Over the last few days, my efforts have pushed me to the brink of insanity, one crumbling step from plumetting into an abyss of darkness that no being can return from without being changed for eternity.
That abyss is known as Adobe Acrobat.
The war was hard-fought, and the victor was—well, the character sheet? I’m exhausted and really don’t have that much literary muscle left to truly write with.
The sheet is based directly on the good work that Neceros put into the latest version of his character sheet (at this time of writing: 1.1.0). Using it as a base, I added forms across the entire first page that worked out the tedious bits so that you can spend a bit more time working on your background than on figuring out the overall totals for your skills and such.
The resulting PDF is pretty small, about 670KB 905KB. I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know if you find any demons lurking inside of it. Remember, though, the forms are still in beta and will be until I finish fleshing out the second and third pages.
Sep 15, 2009Appreciate it.
The highlight of the entire process was cursing at Acrobat as I was working on the skills section. The “lowlight” was also the skills section when Acrobat decided that it had had enough of the carbon-based lifeform that was demanding its full attention.
Sep 15, 2009Well I found one demon in the form Fillable Pathfinder Sheet, It seems that the will Save atribute is tied to Dex instead of Wisdom, its the only thing that I can work around but wish I didn’t have to. Good work on the sheet.
Sep 15, 2009@T Gross: Appreciate the heads up. I fixed the problem and new version should be available for download. The version number should be “0.9.1 beta” now. If you find anymore problems, please let me know.
Sep 15, 2009Sorry to be a bother, but using your sheet I noticed a couple more bugs. First off the Armor Class calculator is subtracting the Armor penelty from AC. The CMD is not adding the plus 10 to the final total. Keep up the good work.
Sep 16, 2009Trust me, I don’t mind. I’d rather have people giving me feedback to let me know what I need to improve to make it work. Without the input from you, the sheet would be less than useful and I’m not a fan of that.
In other words: keep ‘em coming.
Also, I’ll take a look at the sheet once I get home and make the corrections. Should be out sometime this afternoon (East Coast, US).
Sep 16, 2009The new version is up, and both of the previous issues are corrected in 0.9.2. Keep up the feedback, T Gross, I appreciate the work.
Sep 18, 2009Hey, great sheet [v. 1.1.0 (BETA)]! A couple of notes that you’re probably aware of: the armor check penalty isn’t applied to skills, and the experience fields are a bit off (current xp is entered where xp for next level goes, and xp for next level isn’t calculated). Thanks for putting in the effort!
Zo
Sep 19, 2009@Zo: I’ll add the Armor Check penalty to the top of the skill section, but I’m not 100% sure about adding the AC Penalty to all the applicable skills. It’s six in one hand, half-dozen in the other. If I add them into the skills, you’ll have to remove the penalty when out of your armor. If I keep it as is, you’ll have to add it to the respective skill. What’s your take on it?
There is only one box for experience due to the fact that it can change an amazing amount during a campaign session. The block is for the amount needed to gain the next level. Also, to have the sheet automagically calculate the experience needed at the next level is tricky. Not only would you need to add the numbers of levels (easy), you would have to take into effect anything that has a level adjustment.
Also, Neceros has released version 1.1.1 of his character sheet which I’ll incorporate into this sheet once I get back from travel.
Sep 19, 2009@Zo: After looking at Neceros’ 1.1.1, I’ll have the form automatically incorporate the AC Penalty to the skills when I update the sheet.
Sep 19, 2009Looking forward to it! I get what you’re saying in regard to the XP fields, it makes sense now that I think about it (initially I just thought it was a formatting error). Anyway, my players and I appreciate the work you and Neceros are doing, and keep up the good work.
Sep 21, 2009Hey, I was wondering if some of us in the community could assist you in getting the second or third pages done? I am really digging your sheet, but the lack of fill in boxes for pages two and three is bothering me.. so I figured I would offer some help [If I can, sorta a PDF Noob myself].
