Everything except Equipment List and Gold on the front page. Equipment and gold, along with all the character's notes (allies, enemies, themes, backgrounds, etc.) on the back page. And I REALLY HOPE they bring back the abridged version of powers/spells that we saw in 3E. It's something that I REALLY miss in 4th Edition since you have to read the whole box just to get a gist of what the thing does. I tried to make one for 4E but it didn't turn out too well.
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I think the search for the perfect character sheet will never end, since everyone has different ideas what is most important info to have to hand.
It can be quite tedious watching someone trying to squeeze another plus to a roll, but not sure where they get it from. Checking first their feats on this page, then their traits on that page, then their class abilities on another page,....but only the names of the abilities; you still have to then remember which book they were from, then find the text and read it....
My character sheets these days are set out like statblocks. Everything is much easier to find, if I put abilities in alphabetical order. And if I print the relevant text, there's no need to search the books for an interpretation.
It may look sparse and bare, but anyone can take that PC and run with it, if I can't make it to the game.
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The Use of Stat-blocks to describe a PC seems more efficiency based than simplicity. If a character sheet were reduced to Stat Blocks you could pretty much divide the rest of the single page Character Sheet into Background Info and a What the PC looks like Sketch Area.
Is that better than a stripped down Character Sheet with minimal content?
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'Simple' and 'efficient' become much more attractive, as we get older and greyer, and have less time to game.
What I've seen a lot of, over 30+ years (and several editions), is players coming to the table with some kind of custom sheet, that they declare to be the perfect match for their class, with lots of pages, covered in overly-specific boxes, micromanaging bonuses and abilities from different sources. (racial abilities go here, class abilities go here, feats are round the back of page 2, traits are an optional rule, so they get shunted to appendix A, etc).
Often these areas are ring-fenced by borders formed of intertwined vines, runes, clouds, or other 'fantasy' imagery. This prevents that space being used for anything else, and is often the wrong size.
How many lines should a sheet reserve for feats? That depends on class, certainly, but also race and level.
Reserving 22 lines for a Fighter's feats is a good idea, if the game is going all the way to level 20, and the player intends to remain single-classed, but it's wasted space for a low-level game, or if the PC multi-classes.
Same with spells; the player borrows a page from a special 'caster' PC sheet, but again, all the spaces dedicated to mid- to high-level spells are wasted space if it's a dip class, or one with a slower progression.
So the player turns up with a folio for a charater sheet, most of which is blank space, and they don't know where most of their abilities are recorded.
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I do wonder; how would the proposed 'modularity' of the 5E ruleset impact on the ability to create a standard character sheet?
It could perhaps be bypassed by having a buffet-style 'build-your-own' character sheet generator, that each GM or player could cut, paste and expand to fit their character concept and the options being used in that specific game.
E.g. A game using the 4E-style skills would merely require a space to list which were considered trained, the default assumption for all other skills being [stat mod + half-character level].
A game using 3E-style skills would require the usual half page to reflect the greater customisation available.
1st/2nd Edition-style Non-weapon proficiencies would be back to a short list.
1st-Edition secondary skills would likely be one line, to reflect an adolescent trade, the GM assuming the PC has any reasonable skill associated with that upbringing.
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Interesting that you bring up spells - should a wizard have knowledge of how a spell works before having cast it and applied (or attempted to apply) it in game. When Oopsy the Wizard casts Fireball from a scroll he just got - is it more acceptable to provide him access with spell range and blast radius info or have him burn to death having thought it (the explosion) would be smaller?
Is it sufficient for Spells to only be known to any degree to the DM only - and to the PCs through Trial and Error (and Training at the University of Awesome Irresponsibility)?
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Wouldn't that be covered by the Spellcraft/Arcana roll to identify the spell?
Usually, the GM will tell the player, "It's Spell X", or "You can't interpret the spell.". There's rarely a partial translation.
What you're envisaging, is the scroll being identified in stages, such as a roll to identify the school, another to identify the range, another to identify the area of effect, another to identify the general result ("It's a fire spell, creates a ball of fire!").
If done that way, the player could perhaps loose off a spell that catches himself in a larger blast than he anticipated. But it would require a lot more rolls, and keeping track of what specific pieces of information were known, for every spell.
While that could work for a truly rare spell, such as those created by the previous owner's individual spell research, or from a newly-introduced non-Core source, it's a lot to remember for the meat and potatoes spells that everybody has been using for decades. Especially if the player is involved in multiple simultaneous games...
"Hmm, my mage Blasto knows that fireball is a 20' blast, but not the range...and Bazooko knows it has a good range, but not the spread...or is it the other way round?..."
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No. What I was thinking was Bob the Wizard having never cast a spell or seen a spell used cant possibly know what it does till he uses it for the First time. Sure its a fireball spell - but are the details in the spell as you memorize and read it for the first time - like this is the instruction manual on how to build and use a nuke? - How does Bob the Wizard know It wont cook him if he air-bursts it out there at 20 Feet in front of him?
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Well, you're going into the assumptions people have, about how comprehensive a wizard's apprenticeship actually is. And that varies with every group.
Traditionally, it was flavoured as being many years, paying off their college fees as an indentured servant, before mastering the language and concepts, that would see them in good stead for the rest of their career.
That could be enforced in 1st/2nd Edition, where the choice to be a wizard, or a wizard multiclass, was a one-time only decision, made at 1st level, at the very beginning of the PC's creation. Being a wizard was a lifelong vocation.
However, mechanically, the rules in 3E and later don't support that.
As soon as you allow at-will, mid-career multiclassing, you imply that the training period for any class is so short, as to be almost irrelevant. Being a wizard is a matter of 'what job am I doing this week?'.
Therefore, going by the RAW and RAI, of the various editions, using pre-2000 options should imply the mage is a lifelong master of his craft, and be given the benefit of the doubt whether he has an intrinsic understanding of all aspects of any spell he identifies.
Using post-2000 options, the implication is that the mage is a dilettante, who found a 'magic recipe book', and is flinging bat-poo at the walls to see what will stick.