for a more convenient D&D 3.5 experience: developing a spreadsheet-based character sheet

glennmagusharvey

I've played D&D 3.5 a few times, and one of the more annoying aspects of my experiences has to be managing my character sheet.  Between the tons of scratched-out and rubbed-out HP numbers trying to keep track of lethal and nonlethal damage, the confusion over exactly how much ammo or stuff or weight my character is carrying, and trying to remember which of the many things on the sheet I need to update when leveling up (or leveling down, even)...y'know, dealing with these things really breaks immersion.

So I'm trying to make a character sheet that automates as much of this as possible.  You give it the book data, you give it your character's info, and it'll show you all the relevant stats.  For example:

* When you take a new level of [your class here], just increment the level next to that class.  Your new base attack bonuses and saves will be automatically displayed, taken from a chart that you can throw into the spreadsheet in seconds.  Multiclassing?  Enter the level of each class, and the sheet will add them up together.

* When you throw a dagger at something, all you need to do is increment the number of daggers you have down by one.  The weight of your stuff is automatically recalculated.  The value is also recalculated.

* Leveling down?  Change your level total and you'll automatically lose every-4th-level ability gains--without forgetting which abilities you picked.  Losing skill points?  Select the level you're losing, and the sheet will subtract precisely the skill points you gained in that level.

Looking online, I saw some people use spreadsheets.  Unfortunately, some of them used macros, or were otherwise too confusing to use.

So I started making my own.

Here's my newest version so far.  I'm starting from scratch since the previous one was kinda buggy: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14074925/ods charsheet 3.5.ods

You should play around with it by changing the levels of rogue and wizard and watching the ability scores, saves, and base attack bonuses automatically change as you mess with the levels.

(Also, I think you can move cells around with impunity and other cells that reference them will be updated automatically.  So you can rearrange stuff to your liking.)

 

For reference:

The old version.  You can play around with it and look into the formulas.  It's made for OpenOffice, despite its .xls extension: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14074925/OOC character sheet (old).xls

The basic paper D&D character sheet (downloadable from the WotC website): https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14074925/D&D 3.5 Character Sheets.pdf

The basic paper D&D character sheet from the 3.5 PHB: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14074925/PHB v35 charsheet.pdf

 

I've chosen to make this in OpenOffice Calc (.ods format) because it's easier for people to get OO Calc than to get MS Excel.

(Filing this under Roleplaying, though it could conceivably be a Media thread.)

 

FYI "Rycan" is a character I'm creating for Super Lazuli's D&D game (that he's organizing on Heapers' Hangout), and Flipside is the world name so I just took that to be the campaign name.  They're both just placeholders anyway.