Why are character sheets so often badly designed?

[Ulfgeir]

One thing that struck me yesterday, when my group made characters for the rpg Tianxia, is that the official character sheets often seem to be badly designed, with way too little space to write things.

Tianxia, is a FATE-based game, as such you have your five aspects. Yes, there was room to write the high concept, and the trouble, but not the other 3 aspects (yes you could put the other under the larger place for trouble, but would have beeen nice with its own header in that case). Likewise, a game where Kung Fu is to play a significant role, you would expect more space to write which shcools and techniques you know.

Or take various D20-games where characters can get bonuses of different types on skills from a range of various sources like race, class, feats, magical items, normal gear, and lots of other cases. You often have to bundle a lot of the relatively common bonuses together in a Misc-field (if it is even present). That makes it harder to track just where did that bonus come from, and will the bonus from a new thing stack or not, or just what is your effective skill-rating if you do not have access to your gear.

Or if they write out all the skills, then you usually have one skill called Knowledge (and there usually are max 10 such skills). If you are lucky, you get 2 or 3 tiny rows to write which knowledges you have (but often one set of boxes to note which bonuses you get). Why not actually write them all out? It isn't in these games like you will suddenly invent a new knowledge-skill.


edit: To show how ridiculous D20-systems can get, here is the spreadsheet I had to make for Starfinder to keep track of skill-values. The official character sheet had Total = Ranks + Class bonus + Ability mod + Misc. I played a Halfling operative, with the template of Ace Pilot, and specialization of Ghost. May look strange with the stats, but first column was my normal stats, the second the de facto stats due certain things heightening them (some due to biomods, and one due to the equivalent of an Ion Stone), and then the effective stat modifier after that.

 

[Leatherhead]

I think it's because people rarely comment on the design of character sheets beyond the artwork.

Which is a shame, because I too have noticed how user-unfriendly they are. Even D&D could stand to have a UI pass.

 

[John Dallman]

I have the impression it's because the design is by a graphic artist who hasn't played the game much, if at all. Some cases where I know that hasn't happened (the John Sapienza sheet for RQ2, the Phoenix sheet for GURPS Character Assistant) are much more useful.

 

[Li Shenron]

You are all right

We play 5e and the official character sheets left me baffled since the start because of the fact that they don't even have enough rows to write all the spells a Cleric or Druid knows at 1st level... how did then not even notice this?

In every edition, early or late I encounter issues with both official and custom character sheets, some of which are truly nice, but in most cases when I try to play with them I run out of space somewhere...

Also, specifically in 5e character sheets, I think people are still too much attached to the idea that you have to pre-calculate everything (attacks, saves, skills...), while 5e has forsaken all those fiddly bits that were typical of older editions, to the point that skills and saves bonuses are pretty much always just the sum of the proficiency bonus and the ability bonus. There's nothing hard to just calculate on the fly with skills and saves, although attacks and AC are used so often that I still think it's best to pre-calculate them.

With these in mind, I have modified the official 5e character sheets into our own version and we have been using it for years, so I have also shared it here on ENWorld:

Quickstart 5e character sheet (beginner friendly)

This is my first attempt at a simplified 5e main character sheet (derived from the official WotC 5e character sheet), that is aimed at being the least intimidating to beginners as possible, by minimizing the amount of information included, and...

www.enworld.org

but notice that they don't cover 20 levels, because I haven't personally played or run the game yet at high levels. I think it's probably time for me to revisit my character sheets design, and tweak something after a few years of experience using them.

 

[Umbran]

You ask that as if it should be easy.

Character sheets typically need to be dense with information, which is a bad place to start. Then, there's the problem that what information actually matters varies from character to character. What a Barbarian needs to see, and what a Wizard needs to see are not the same thing.

 

[Lanefan]

@Umbran 's nailed it. A generic character sheet by default has to (try to) cater to every different class or character type in that game, making it inevitable that for any individual character there's going to be wasted space that doesn't apply tand thus probably not enough space for what does apply.

My own solution is to only include on the generic sheet those things* that apply to (almost) everyone, while leaving lots of blank space under a heading "class-specific notes".

* - for D&D (any edition) this'd be class, creature (a.k.a. race), gender, level, stats, stat-based bonuses/penalties, name, age, height, weight, description (or picture!), handedness, languages known/spoken/written, weapons used/carried, armour used/carried, AC, HP, historical or character notes [e.g. secondary skill(s) in 1e, bonds-flaws etc. in 5e], magic items used/carried, mundane gear used/carried, money, xp record, feats (3e and newer), and probably a few other things not coming to me right now. The rest would all be class-specific.

 

[John Dallman]

The rest would all be class-specific.

Yup. Games based on character classes often need class-specific layouts. When I play D&D family games, I use lined paper or a spreadsheet for characters. The examples I quoted above are both for games that don't use classes.

 

[Imaculata]

I can often not find what I need on my character sheet. I get the impression that a lot of designers just put the statistics whereever they fit on the piece of paper, rather than where the user would expect them. This often leaves me scanning the sheet for my armor class, saves, hitpoints or attack. They also never leave enough space for equipment.

It also frustrates me how character sheets often include these stupid little squares to track ammunition. A few sessions of erasing the squares will quickly render them unreadable (because the squares are so tiny, that your eraser basically hits more squares than you intend to erase).

 

[Li Shenron]

I can often not find what I need on my character sheet. I get the impression that a lot of designers just put the statistics whereever they fit on the piece of paper, rather than where the user would expect them. This often leaves me scanning the sheet for my armor class, saves, hitpoints or attack.

I don't usually have problems finding those key stats but you reminded me something similar that for me is a big deal.

Many if not most of the people who design custom character sheets organize them by the source of abilities rather than their usage.

Meaning that a lot of custom character sheets have a section for class abilities, a section for racial abilities, a section for feats, possibly even a section for subclass abilities separate from class... This is a terrible choice that is focused on character building but not on playing the game! Because it seems neat to organize your abilities by source when you create your PC or level up, but while playing the game all those abilities are scattered around.

Once you are done with building or updating your PC, it doesn't matter if your proficiency or advantage or special ability on something comes from race, class or feat, so it is a lot more useful to group abilities by usage.

This is something I struggled with when designing my own custom character sheets, and I am still not satisfied by them! For example, I have created a box for saving throws, where you mark both your proficiencies as well as special stuff like advantage on ST vs poison, and this has worked very well for us. But other abilities are still lumped together too much, and I feel that they need some organization by situation, for example having a section for all social interaction stuff, another section for senses/perception, another for movement. The problem is that some characters will end up with almost empty sections.

A similar problem came up when I tried to group special abilities by time. If I create separate sections for actions, bonus actions, reactions, out-of-combat abilities (basically anything taking 1 minute or more, since there are no abilities costing more than 1 action but less than 1 minute) and passive/non-actions, then this greatly helps characters who have a bit of everything, but doesn't work at all for those who mostly have a type or two, as the space for those fills quickly while other sections remain empty. Eventually I scrapped this idea entirely and instead designed spells/actions cards (color-coded by action type) to use alongside the character sheets.

 

[aco175]

I tend to not like the ones with more than one page, unless a 2nd page is for spellcasting. Some have 6 pages to track everything which makes a lot just blend into the mess.

Kind of like when you ask your boss what the most important thing to do today is and he says that everything is the most important. He then gets upset with you when you pick something and he says that you should be doing X instead of Y, since that is more important. If everything is most important, then nothing is. Same with the PC sheet.