ADungeons and Dragonsfan has created a simplified version of the standardDungeons and Dragonscharacter sheet, intended to help new players create characters more easily. The character creation process inDungeons and Dragonscan be fairly complicated and difficult to understand, especially for those who are new to the game. While character sheets are meant to keep information about player characters organized and easily accessible, the amount of information in a character sheet that players need to fill out and know the meaning of can prove overwhelming.
InDungeons and Dragons, a character sheet is used to store all of the relevant information on a player’s character, from their class and species to their ability scores and gear. Considering how much can go intocreating a character inDungeons and Dragons, these sheets are often considered a must for keeping track of such information while playing. However, as previously mentioned, a normalDungeons and Dragonscharacter sheet contains a lot of boxes and sections that players have to fill out with their characters' information.
RELATED:New Dungeons and Dragons DMG Will Be More User-Friendly
The modified character sheet was shown in a Reddit post on May 27 by its creator, yoshixin. The simplified version excludes certain aspects found in a normal character sheet, including the character’s alignment, background, experience points, proficiency bonus, temporary hit points, passive perception, player name, and the character description section that comprises the second page of the standard sheet. It also renames the “equipment” box to “inventory” and the “attacks and spellcasting” box to “weapon attacks”. Finally, the modified sheet significantly shortensDungeons and Dragons' spells section, which usually covers the third page of a character sheet.
In an accompanying post, yoshixin explains that they created the simplified character sheet in order to streamline the information contained in said sheet. This was done in response to cases in the past where they had to tellnewDungeons and Dragonsplayersto ignore parts of the sheet or ran into difficulties when explaining the meaning of the different sections.
This modified version of theDungeons and Dragonscharacter sheet has the potential to make the character creation process simpler and more accessible. It compacts the character sheet into a one-page form while still containing most of the essentials, and cuts out largely optional sections such as the character description. This, in turn, could draw in new players who might otherwise be put off by the amount of work usually needed to make a character. In addition, it could be possibly used in tandem with other resources intended to help players keep track of character information, such as theField Notes 5e Character Journal.
On the other hand, some of the changes found in yoshixin’s simplified character sheet might not necessarily work well for everyone. For one thing, the absence of the sections removed from yoshixin’s version may lead to difficulties if players ever find themselves needing the information from those sections during a game. In addition, the reduced space and detail of the simplified version’s spells section could be problematic for characters that use a lot of spells - particularly forheavily magic-basedDungeons and Dragonsclassessuch as wizards, sorcerers, clerics, and druids - which the standard sheet’s more substantial spells section helps with.
