This week we take another look at an area of the game which improved over the course of the playtest. While not a rules element in and of itself, the character sheets that go along with Realm of Runes are an important part of the user interface, and what information is presented and recorded and where is vital to get right. A badly organized character sheet can cost valuable game time while players search for important statistics, while a well organized one might go unnoticed entirely. That might sound like a bad thing, but it isn't. The less time a player spends thinking about the sheet and mechanics, and instead focusing on the character represented thereby, the better.
One of the earliest evolutions of the sheets is, perhaps, one of the more important. When the basic sheets expanded from two pages to three, it added a great deal of freedom for usable space. A majority of this usable space is now devoted to perk slots. Every perk slot offered in the character sheets comes with extra space to record a summary of the perk in question. Over the course of the playtest, this dramatically cut down on the amount of time players spent flipping between sheets and rulebooks to remember what their chosen abilities do.
This streamlining of time and information management ultimately inspired another of the major changes to the character sheets. Since the third sheet is one of several class-specific and class-oriented sheets, one can reasonably conclude that only characters which are playing a given class will use that class's sheet. Class features abilities that are exclusive to a class, but automatically granted to every member of that class regardless of specialization. Since class features are not actively chosen by players, and only sometimes require a customization choice within the ability itself, these important class abilities have exhibited a rather unfortunate tendency to be overlooked during play.
To combat this phenomenon, all of a class's important features are now also included on that class's character sheet page. These features are presented in a manner similar to perks, and include a complete summary of the entire ability as well as a reminder of which levels each feature comes online for that class. This serves as both a handy reference for the specifics of more complicated class features, like a Barbarian's Rage, and ensures that players are always able to consider even the higher-level and more obscure class features, like a Monk's Fierce Flurry. One other benefit that playtesters appreciated about this setup is the way in which it kept those higher-level features front and center while leveling up, serving as a reminder of abilities to build around looking forward, or to simply prevent redundancy.
Another helpful way in which the character sheets have grown is through the addition of several optional additional sheets. Some of these are more important than others. The Minion Tracker sheet is of critical importance to any character with an animal companion or familiar. The Perks and Equipment addendum can be added any number of times to get additional space for lots of gear and for when characters inevitably run out of perk slots on the primary character sheets, often around level 10 or so.
Other optional sheets instead offer quality of life improvements. A Buff/De-buff sheet has seen a lot of use in parties that contain Bards, Clerics, Rangers, Wizards, and other characters that consistently use their abilities and spells to enhance the party. With space for keeping track of several effects at once, and room to keep a comprehensive summary, this sheet offers those who want it a handy guide for all of the different effects an adventurer winds up with. If, like a few playtesters, your players have an unfortunate tendency to overlook some of their active effects, this sheet definitely helps avoid the cycles of "oh, wait, I also had this effect, so my result was actually...."
The Downtime Worksheet also offers a helpful quality of life improvement. This sheet has sections dedicated to keeping track of some of the most common Downtime activities, such as item crafting, training animal minions to learn new tricks, and using Retraining to replace perks and abilities that turned out to be less helpful than were initially thought. With space for multiple projects of different types, and for keeping track of costs and progress, the Downtime Worksheet keeps these notes organized for ease of use.
The character sheets are designed to help keep a lot of player information close and organized for every class option. With several optional sheets for specialized notes available, all the tools you need are always right at your fingertips, with as many or as few as you need at every step of play. Next week we'll once again introduce the Vanguard Exemplar, and its class portrait.
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