what does your character sheet mean to you?

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    • what does your character sheet mean to you?

      What's it mean to you? Is it just some numbers and some writing on a piece of paper, or is it the vessel of which your character takes form? Do you print a new one every time you change a lot of things, or do you keep the old one for as long as possible?

      I've always been under the impression that a used item is worth more then a non-used one, because a used item was used for which the item was meant to be used for. The rare trading card has been seen in a game against the opponent, a toy has been played with by a child, Not kept in the box or behind glass to be looked at, and this is how I feel about my character sheet.

      The character sheet is what tells my characters age, the things he's been through. Every eraser mark, every doodle, every cheesy puff stain tells a story. The dagger in the margin tells of when we brought the dead kings blade to his son, and stood by him as he rebuilt the kingdom. The skyship from when we defended the kings wife from a band of skyship corsairs. The hole in the stamina box tells the many battles I've fought in and come out on top. They all tell a story, and I'll only reprint my character when I literally can't write on the character sheet anymore! The character sheet says "I'm still alive, ready for another adventure!"

      What does yours mean to you?
    • RE: what does your character sheet mean to you?

      My character sheets back in the old D&D days were for me (to a slightly lesser extent, explained below) what yours seem to be for you...

      However, interestingly enough, I have a friend named Ninespike here on the forums who went through character sheets like a wildfire, not because he was constantly changing his single character or updating it, but because he enjoyed the character creation process so much that he'd create character after character all the time!

      Sometimes they'd be variations on a single theme (with very similar-sounding names), and sometimes they'd be wild and crazy different races, classes, etc.

      Somewhere I think I kept a notebook containing all his character creation ramblings... Quite impressive!

      Whereas if you looked at MY character notebook, I'd have all my past character sheets all the way up to my most recent one displaying all the variations of cool character sheets created by either TSR or some other company. Each time a new and cool "style" of character sheet would get on the market, I'd buy it and re-transcribe my info on it just to be stylish and awesome!

      Of course,...mine generally changed so little anyway because I was always stuck being the DM, and rarely got the chance to play!!!!

      Scottie ^^
    • As a 4E D+D player, I tend to use their Character Creation software to create and update my characters. The sheet I bring to the game (when I don't just play from the laptop itself) is just a shell for the character as I see it, a shell that is outgrown and cast aside after a few thousand XP like a snake sheds it's skin.
    • I'm a writer at heart, so my character sheets tend to become syntactical sketchbooks for me, complete with notes and phrases and what have you. There are always notes on back story, character interaction, concept and development, etc jotted down everywhere.

      I tend to keep the same sheet and just update it until it's not readable or legible anymore, mostly because I hate transcribing the same information more often than I have to - and because there's always so much information, written down in such an organic way, it seems a shame to change, almost as if it changes the nature of the path the character has trod through the game.

      At the end of campaigns or longer story arcs, my sheets tend to feel like maps of where the character and the party have been and what we've done.
      /jayiin
    • My character sheets are always the most unreadable in all of the land. There are numbers written and erased numerous times and often holes worn through. I had a GM (Nicky lolz) get fed up with me every session due to the poor quality of them. I keep them all one shots and all in this decrepit folder for giggles at later dates. Other than that I don't take notes and I often have large blank spots on them. I see them as a loose outline to my character more than anything.
      Rhinos don't wear t-shirts.
    • Since I made myself a pdf charsheet you can fill in (it calculates costs too, but theres a few bugs still) I haven't really made any new "real" charsheets, but used the filled in ones from my netbook.

      I still treasure my physical charsheet I use for Serpentus' campaign though, cause it took so much time to get it right (more or less, my first attempt to echant something ended with the object exploding, but nyeh).