The character cards that come with the game are great. They are small and tidy, contain the artwork, and are easy to reference and play with. But I can't bring myself to mark them up as I play, and even if I could, that doesn't help with multiple campaigns.
The character sheets available for download directly from Paizo are also well done. Very complete and professional looking. However, having a full 8.5x11 sheet makes them a little cumbersome during play. Particularly when a bulk of the form is used up by the deck checklists which only really matter between games. (Will the PDFs be updated to reflect the FAQ/second printing?)
I've Googled and found a few other examples of various quality, but nothing that meets my needs. If I had the software and talent to create my own sheets, I'd certainly do so. But I'm lacking in both of those requirements.
I think my ideal character sheet would be something like a 5x7 (give or take... smaller is better, as long as everything is clear) with only the details from the character and roll cards from the deck. A separate 8.5x11 sheet with checklists for the scenarios completed and deck lists would allow for complete character management but would not get in the way during gameplay.
Has anyone come across something like this that I've missed? Or does anyone have the talent, time and willingness to put something like this together?
There is a guy over at BoardGameGeek.com that is making character playmats with the character sheets on them. Here is his Valeros one:
http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/99547/premium-valeros-character-playmat-h igh-quality
What I ended up doing was scanning the character cards and printing and cutting out a copy to mark up. I printed them on cardstock to give them some weight. I went ahead and just printed and cut about 5 for each character since I play with different groups and the same character might get used by different players. You don't have to do the card side since you don't need to know that piece of info during the scenario and you can just track it on the downloadable character sheets. I did the same with the role cards, but made them single sided. Doing this for personal use is fine.
You could also just put the character cards in penny sleeves and then mark the sleeves with permanent marker. Many people seem to do that.
I have also followed Hawk's path by scanning the cards and printing them on card stock. Well, actually my wife did it, she's the artist really. I'm kind of in a unique position to have half-page sleeves that I've used by folding the full size sheets Paizo supplies, so maybe folding one into thirds will work (it takes up a little room but not nearly as much as the full sheets).
I used the free Inkscape (similar to Illustrator) application to build some character cards for myself. Might be a bit of a learning curve, but it works well. I have card, power, and skill feats on the front as well as favored card, scenario check boxes on the back. Minimal artwork, just a mugshot on the front.
Not the prettiest thing, but I like all the information to be right there. Sometimes I forget just how many blessings I have in a character's deck at times, so I like the card feat available to me as well.
I only have a first draft of a few of the characters done (just our current running group), so not quite enough to post a package on BGG.
I only have a monochrome printer, so I print them out and put the front and back on either side of a cheap standard playing card and put it in a clear sleeve. Haven't worked out exact positioning to be able to do duplex printing yet. The text size is comparable to the card provided in game, but with less artwork all the information fits.
Since I do the two sheets of paper sandwiching a playing card, I just write in my gear on the back of one of them at the end of the session. Makes it nice to have all of my information contained in a single sleeve! You are forced to print out a card for each role as well, but I don't like having multiple roles on the same sheet anyways. Role cards have even smaller artwork and no flavor text unfortunately.
During play we use dry erase markers on sleeves that we put the cards in. Between games we keep our decks and feats written down on a notepad.
You can use GIMP- a free image editor- to import the PDF files of the character sheets that Paizo distributes, then cut and paste and scale up the relevant sections, and 'erase' the rest. Not much learning required.
I did this to create some 8.5"x11" sheets with enlarged text (presbyopia, a common affliction among us grognards) and a space for the deck and discards. The decklists can be printed on the back.
I'm not sure about whether they are in line with the community use policy, so I am hesitant to post them at BGG.
One word of warning about Gimp, save any and all Photoshop files to another location, as in something removable from the computer, before installing. When my wife and I lost access to photoshop we tried Gimp and it rewrote all of her photoshop files to Gimp files. Gimp files are not compatible with photoshop so you can't go back. We learned that lesson the hard way.
Hunh. Never heard of that happening before. Couldn't you just have saved the GIMP files (.xcf) as photoshop files (.psd) using the 'export as' function? Anyway, that is why backups are a must. Sorry about what happened to you guys though. Adobe software :P
I sleeved the pages in those sheet protectors-- the ones that have holes for putting them into a binder--that you can get at your local office supply store.
I've found an amazing solution to this problem. Print out the sheets from paizo.com and fold them to index card size so that the stats from the character card are all that's visible. Voila!
I took the lazy solution of a clear sleive for the caractor cards. Then mark the sleve with the caractor upgrades using a CD pen. If the cards are being used in mutipal groups then you need s sleive for each group.
There is an andriod app available a user put together. You can download it for free at the google play store. I saw it on BGG a while ago. Just search google play for Pathfinder ACG.
Basically it is a digital character card you can use during your games.
Sleeved the character cards with cheap clear sleeves. Wrote on them with a marker. Done. Benefit is when we get to choose a new role you slide it behind you character card and you still only have "one character card".
