TOPIC: What Changes To Make on Character Cards in 2016?

Alvin Oliver:

Or better yet, let a monk "guard" in terms of saves another character. Maybe only so many times per game.

I think reflex saves make the most sense for this, and I'd like to see the monk be able to do the same thing with missile attacks, since he has deflect missiles which never gets used. Either jumping in front of an arrow, or grabbing someone with a dive-dodge in the case of a fireball.

Bard has ways of recovering allies from a failed Will save, and Cleric/Druid can help with a failed fort save (at least for some cases.)

General - As for the cards, right now they are serving 2 purposes -- a tracking device for HP and a quick tutorial for players not familiar with the class (or TD in general). As several people have already suggested, the tutorial part could be a separate sheet or even a large poster in the coaching area. This would allow the card to be more player/DM friendly in the dungeon. Everything in silver on the card is useful for character generation, but not very useful in the dungeon as the DM sheet has the updated values. All of that info can be put in a small block on one side of the card (space gained).

General - I suggest outlining the front of the card with a color to represent level -- neutral color for 4th, silver for 5th, gold for prestige.

General - As for HP, I don't think you can put 1-99 (or whatever the current possible max is) along the outside of 1 side of the card and a wheel would be cost-prohibited for players who are not willing to spend the additional money. I suggest keeping the current singles 00-09 along 1 side but moving the 10's to the top of the card where they would be less likely to get knocked-off. Put 20-90 on the front and 00 & 10 on the back. Outline the back-side in red so when someone goes below 20 they have to flip their card over and it is obvious to everyone who is low on HP.

I really like the idea of marking the printed starting HP in a separate color on each card. For example, let's say a class has printed starting 18 HP, so their player card would have a black 00, red 10, black 20/30/40/50/60/70/80/90, red 8, and black 0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/9.

I like the idea of coloring the starting positions for hp differently. There could be some confusion introduced for new players that luck into an hp-increasing token, but there is always the potential for it to get forgotten once they take damage anyway.

UPDATE!

I am finally meeting with the graphic artist tomorrow to go over some changes with the 2016 cards. We are going over general changes before tackling individual character cards. We will be trying out some of your excellent suggestions regarding hit points and easier to read text. I hope to have some new look graphics posted on Wednesday.

Thanks so much for your long patience.

Woot!

If it isn't too late to chime in (and as cleric didn't seem to come up much in the previous pages)...Could the 5th level clerics get another 2 spells to bring them in line with the 5th level druid, wizard, & elf wizard?

Currently, the cleric only gets their 3rd level spells (2). The druid gets another Lvl 0 and three Lvl 3's. Both wizards get another Lvl 0, another Lvl 1, and two Lvl 3's. Basically, everyone else gets 4 more spells, the cleric only get half that.


Also, is there much point of including the 'all' scroll use line for Paladins and Rangers since I don't remember seeing a bunch of 'all' scrolls the past few years?

Cain Eyebright wrote: I don't remember seeing a bunch of 'all' scrolls the past few years

Scroll Endure Elements (2014)
Scroll Detect Poison (2015)

ok, so maybe one each year...still not much of an ability...

As a general point Id like to lobby for more (if not all) classes to have odd stats. It would make calculating bonuses a little easier in the coaching room if the first odd bonus a character receives could just be assumed to add a bonus.

Replace Elf Wizard's "Detect Magic" with something like "DM's actually have to give the players some sort of clue" so that spell does something. Usually, every room just disables the spell from providing any useful benefit regardless of how creative the players are with its use.