I’m using the standard character sheet from the 4th Edition Player’s Handbook, which is a pretty good sheet except that it doesn’t really leave much space for you to write what your powers and magic items do. That’s OK, though, because I plan on using power cards. Initially, I didn’t like the idea. I’m not really sure why, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way. The more I’ve thought about it, though, the more I’ve come to think that having a card on which all the relevant rules for a power is written, and on which you can make notes and record the specific modifiers and damage, would be a good, useful thing. I’m also going to be creating cards for magic items, and I’m toying with the idea of creating cards for quests, too.

Per a suggestion on the EN World forums, I’m using the Magic Set Editor to do my dirty work. The program is designed for creating your own cards for trading card games such as Magic: The Gathering, but it works equally well for this endeavor. I tried to install a template that turned the entire card into a text area, with no space for a picture, but for some reason the template didn’t work. However, I’ve come to think that actually having a blank white space where a picture should be is actually a good thing, since it gives players a good-sized space to write notes about the specifics of their powers. So anyway, below is a picture of one of the power cards I’ve created, specifically for the fighter at-will power Reaping Strike, complete with notes written in specific to the character. I printed these out on card stock, and they’re really very nice.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 6:08 pm and is filed under 4th Edition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.