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Lately I’ve seen a lot of custom character sheets for DnD5 on Pinterest and I’m jealous. For years I’ve been using some sheets a friend made in Word and I modified for my personal use, but they are not very attractive. They’re made entirely of tables, which makes some editing easy but other edits are hard. It ends up looking like it was made in Excel even though it wasn’t.
I do not want to use an app. I find that too annoying during a tabletop game. I do not want a printed sheet I have to hand-write all the details in. I want a sheet I can type information into on my computer and then print. I’ve seen the suggestion to use Excel, but I despise Excel. I want the sheet to have space where I can insert things like graphics and decorative borders. I want to be able to select from a variety of fonts for the fillable fields. I do not want it to do formulas for me.
I want a sheet that I can edit to suit changing needs or customize for specific characters, and I want it to be attractive but functional. Does such a thing exist? Is it possible to create one without having to purchase new software or develop artistic skills that I lack? Why is all the cool art going into DnD sheets and not Pathfinder?
For Pathfinder, I have generally used MS-Word files without any sort of table formatting. Then I can do global replaces whenever I need to update a frequently referenced stat.
Lately I’ve seen a lot of custom character sheets for DnD5 on Pinterest and I’m jealous. For years I’ve been using some sheets a friend made in Word and I modified for my personal use, but they are not very attractive. They’re made entirely of tables, which makes some editing easy but other edits are hard. It ends up looking like it was made in Excel even though it wasn’t.
I do not want to use an app. I find that too annoying during a tabletop game. I do not want a printed sheet I have to hand-write all the details in. I want a sheet I can type information into on my computer and then print. I’ve seen the suggestion to use Excel, but I despise Excel. I want the sheet to have space where I can insert things like graphics and decorative borders. I want to be able to select from a variety of fonts for the fillable fields. I do not want it to do formulas for me.
I want a sheet that I can edit to suit changing needs or customize for specific characters, and I want it to be attractive but functional. Does such a thing exist? Is it possible to create one without having to purchase new software or develop artistic skills that I lack? Why is all the cool art going into DnD sheets and not Pathfinder?
5e is a bit more widespread, and is much older than PF2. I hope to see people working on PF2 variant character sheets soon, especially now that the optional rules for stamina in the GMG make it so that we need variant character sheets that have a place to track that.
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5e is a bit more widespread, and is much older than PF2. I hope to see people working on PF2 variant character sheets soon, especially now that the optional rules for stamina in the GMG make it so that we need variant character sheets that have a place to track that.
I should have mentioned that this question is specific to Pathfinder 1e.
I use Word at work although not at home. We don't have the most up to date version but you should be able to edit the Tab positions so that you don't need to use Tables to align things. Each line can have different Tab positions as necessary.
For artwork you can insert a picture into a Frame and format it so that text flows above, below, to one, other or both sides and, I believe, even over the top of the frame (picture). You may also be able to do that without a Frame - not quite sure about that. You can anchor it to a paragraph so that it moves when you type extra text or direct to a location on the page so that the text moves around it.
You can also put text into Frames or Text Boxes that you can move around the page.
To some extent it will depend on the version of Word you have but really, if you don't need the sheet to calculate or auto-fill anything, it's just a case of scribbling down the approximate layout you want and then fiddling with the Tabs and Frames and point sizes until it looks a way you like. That will go for any word processing software.
You could go with page layout software like PagePlus but that probably isn't necessary for a character sheet. Word should probably do it quite well.
The only thing is, doing things like this takes time. Don't be surprised or distressed if you find it taking several hours to come up with something you like and find easy to use.
Not sure what is available ready-made.
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I use Word at work although not at home. We don't have the most up to date version but you should be able to edit the Tab positions so that you don't need to use Tables to align things. Each line can have different Tab positions as necessary.
For artwork you can insert a picture into a Frame and format it so that text flows above, below, to one, other or both sides and, I believe, even over the top of the frame (picture). You may also be able to do that without a Frame - not quite sure about that. You can anchor it to a paragraph so that it moves when you type extra text or direct to a location on the page so that the text moves around it.
You can also put text into Frames or Text Boxes that you can move around the page.
To some extent it will depend on the version of Word you have but really, if you don't need the sheet to calculate or auto-fill anything, it's just a case of scribbling down the approximate layout you want and then fiddling with the Tabs and Frames and point sizes until it looks a way you like. That will go for any word processing software.
You could go with page layout software like PagePlus but that probably isn't necessary for a character sheet. Word should probably do it quite well.
The only thing is, doing things like this takes time. Don't be surprised or distressed if you find it taking several hours to come up with something you like and find easy to use.
Not sure what is available ready-made.
Good points! I think the original version of the sheet might have been made in XP and although I’ve converted it to Word 2016 it’s still running in compatibility mode, which probably explains why the tables are sometimes uncooperative. I should take a stab at recreating it without tables.