues, or maybe you're in charge of tracking the story-- who knows?  And of course, it's now a trifold single sheet, which is much easier to keep up with.

 

(and if the GM screen makes you nervous, you can screen him right back!    )

 

 

[assault]

Personally, I prefer single page character sheets.

 

OK, two for characters that carry a lot of equipment. Maybe another for characters with long spell lists.

 

But the character itself should fit on one page. Actually, half a page, with the rest of the page being art and background fluff.

[Trechriron10]

1 hour ago, assault said:

Personally, I prefer single page character sheets...

 

How, in the name of the Seven Gods of Design do you accomplish that with HERO?

 

I'm working on a fancier creature stat block next, but as it sits currently the official one generally take up 1/2 - 3/4 of a page excluding the "fluff".

 

I believe being able to read and comprehend the sheet is more important than brevity. In order to reduce the info required for HERO onto one page, I would have to use super SUPER small fonts, tons of abbreviations, and likely hieroglyphs to come close to putting the stuff you need on it. But again, this sheet was really targeted at casual and new players.

[Duke Bushido]

I am neither of those things, Good Sir, and I very much liked it!  

 

(what I _am_ is 59 years old, and nearly all of that is in my eyeballs.  ) 

 

[assault]

2 hours ago, Trechriron10 said:

 

How, in the name of the Seven Gods of Design do you accomplish that with HERO?

 

Take a look at the villain write ups prior to 5th edition.

 

Basically, use three columns. Characteristics in the first, powers and skills in the second, and complications/disadvantages in the third. If you do it as a spreadsheet, you can even add up the points.

 

Or, just as a list: Characteristics at the top, then powers and skills, then complications. That allows you to pad out stuff like characteristic rolls and so on if you want.

A random page from Surbrook's Stuff will give you a messy version of the latter.

[Trechriron10]

1 hour ago, assault said:

... A random page from Surbrook's Stuff will give you a messy version of the latter.

 

OK, that in my mind is easy to read. Concise. I may have to be inspired by Surbrook's approach for an updated creature stat block.

[assault]

In fairness, my character builds lean heavily towards simplicity and short skill lists. A more generic sheet might need to be longer - but that splits information across pages, which is a pain.

 

I also don't include combat maneuvers, aside from those from Martial Arts. That information is easily derived, but it might be easier to do it up front for new players. On the other hand, the more derived information on the sheet, the more cluttered it becomes.

[Trechriron10]

I was considering moving all the reference stuff to a new sheet with a few more things as a HERO "cheat sheet". I modeled after the official one and I felt they could make the combat sheet more useful.