My WFRP 2 Character Sheet

Warhammer 2nd Edition Character Record Sheet – by Paul Emerson
I worked hard to put this new character record sheet for Warhammer
2nd Edition together to provide players with a platform that allows
them to place all of the information for their character in such a way
that is more easily, and quickly, accessible. I have studied, and built,
character record sheets for more than two decades, now, for almost
every game I’ve ever played, run, read, or wrote, which is around
forty-five (45) games; I believe this makes me uniquely qualified to
develop this particular sheet.
Warhammer, starting with 1st Edition, is a particularly elegant game,
despite the genre or ease of the game itself and, as such, it demands a
character sheet that lends to immersion for the player, looks good,
and is easy to access and use. I believe that I’ve achieved that balance,
here. My best friend, Shane, expressed to me, as I was seeking to
develop this new sheet, that the 1st Edition sheet is beautiful, and is
one of the only record sheets he has ever really liked; since I respect
his opinion a great deal, I took that, and the other ideas, he expressed
he would like to see, coupled with my knowledge of the organization
of all sorts of character record sheets –most of which are very poorly
designed– and put together that which you’ll find in here.
It’s important to take some time and explain what is within this
document, and what is on the individual pages...
Pages 1 – 2 are these descriptive primer pages, designed to help you
enjoy this character folio to its fullest.
Page three (3) is the front-outside page, and allows a GM or player to
easily identify a character by name or player. This first page of the
“sheet”, more like a character folio, and the last page, are designed to
be “outside” pages, as the information contained on them is less
important to the general game than the information contained on the
“inside” pages; therefore, when printing these, they are designed for
double-sided printing. Also, the borders on this folio are designed
for laser printing, and may not set up on your computer printer in the
same way because all different printer types have different minimum
margins, and their software sets up for minimums that are outside the
control of the user, the computer, and the printer.
Trappings is a box designed for overflow trappings, those things that
are peripheral to the character’s survival and the player’s game-play.
The Ready Trappings box on the front-inside page is for those things
that are important to the character. Encumbrance allows you to
record your character’s Encumbrance Limit (Strength x 10), the
Encumbrance by how they are carrying their items, and the Total
Encumbrance carried. I have a house rule that states the total
Encumbrance of items carried in a bag must not exceed the bag’s
limit, but once in the bag, the total Encumbrance is cut to 1/3rd of the
total inside the bag, plus the bag itself, for determining carrying
Encumbrance. Many of the rest of the blocks are self-explanatory,
except that you should remember almost everything on this page, and
the back-outside page, is not going to be used as often as what is on
the inside pages. Career Planning is just that, what you intend to do
with your character as you continue playing this game that is based on
advancement through careers. Where you find the vertical word
Career in each career block, you can place a number in that same
block for what number career it will be for your character, if you
like, or simply use the remainder of the blank vertical space above to
list the career name.
Pages four through twelve (4 – 12) are the front-inside page. Again,
much of what is on this sheet is self-explanatory. Toward the lower-
left of the page, above Weapons, is a scroll for your character
portrait; it’s not as large as I would like it to be, but for the
information necessary on the sheet, it is just right. In this same area,
you may also draw, or record, your character’s personal heraldry, if
they have any.
Action Points are based on a house rule, where the actions from the
2nd Edition game, plus some others, have been put into a chart, each
action assessed a number of points their character’s Action Points are
spent each round to accomplish. Action Points are calculated as
Agility/5, rounded down, +5 for each additional Attack/Action
(from the Character Profile block) their character has. I came up
with this system because some characters my players have had rolled
extremely low on Agility, but because their character was a warrior,
or otherwise received more Attacks/Actions, they could still do
better than their colleagues with higher Agility values; that doesn’t
make sense to me. If you wish to have a copy of my Action Points
system, it’s on page two of the following (
http://www.wolvesau.net/wh/2e/WFRP2_Rules_Trunc.pdf ). If
you just want to continue to use the system given in the 2nd Edition
game rules, this block is easily ignored.
Hit Locations, Armour, and Damage is just what it says. APs in each
location block are your character’s total Armor Points by location,
Max is the maximum amount of damage they may take to the
location (based on the article Damage on Location from Warhammer
Forever), and Dmg is the amount of damage they’ve suffered to that
location through game-play.
The front-inside page actually has 9 pages to it, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling,
and Human Male and Female pages, with graphics in the Hit
Location box for each race and sex, which are designed to be light
enough for you to draw your character’s outfitting, if you like. Page
12 is a blank if you want to print a sheet without a graphic on it.
Page thirteen (13), or the back-inside page, is designed to help you
record and track Skills and Talents. The Skills block lists ALL
skills in alphabetical order, rather than separating them as Basic and
Advanced skills, like other record sheets do. This is for two reasons:
1) The skills in the Basic block on the WFRP 2 Character Sheet
from the rulebook do not match what skills are listed as basic in the
chapter on Skills in that same rulebook, and 2) This allows players to
more easily find their more useful and important skills.
The list is set into two columns, and each column is laid out as
follows: Basic allows the player to see which skills are basic by
following the stars and, if their character is not skilled, a player can
roll below 1/2 the governing characteristic for the skill.
Skilled has a diamond with a circle before each skill, and in the +10%
and +20% Mastery columns, to allow players to color in the circle
for skills and talents they are able to purchase and/or improve, and
then when purchased the diamond is also shaded in.
