D&D 4e Character Sheets

The D&D 4e character sheets that come in the Player’s Handbook (or downloadable as free PDF — fergoshsakes, don’t buy the damned things!) are … um … sucky.

I mean, they look nice, and they are definitely more usable than the text-block based sheets we’re using with the Keep on the Whaddayacallit pre-gens. The latter are complete, and and quite readable, but impossibly organized. The standard character sheets, on the other hand, suffer from way too little space to fit way too much information, marred by gratuitous blocks of distracting black. They’re like every awful form you have to fill out where they give you the same space for your full street address as they did for your first name.

Now, my handwriting is not all that great at the best of times. But when I try to squeeeeeeze stuff into those little boxes, it’s barely legible to myself, let alone to Margie. Since we’re generating characters for a Family D&D Night where Margie and I will be trading off GMing and running our own and each other’s character (Kitten doesn’t get to GM … yet), this is a problem.

So I did some searching, and evidently I’m not the only one who feels this way. Granted, alternative character sheets is a long tradition dating back to … well, probably D&D 1e. Heaven knows I used to looooove hand-crafting such things (I enjoy form design), and, later, building spreadsheets to make something purty.

One thing I’ve seen a lot of in this version of D&D that I don’t recall from the 3.x days is “Power Cards” — putting individual powers/attacks onto their own little playing cards. The idea is three-fold — it saves space on the main character sheet, it lets you organize things ad hoc, and with the new at-will / encounter / daily structure, it lets you easily put aside (and out of consideration) things you’ve already “used up.” Yes, it’s very CCGish (another reason for the Purists to hate 4e), but useful — and, in fact, it harkens back to the old “magic item” cards I used to draw for folks in my campaigns, once upon a time.

I definitely need to try the concept.

Some resources I definitely want to point you at (and bookmark for myself) for character sheet alternatives and power cards:

1. 4th Edition Character Sheets and Power Cards – A couple of good sheet designs here (Shado’s in particular), plus a very useful crib sheet that Doyce has been handing out, and some excellent power cards by Ander00 (though actually generating them looks to be more work than I want to screw with).
2. 4th Edition Character Sheets and Other Resources | Dragon Avenue: a Dungeons and Dragons Community – Parallel to the previous entry, this has some added character sheet options, some wonderful “condition cards” (little items you can put in front of yourself to remind you and others that you are stunned, slept, prone, etc., and what that means), blank power cards, initiative/effect tracker sheets, and some encounter generators.
3. My 4E Character Sheet – EN World D&D / RPG News – As stated.  A nice “retro” feeling character sheet.
4. [4e] Neceros’ Character Sheets – RPGnet Forums – More character sheets, and some good blank power cards.
5. RPG Sheets: Role-Playing Game Character Sheets, d20 Character Sheet, NPCs, Equipment, Swords, Magic Items – Another variety of character sheets, including an Excel-based one that looks pretty darned good.
6. Power Cards, character sheet, etc. for 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons – Still more recommendations, including links to more groups of power cards.

There’s a certain measure of duplication and cross-linking above, but in all it’s good resources to dive into (Google is your friend).