Character Sheet - Overview

Overview

What is considered relevant can vary by game and personal preference—one player may consider his character's eye colour or personal background relevant while another might not, but both may be required by the game rules to note down on their sheet if their character suffers an injury.

Character sheets for a game are usually found within the game's main rulebook, and permission is almost always given for players to photocopy this sheet. Some publishers sell preprinted sheets separately. Many offer PDF files with character sheets for the players to print out themselves. It is not uncommon for players to create custom character sheets, to their own design, rather than use the publisher's “official” offerings.

A player may have an additional character sheet if he also controls a second character, a cohort or a hireling, but this is less common. The game master, who runs the game, may optionally keep proper character sheets for non-player characters (NPCs) if he wishes to keep full information on the character. Some rulebooks offer special “NPC sheets” for this purpose that are considerably smaller than the usual (main) character sheets.