What is the best D&D Character Sheet? A Comparison

By EricMesa

- 6 minutes read - 1256 words

When I first played D&D with David maybe 3 Christmases ago, one of the most baffling things for me to understand was my character sheet. Take a looka t the first page of Sam’s Dungeon in a Box character sheet:

Ignoring how busy this page is, one of the biggest design issues I see right away is that all of the trait boxes are incorrectly prioritized. I have seen people argue for completely eliminating the scores from the sheet because you don’t ever use those scores. Instead, you use the modifiers (the +# or -#). Yet on this sheet those numbers are teeny, tiny compared to the numbers that are functionally useless. (Except during character creation) I would otherwise say there’s not too much that’s bad about this page - it gives you the information you will need most often. The second page has information you might need to refer to so that you don’t need to keep referring to the Player’s Handbook (PHB)

On this specific character sheet (derived from DnD Beyond), the third page is just overflow from page 2. The fourth page is biographical information. I think, during gameplay, most players would never read this page. They would just reference it before a session to remind themselves of the character’s backstory and other details relevant to roleplaying. Finally, we have the spell sheet:

The only real critique I have is that spells are used WAY more often than the prior sheets. I think it should probably be the second page.

The Humblewood (a D&D campaign setting I’ve written about a few times) character sheet does a much better job with the skills, saves, and traits:

I’ll speak more about why I think this is an optimal organization for the information below. If there’s one complaint I can level against this sheet, I think that Hit Point Press is trying to put a little too much information onto one page.

Wizards of the Coast seems to have recognized there were some imperfections to fix with the character sheet because the 2024 design is MUCH nicer. In fact, the biggest critique I have of the 2024 sheet is that DnD Beyond STILL doesn’t export to the 2024 format AND the PDF they provide cannot be filled in. But let’s take a look at how much better organized this character sheet is:

FIRST best thing, the modifier and character scores have been flipped, fixing my complaint above. Your modifier, which you are constantly using, is more prominent - circled AND larger. But they went even further. If you scroll back up to the original sheet you’ll see that saving throws and skills are in separate boxes. This means when I am serving as the DM and I ask for a DEX (Acrobatics) check - in the old sheet the person has to first look in the skill box and then, if they don’t have the proficiency, look in the attribute area. Now it’s all compacted together with the saving throws. Much, much better organized. They also bring the weapons and damage cantrips up to the top of the sheet because they are what you use the most in any game of D&D.

The second page is a much nicer spell sheet, organizing things perfectly:

I think Wizards of the Coast has really nailed things here and I think it will serve as a much better introduction to the hobby.

Before I move on, I do want to point out a huge outlier character sheet style:

THis character sheet is from DnD Adventure Club, which I’ve also written about a in the past. Yes, this sheet is written for a younger crowd, but it is also a great way to see a pared down character sheet. As you can see - there’s a lot less information on this sheet than in the other examples, and yet it’s almost everything you need in order to play. (I say almost everything because most character sheets from DnD Adventure Club are two pages and the second page usually has the spells if the character is a spell-caster) Definitely consider creating a pared down sheet like this if you are often introducing new players to the game. Don’t confuse or distract them with lots of numbers you don’t need. (Notice they have minimized the scores for the traits in favor of the bonuses)

This is a perfect contrast to a sheet I discovered the day before I started writing this post. This is the first page:

To really appreciate the level of attention to detail in this sheet, look at page two:

It goes on for 6 pages (page 4, page 5, but I really do like their spell sheet:

It reminds me of my current favorite spell sheet from Tales of the Valiant:

And when I did a bit of a search on Drive Thru RPG I found a bunch of sheets. Here are some of the ones I liked:

And D&D YouTuber Ginny Di advocates creating a character journal (which encompasses the information that would be on a character sheet):

So if we have all this choice - from free, specific character sheets given away on Reddit to character sheets you can buy on Drive Thru RPG to creating your own journal - what does it matter how good the character sheet from Wizards of the Coast is? Well, like many things in D&D (like the OGL), there is a good comparison in the Linux world. The distro makers like Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch will often agonize over the default wallpaper, default font, and default color scheme. And many people, especially those you can find at /r/unixporn, will argue that the type of person who uses Linux will probably immediately customize everything. So why spend time trying to get the defaults right? Well, I would argue that defaults represent your first impression. As the cliche goes, you can only make one first impression. So if Wizards of the Coast wants to continue to grow the hobby, it’s in their best interest for someone not to bounce off the game right away because of a scary character sheet - the FIRST thing you typically interact with when playing D&D. Additionally, the default is the launching pad from which everything else springs. If you look at the links from Drive Thru RPG, they’re mostly recognizable. Most people are not going to go off in a random direction with their presentation of the same data. They’re going to modify the default. So if we start with good defaults, we have even better modifications. For example, there’s a lot that I like about the 6 page character sheet from that redditor. But they were taking the 2014 sheet as their starting point so they still have the skills and saves divorced from the traits they are derived from. I think if they started off from the 2024 sheet, they’d have the pefect sheet for the detail-oriented player.

In the end, I think this is, like computer or phone customization, somethign where you end up moving away from the defaults and to your pefect organzation if you play long enough, but I think the 2024 sheet is pretty darn close to perfect. (If they would only release it in a form-fillable PDF)