In my last post I mentioned that while there are a number of character sheets available I use a spreadsheet to track my character’s particulars. While it takes a bit of work upfront, the dividends are well worth it.
With the way I’ve set things up making a change to an ability score adjusts other appropriate values. If, for example my character’s STR score goes down, the associated ability modifier is adjusted along with his attack bonuses and STR based skills. I included a separate column to track what his current max score is so that temporary changes can be tracked without fear of losing what his actual score should be.
Is it perfect? No, and I’m constantly updating and modifying it. In fact while writing this post I’ve already thought of a couple of alterations I should make.
Why OpenOffice? For starters while I use Microsoft products I’m a firm believer in open source and of course the price is right (free) which means I can share this with others and it only costs them the download time and disk space. The other major reason is that like the Evernote application I mentioned a couple of days ago (see Evernote for your spell list) there is a portable version so I have it installed on my USB drive and have it available to me when I need it.
As a bonus I can export my character directly to PDF so I can easily send it to anyone who needs a copy as most everyone has Acrobat Reader available to them.
For those that are interested here are the PDF and OpenOffice Calc (zipped) versions of my character sheet.
Do you use a spreadsheet or another application to track your character? If so please take a moment and post as I would really like to hear what you do.
May your dice roll well.
I use e-Tools, but it isn’t really for real time play.
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