Sep 21, 2009@Michael: As far as a timeline for the final two pages, it has been delayed slightly. Neceros has updated his Pathfinder Character Sheet to 1.1.1 which means that there are a few changes on the second and third pages that have to be fixed. I should have the second page complete along with changing the base version of my version to 1.1.1 available tomorrow, and the third page done by Thursday.
As far as help: I wouldn’t wish drawing these boxes on anyone. I appreciate the offer, but most of it is a simple “grind.”
Sep 21, 2009Released 0.9.3 and changed the article to show what happened to it.
Remember: there are still bugs in the document so if you find one, please let me know so I can fix them.
–JTB
Sep 24, 2009Hey Jamesthebard, thanks for this awesome sheet. A few bugs / nitpicks:
1: The “Apraise” skill should be spelled “Appraise”. I realize this may be a bug with the Neceros sheet, but it’s still spelled wrong.
2: The Appraise math doesn’t work out. If you select it as a class skill it puts “+3″ in the trained column (correctly), but when you put ranks in the skill it seems to ignore that column. I mucked around with it and it seems if you put ranks Acrobatics (above it), the math starts working on Appraise. I’m going to guess that you’re referencing a wrong cell perhaps?
3: It would be really cool if the INIT (initiative) column was broken down into DEX + Misc Modifier. That way you could pull in the DEX modifier automagically and people like me, playing a Diviner, could put in our +4 bonus to initiative and that value would automatically become INIT = DEX_MOD + 4… just would be cool.
And most importantly, thank you for giving us your time and work without anything in return. Please accept my thanks and accept my comments above are intended as nothing other than to help find bugs.
Sep 25, 2009@Ullapool:
1. I don’t have a lot of control over the base of the character sheet. I’ll email Neceros and give him the heads up about the misspelling.
2. I’ll take a look at the character sheet once I get off from work. It’s most likely either a bug in the forms for that skill or an order of calculation problem that tends to creep up in Acrobat when I’m forming it out. Will be addressed once I finally get the third page fully formed out.
3. As far as Initiative, I’ll take a look at the form I have for it and see if I can squeeze an additional block to help with calculations. I’m trying to make the sheet as easy to use as possible without changing it into a “Character Generator”.
I genuinely appreciate the feedback. I can form the hell out of the character sheet, but without people using it I would never be able to address all the problems in a quick and efficient manner. If you find more bugs or have things you’d like to see done differently, please let me know. I can’t assure that the “done differently” part will be changed, but if it’s a good idea, I’ll definitely see what I can do about implementing it or give a good reason why I can’t.
Sep 25, 2009Thanks again man. My players are eager for a form like this.
Sep 25, 2009Ullapool,
I’m working on forming out the last page of the character sheet (which is currently kicking my tail as we speak). Neceros has updated his character sheet to version 1.1.2 and corrected the Appraise skill.
There are a few more bugs on the sheet that I’ve noticed as I’ve been trudging along, so it’s been a touch delayed. However, I should have it done by the end of the weekend barring any more delays and new “features” in Acrobat.
–JTB
Sep 25, 2009Please go to the new page located here to leave comments about the 1.0 release.
I appreciate all of the feedback that I’ve received so far and hope that you’ll continue to provide input on corrections and suggestions. Without the support, this sheet wouldn’t be where it is now.
–JTB
Oct 17, 2009Hi James,
I just downloaded your character sheet for an upcoming game, and I noticed an apparent bug. The AC modifier for Dexterity always remains at the base of -5, even after adding in an attribute value. In this case, a Dex of 12, which should have the +1 bonus to AC.
I thought it was due to the Armor Check Penalty (as I see someone above mentioned), because I didn’t notice the problem until after I’d created a fighter with scalemail and a heavy wooden shield (which would be -6 penalty, +1 for a 12 Dex), however, the problem persisted, even after I removed the armor check penalty from the armor fields (just performing a little QA).
Bad Behavior has blocked 54 access attempts in the last 7 days.
Blog RSS Feed
3:53 am
Hey, great post!
Honestly though, you’ve done a great work here. I thank you for your efforts that I refuse to put myself through… I feel your pain.