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I've gotten back into GMing lately - I had a break from it because I usually find the experence stressful. One of the core reasons for this is the need to flick through the book constantly especially when the encounter involves multiple different foes. Picking out specific informatin in the wall of text is also difficult for me.
I am the sort of person who likes to see my options in front of me when running a combat, and would love to have informatin more clearly available than is possible when using a book.
I have tried other methods such as HeroLab, but often the resulting sheet has too much information visible for quick and easy use; when running a combat I really dont need to know what portion of an NPCs AC comes from armor, DEX, or dodge bonus, I only need the final number.
So I have been working on something I call the Quick Encounter Sheet. The goal of this project is to present all important information of a creature in the most minimalist form possible.
Below I will post the first page of the sheet I am working on. Warning: Very minor Hells Rebels spoilers. The black bar below the characters name is covering a more major spoiler, I covered it avoid revealing this to anyone. This is my own personal build of the character being used, so it wont spoil her strat for players sticking to the book.
The sheet in it's current form is made to be printed at A5 size. The front sheet focus on basic information and non-passive feats; this is done for the case of a Fighter build - as a standard Fighters class features are mostly passive, only the information on the front sheet would be needed to run an encounter (though this wouldn't work for intimidate builds due to lack of a skill line.)
The numbers in bright red next to HP are max HP; this is for quick difficulty adjustment, such as when running for 5 players.
Passive feats (such as dodge) go on page 2, which I am still working on. My goal is to fit all information on two pages, but this might not be possible for more advanced caster builds. I will upload sheet 2 as soon as it is compleated.
Untill then any criticism would be appreciated. Once the 2nd page is compleated, I would love to do a playtest and hear opinions of actual in game use (though I would need to remove the offical character art if I am distributing the sheets for more than my personal use, I'm sure this one time for my example will be ok, but I'd like not to push it).
I've gotten back into GMing lately - I had a break from it because I usually find the experence stressful. One of the core reasons for this is the need to flick through the book constantly especially when the encounter involves multiple different foes. Picking out specific informatin in the wall of text is also difficult for me.
I am the sort of person who likes to see my options in front of me when running a combat, and would love to have informatin more clearly available than is possible when using a book.
I have tried other methods such as HeroLab, but often the resulting sheet has too much information visible for quick and easy use; when running a combat I really dont need to know what portion of an NPCs AC comes from armor, DEX, or dodge bonus, I only need the final number.
So I have been working on something I call the Quick Encounter Sheet. The goal of this project is to present all important information of a creature in the most minimalist form possible.
Below I will post the first page of the sheet I am working on. Warning: Very minor Hells Rebels spoilers. The black bar below the characters name is covering a more major spoiler, I covered it avoid revealing this to anyone. This is my own personal build of the character being used, so it wont spoil her strat for players sticking to the book.
The sheet in it's current form is made to be printed at A5 size. The front sheet focus on basic information and non-passive feats; this is done for the case of a Fighter build - as a standard Fighters class features are mostly passive, only the information on the front sheet would be needed to run an encounter (though this wouldn't work for intimidate builds due to lack of a skill line.)
The numbers in bright red next to HP are max HP; this is for quick difficulty adjustment, such as when running for 5 players.
Passive feats (such as dodge) go on page 2, which I am still working on. My...
I find this to be a beautiful character sheet and concept.
The only good criticism I would have is to perhaps for efficiency sake, create another box starting from her Belt to her Ankles. Perhaps add in class specific abilities in that box, such as ki powers and maybe spells. Similar to the format of how paizo has it such as:
"Special Attacks teleporting burst
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 8th; concentration +10)
3/day—quickened dimension door"
2/day etc Dc14 reflex
1/day etc DC17 fortitude"
This might be good especially for less important encounters, when you dont want a full list of a creatures skill ranks, and feats, and traits and such. Just the important ones related to combat.
There wouldn't be a reason to know how many skill ranks a goblin has in appraise and knowledge nobility in battle.
Similarly, you wouldn't need to keep track of A Boss's Craft skill ranks, and disable device in the mist of battle.
I would love to have all class features on page one, the key problem would be a level 15 character of a more complex class would cover the entire character portrait. I'm trying to build for this template to be applied to all kinds of foes, and I want the same information to be in the same place between sheets.
There is also the problem that, at least for me, the large picture of the character actually helps me know which creature I'm controlling at a glance. I would hate to cover up the art, but if I ever share these I will have to figure out an alternative to using Paizo art, so that space might be empty in future.
I might squeeze in Spell-Like Abilities into the space you suggested, as they are often very few on any creature. Rage Powers and Rogue Talents might also work well there, as I'd concider those first page material.
Thanks for commenting! I'll definitely think about what you suggested.
so I know it's been some time, but here is the two page version;
Link, Hells Rebels spoilers within.
I would still love any opinions.