Govern Char. lists the characteristic that more closely controls the
skill. You’ll notice there are quite a few more Variable skills listed
than what is covered in the rulebook, and this is on purpose, based on
25 years of gaming experience; some skills simply do not fall under a
single characteristic, and it’s up to the GM to decide which one to
use.
Talent Bonus gives the character a space to record any percentage
bonuses to skill use received from Talents related to the skill they
possess. Related Talents allows the player to check any talents they
may have that are related to each skill.
You’ll notice that Spoken Languages, Academic Knowledge, and
Common Knowledge have been detached from the normal skills list
because, though they are used periodically in game-play, they do not
figure as prominently in the game as the skills in the main block,
above them. Likewise, Speak Arcane Language, Secret Language,
Secret Signs, Trade, and Performer have been moved to the backoutside page. Surely, you’ll also notice that these skills may each
have multiple sub-skills within them, so I felt it important to separate
them, to save space and allow players a que to access them from.
Next are the Talent blocks: Combat Bonus Talents, Skill Bonus
Talents, and Magic Bonus or Other Talents are the last blocks on the
back-inside page, and they are separated for the reasons of ease of
finding your talents, and to separate them by their importance. All
characters’ most important talents are going to be combat-based,
followed by skill bonuses, then magic, then Attribute, or Other,
Talents, which are accessed from the back-outside page.
Combat Talents provide all bonuses to be applied to combat, even for
mages, and are almost always used during combat. No more
forgetting that your character possesses Strike Mighty Blow or Fast
Hands.
Skill Talents are used quite often, as well, but not in rounds when a
player may need to look them up very quickly, as with Combat
Talents.
Magic Talents, or Others if you’re not a caster, are used less
frequently than Combat and Skill Talents, though they remain
important enough to put them on this facing page, so they may also
be easily seen.
All remaining talents should go on the back-outside page because
they are only used when the Talent is granted (as during Character
Generation), or purchased (through game-play). These talents are
your permanent, starter-profile-modifying attribute bonuses, and
things such as Night Vision and Natural Weapons; easily
remembered, or not terribly important after their initial use. As with
the Skills, each Talent has a diamond with a circle attached to its
upper-left; the circle is shaded in when the Talent is made available
for purchase through careers or game-play, and the diamond is shaded
in upon actually purchasing the Talent.
Page fourteen (14) is also for filler, the back-outside page, though it
does collect some information that players will find of varying
importance to them. Most of the blocks are, of course, selfexplanatory, though I will still highlight a few of them.
Party Members is for those groups who actually like to role-play,
calling one-another by their character names through the course of
play. The headings of Player/Character and Race/Career can be
ignored, though I felt it important to have them available for those
who prefer more detail.
There is a listing on the front-outside page in the Background block
for Religion, though those of you who choose to expand on your
character’s Religion/Faith will be able to do that in the appropriate
block on the back-outside page.
Several of the 2nd Edition character sheets I downloaded, studied, and
incorporated elements of into this character sheet have spaces for
Title, Licenses & Holdings, so I thought I might put a small block on
here, as well. One of the hallmarks of WFRP is, in much of the
artwork, at least, that characters are wearing edicts, contracts, orders,
licenses, etc. written on various types of paraphin-protected
parchment and animal skin pinned to their clothing, tacked to their
armor, etc. If you’re a GM who uses these sorts of things in your
game, this space will allow your player’s to record them for their
characters; likewise, Magisters should likely record a license for
being able to use Magick within the Empire. Casters who are not
from the Empire, Hedge Wizards, or anyone not an Imperial
Magister, should not write a license to use magic.
For those of you who like an in-depth character history, or like to
keep notes, you should use the Talent, and Other, Notes and
Character History & Notes blocks to do so.
Finally, on this page, is a section to list Companions & Animals and,
though it’s a small space for each, that’s all the space I had left to me
once I was done designing all four sheets.
Closing
It’s been important to me to develop character sheets that make games
easier to play, not only for players but for GMs as well, especially
since the complexity of games has increased exponentially since the
original Dungeons & Dragons. Likewise, it’s my hope this character
folio will be useful to you, whether you’re a player or a GM, and
you’ll be able to get a bit more longevity out of it than what
character sheets normally provide.
A word to those who have the illegitimate complaint that there’s still
not enough space: either get some scratch paper or stop writing! This
character sheet is college rule and I tightened it up as much as possible
without sacrificing the look and feel of it. If you have a tendency to
pack that much onto your character, then that’s your trouble, not
mine, and I invite you to keep that problem to yourself. I’m not
trying to be an ass, I’m just trying to let you know that I worked very
hard to get this character sheet tight, and still allow it to be pretty
and informative. ‘Nuff said.
Enjoy, friends.
©
2005 – 2009 Games Workshop, Ltd. Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay 2nd Edition. Permission is granted to reproduce these pages for
personal use only. © 2009 – Present Fantasy Flight Games.
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 3rd Edition. Hero Machine templates
© their respective owner(s).
The author and artist of this document and these character sheets
offers these for non-profit use, does not authorize them for re-sale in
any instance or medium, and is not attempting to challenge copyright
or stifle profitability of any of the aforementioned copyright
holders.
Dwarf
Male
Dwarf
Female
Elf
Male
Elf
Female
Halfling
Male
Halfling
Female
Human
Male
Human
Female