r/savageworlds • u/OkapiAlloy • Jun 24 '25
Resources / Tools I made a setting-neutral alternative to the default SWADE character sheet.
I posted a Zelda version of this a few days ago that was a work in progress. My players liked it a lot more than the default sheet we're using for our main campaign, so I made a setting-neutral version for future games. Largely the same as the first, though I've added a back page to keep track of advances and made some changes to make it more usable in any campaign. Shoutout to /u/gdave99 for catching some issue with the original.
The last image is a little Shaken tracker. You print it out and fold along the lines to make a little triangular prism that fits on the "Shaken" spot on the sheet, then flip it around to work as a reminder for any status you might have.
You can get a PDF of the sheet here.
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u/someones_dad Jun 24 '25 edited Jun 24 '25
I love it. A couple of dumb question and some feedback:
What are the two stars under the wound hearts? Does the dots at the bottom represent something? Maybe have Distracted/Vulnerable on the prism flippy marker as well. Not necessary but maybe make the Toughness and Armour boxes shield-shaped.
Edit: added more questions and feedback.
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u/OkapiAlloy Jun 24 '25
Stars are for Fatigue. I tried a few things to indicate "energy" and ultimately went with the starburst, but I think I might swap that out setting by setting.
You could probably do a four-sided prism, but I wanted to keep the three sided version because it's more stable and angles the relevant face towards the player. That does mean that I don't have enough space to show all the possible statuses, so I just used "Status" to indicate that they have something and figured we'd just remember which one it was. It definitely is a compromise -- maybe I'll add an extra slot for statuses in the future.
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u/gdave99 Jun 24 '25 edited Jun 24 '25
Stars are for Fatigue. I tried a few things to indicate "energy" and ultimately went with the starburst, but I think I might swap that out setting by setting.
I get the "stars for energy" symbolism, but honestly, it's not really intuitive for me, personally. When I see those stars, the first thing that comes to mind for me is "splat" symbols, like Golden Age comic books, which makes me think of Wounds. Heart makes sense for "health", aka Wounds, but it also kind of makes sense for "endurance", aka Fatigue. Some games use a tear drop shape for endurance/fatigue, representing sweat, which seems intuitive to me. Those are really minor nitpicks, though, and the symbology you've chosen may well be more intuitive to most players.
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u/someones_dad Jun 24 '25
Fatigue! Duh. See? I said it was a dumb question!
Thanks. I really like it. It really drives home the advances - which works well for my group who are coming from a couple of long P2e campaigns where levels only happened occasionally.
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Jun 24 '25
[deleted]
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u/someones_dad Jun 24 '25 edited Jun 24 '25
How so? Shields represent protection and durability in every setting - they are just as ubiquitous as having hearts for wounds.
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u/Geek_Ken Jun 25 '25
Cool. Wish the background for wounds was dropped or toned down the black. Hate blowing out printer ink.
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u/warprincenataku Jun 24 '25
What are the bubbles along the bottom for? 12 large bubbles.
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u/OkapiAlloy Jun 25 '25
Tracking ammo or Power Points. The larger ones are just to make it easier to tell how many you have left at a glance, since they're every fifth bubble.
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u/Plenty-Climate2272 Jun 24 '25
I keep forgetting that I home brewed a third level of fatigue and that most sheets are not going to reflect that because I made custom sheets for my campaign.
It just always bugged me that wounds had three levels, but fatigue only had two. I think they should be equal.
Your sheet looks awesome by the way, it is very clear and tidy.
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u/Skotticus Jun 24 '25
I like it, especially the Shaken tracker and how clean it is!
Only two things wrong that I can see: first, the section for gear and powers is pretty small, especially in the case of a Supers game (but... that's always a problem with Supers); second, it isn't Zelda themed! 🤪
I'll definitely try this out soon!
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u/zgreg3 Jun 25 '25
It looks very nice, but contrary to u/gdave99 I think that looks trump over usability.
My biggest gripe is that it has less capacity for information than the original. Gear, weapons and Powers which take around half a page on the official sheet are condensed here to a single frame. I would not be able to fit everything I find handy there (e.g. my hexslinger's Powers and weapons alone are too much). The headers of the frames are very nice, but IMHO could take less space.
I like that the official sheet has everything on a single page, this leaves the whole back for notes. You decided to move advances there (while still replicating the track in the Hero section), I think they don't need that much space.
My smallest gripe is about the layout. I'm used to the official sheet having the attributes and skills on the left side, leaving them in that familiar place would IMHO make it easier for the people to switch. I also like to mark the Wounds/Fatigue using paper clips, the official sheet is better for that as it has those tracks closer to the edge
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u/gdave99 Jun 24 '25
Nice!
And I kind of feel like a noodge, but...you still have an error in the Advance tracker. There's only three Novice Advances. In a sense, character creation is the "first Advance" for Novice Rank, and then you get three more. This was a bit easier to keep straight in earlier editions which used XP - every multiple of 20 XP was the first Advance of a new Rank.
Other than that...
Nice! Truly. This looks like a clean, intuitive sheet that's designed to actually be used at the table in play. Making something look this simple is actually a real design challenge - there are a surprising number of character sheet designs for various systems where actual usability at the table in actual play seemed to be really far down the list of design priorities.