I might do these for all the foes in Plunder & Peril in the near future.
If anyone else would like to playtest I'm happy to share (minus the Paizo art of course)
It looks great and well-arranged. For higher level creatures or spellcasters it would need some adaptions, but it could be done.
My main problem is: Most of the time I only need combat dummies. An index card with bestiary-like entries (even shorter, actually) gets the job done, is relatively quick to write and is easy to carry.
I'd rather use it as replacement for the official PC sheet. Be it for actual PCs, competing NPC adventurers or NPCs fully controlled by players.
I really enjoy the overall look for the card, it's pretty great! I do have a few suggestions for further improvement.
For skills on a normal statblock, any unwritten skills aren't assumed to have a +0 total, just 0 ranks. Don't forget that a character's Ability Scores contribute to skill points, as well as some specific classes and races. I think you should do what a normal statblock does, and just make the skills displayed only skills with ranks, and you can remove the "All undisplayed skills have an assumed value of +0".
Another important thing worth considering is actions in combat. Having the little bit of information underneath the name of special abilities, feats, etc. is great, but I've found the biggest thing that bogs down combat is not knowing what kind of action one thing or another consumes. Maybe you can put the type of action just before or after the descriptive text for what that ability does?
For example...
Swift; Make one additional attack at your highest attack bonus when making a flurry of blows.
I hope this helps!
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Thanks for the responses!
It looks great and well-arranged. For higher level creatures or spellcasters it would need some adaptions, but it could be done.
Sadly thats the nature of the beast with non-symetrical class features; different class and monster types will require tweaks to suit, I'm trying to minimise the need for tweaks when possible though.
The first page is for standard stuff every character has, so I'm hoping positioning will be fairly identacle reguarless of creature.
I don't think I'll ever be able to squeeze in spell discriptions on this sheet though.
My main problem is: Most of the time I only need combat dummies. An index card with bestiary-like entries (even shorter, actually) gets the job done, is relatively quick to write and is easy to carry.I'd rather use it as replacement for the official PC sheet. Be it for actual PCs, competing NPC adventurers or NPCs fully controlled by players.
It's great you have something that works for you! personally I'm dyslexic, and having a stardardised layout makes it easier for me to find specific information quickly. Especially compaired to character sheets in books that go over multiple colums and pages.
Thanks for your input!
I really enjoy the overall look for the card, it's pretty great! I do have a few suggestions for further improvement.
For skills on a normal statblock, any unwritten skills aren't assumed to have a +0 total, just 0 ranks. Don't forget that a character's Ability Scores contribute to skill points, as well as some specific classes and races. I think you should do what a normal statblock does, and just make the skills displayed only skills with ranks, and you can remove the "All undisplayed skills have an assumed value of +0".
I did that with the goal of saving space on sheets with larger skill lists. I also feel that it is benifical to have skills like Acroatics, Climb and Swim quickly accessable, even if the creature invested no ranks in them.
This sheet takes into account ability scores for decided which skills are omitted.
(it's also worth noting this build has unspent skill points; Paizos version of the character was a fighter, and I didn't want to give her too much of a power up)
Another important thing worth considering is actions in combat. Having the little bit of information underneath the name of special abilities, feats, etc. is great, but I've found the biggest thing that bogs down combat is not knowing what kind of action one thing or another consumes. Maybe you can put the type of action just before or after the descriptive text for what that ability does?
For example...
Swift; Make one additional attack at your highest attack bonus when making a flurry of blows.I hope this helps!
A great suggestion, I will be doing this.
Updated Sheet! Hells Rebels Spoilers!
I chose to remove Still Mind and Maneuver Mastery, as their stat alterations are already reflected on the first page. While knowing the names of these skills is important for character creation, they do not need to be visible for gameplay.
I also finally figured out how to Right Indent Tab, which lets me right align text mid line; this is amazing.
I put some tracking markers on ki too.
I made another sheet for the boss of part 1 of Pluder & Peril. It sucks I dont have the PDF of this book, it would be nice to have the official charcter art.
New Sheet, Plunder & Peril spoilers!
Data entry on the template is a time consuming struggle as I am using a trackpad on a laptop; I'm sure more screen realestate and a mouse would make the process smoother. What takes me longest is re-writing feats and class abilities to be both space-efficient and informative.
I had enough space on the front page to avoid spltting feast into passive and non passive. Some of tht tweaking SheepishEidolon spoke about was needed, not much additional work, but I imagine there will be layout changes for each new class.
Just had a NPC with too little info for two pages, so I made him a one page version.
I think the template gets a litte more refined every new NPC I fill in.
Popping back in again - these sheets are really cool, and I like the direction you've taken the improvements. Are you developing some sort of tool, or is this something you've created in a program? If this is your own work, I think people would love to see it available in some way.
Looks pretty neat and convenient. :)