[Strife] Character Sheet for review

[Inner Circle Inc]

I've finished with the second edition of the character sheet for Strife.  There are probably going to be more, as I'm in no way a professional at this.  Any comments/critiques are welcome, I'm particularly looking for input on the wider elements of the sheet, such as proper flow, organization, giving the user enough room to work with, etc.  

This is actually already available to our Alpha testers, but we're not going to get any sort of feedback from them for awhile, and I'd like a bit more of a "professional" review.

Character Sheet

[TonyLB]

Is everyone going to have spells?  If not, it shouldn't take up a third of the front page.

You have really big titles for HP and AP, and I assume numbers go with them.  But because the titles are so big, there's no room to actually write the numbers very large.  Reduce the title size and make a big old box to encourage them to write the numbers larger.

You have fighter skills, mage skills and rogue skills on the front page, then "class specific skills, fighter, mage, rogue" on the back page.  If those are different you need to make clear how.

Extremely mutable elements ("Silver", "Inventory"... what the character has in his right hand) should not, IMHO, be on the sheet.  It will either lead to people writing and erasing until they burn right through the paper or (more likely) ignoring those sections of the character sheet.

I wouldn't bother with a history section.  The character sheet is clearly describing the parts of the character that are rules-relevant.  Unless there are specific rules issues that the history will touch on it shouldn't go here.  "Notes", likewise.

[Inner Circle Inc]

Is everyone going to have spells?  If not, it shouldn't take up a third of the front page.

While no, not everyone has to have spells, they're open for everyone, and the sheet must have some way of recording what spells the character has, and I like giving them plenty of room, as I'm reminded far too often of the spell section on a D&D character sheet *shudder*

[quote.You have really big titles for HP and AP, and I assume numbers go with them.  But because the titles are so big, there's no room to actually write the numbers very large.  Reduce the title size and make a big old box to encourage them to write the numbers larger.[/quote]

Fair enough, I'll look into it.

You have fighter skills, mage skills and rogue skills on the front page, then "class specific skills, fighter, mage, rogue" on the back page.  If those are different you need to make clear how.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here.  I assume that you mean I should simply make them more distinct on the character sheet?

Extremely mutable elements ("Silver", "Inventory"... what the character has in his right hand) should not, IMHO, be on the sheet.  It will either lead to people writing and erasing until they burn right through the paper or (more likely) ignoring those sections of the character sheet.

I can probably dumb down the equipped weapons into a simple list of available weapons, instead of making them "slot" specific.  As for Silver and Inventory, while it's true that they're modified a lot, there must be some system of keeping track of it, as few people want to or do remember how much money and what items they have between sessions.

I wouldn't bother with a history section.  The character sheet is clearly describing the parts of the character that are rules-relevant.  Unless there are specific rules issues that the history will touch on it shouldn't go here.  "Notes", likewise.

True, people who are gun-ho enough to write a history for their character tend to have that information stored elseware, and having a set history space does limit them somewhat, so I can go ahead and get rid of those.

Thanks for the comments!

[daMoose_Neo]

Well, things like silver that are going to go up or down in number quite frequently could use its own little corner instead of a "space"

What Tony was talking about with the class skills I think is he's seeing something redundnat. What IS the difference between the two headings? If there isn't any, why have two sections is what he's asking. Could use some of that space if they are indeed redundant for a silver section, allowing players to do some scratch math (5 + 17, 223 - 51 etc (I know sometimes its faster for me to scratch it out than do it in my head).

[Selene Tan]

I pretty much agree with Tony's points. (Actually, I might not have noticed them if he hadn't pointed them out, eh-heh.)

I'm not sure I like the horizontal layout. When searching through a list, I find it easier to look through one long vertical column than two shorter columns side by side.

Since it looks like combat is going to be a big part of the game, it would be more convenient if all combat information were on the same side/page of the character sheet. You might want to dedicate one side of the sheet to combat and skills, and then put things like classes and advancement information on the other side. Maybe have a caster's version which has room on the combat side for their most-frequently-used spells and space for other spells on the back.
Most people don't keep as many weapons around as you have boxes for, and most of the time they don't use all of them. What I would do is put 3 unlabeled weapon boxes + the shield box on the combat side, then put room for more weapons on the other side.

[Inner Circle Inc]

Again, thanks for the commenting.

As for the Skills and Class-Specific skills, yes, there is a major difference in what they are, both in how they are aquired(sp?), what they do, how they work, etc.  I feel it's nessesary for them to have their own space, though perhaps I should put them closer together.

A little corner for silver sounds like a good idea.  I think that's what I actually may have had in mind, I simply didn't give the user enough room to work with.

Yes, this is a bit of a combat heavy game (with a name like Strife, that's what you'd expect).  I like the idea of a side dedicated to combat, with the reverse dedicated to advancement, I'll see if I can do that for the 3rd iteration (like I said, I'm new at this, this is actually my second character sheet ever).

The idea of a caster specific sheet doesn't thrill me, as I've never liked the idea of needed a differenet kind of character sheet just to play the class you want.  A special, optimal, optional caster sheet perhaps, but I'd rather not have GM's worry about not only if they have enough character sheets for everyone, but enough of each class so that everyone could play what they want.  Vampire suffered from this a bit, as they had class specific sheets.

Most people don't keep as many weapons around as you have boxes for, and most of the time they don't use all of them. What I would do is put 3 unlabeled weapon boxes + the shield box on the combat side, then put room for more weapons on the other side.

I like this idea, I'll implement it in the next version.

Good critiques all around.  The sheet's taking a beating, but that's what this thread's designed to do.