I was just looking at the new character sheet again and noticed that the top three Characteristics and their associated Skills are tied to Fatigue, while the bottom three Characteristics and their associated Skills are tied to Stress. In each "half" there is 1 Characteristic that is the base for 5 Skills, 1 that is base for 3 Skills, and 1 that has only 1 Skill associated with it. I'm curious as to how FFG came up with those mixes. It seems unlikely to be a coincidence.

There's not much room allotted to Advanced Skills. How many of them will there be? Will there only be a few or very many so that you have to choose carefully since the sheet implies that you don't get to take many of them? Contrast this with the space given to Specializations and Special Abilities. It seems these will be more important to defining a character than which Advanced Skills he has.

The front of the sheet has a section labeled Equipment, but only contains spaces for Weapons and Armour. There is another section on the back of the sheet labeled Equipment that is presumably for recording more mundane items. Looks like we are still expected to track Encumbrance, so presumably you have to squeeze weight into the Equipment list above and since there doesn't seem to be an obvious place to squeeze it into the equipment list on the front of the sheet, do we presume that you duplicate the Weapons and Armour entries on the back?

Interestingly Critical Wounds have a space on the back of the sheet. I thought we were tracking Crits with cards? If so, wouldn't they just be listed in the Card Inventory? If not, it seems like this is information that may have been better off on the front of the sheet since effects of Crits suffered will affect combat and other Skill checks as well. Possibly Insanities too for that matter. If an attempt was made to consolidate all the info on the front that you need most frequent access to, presumably to prevent constant sheet flipping, I'm wondering how these two ended up on the back. The rest of the back makes sense.

mac40k said:

i have found that character sheets tend to have something on them i always find useless....in DnD there is a workspace for atk mods and Dmg mods........really? you think i can add WoC? but hey some players like that....to each his own

Farin said:

As I understand it the Critical Cards are to be handed back upon the Characters recovery, so perhaps the Critical box is there in order to record more permanent injuries such as the loss of a limb, as opposed to a broke bone Critical Card which will in time heal.

It may also be as simple as not needing to use the card to track the injury. How many of each Critical card comes in the Core Set? There may not be enough for everyone.

I was thinking the same as Foolishboy about the critical cards. Also, consider if you stop a session mid-adventure. You pack up all your cards into your keeper (perhaps including all Wound cards) then next session you need to remember that you had an unhealed Critical, and which one. Several possibilities, so the option to have it available is needed.

dvang said:

good point : ) i try to make a point of never stopping mid way, we always finish the session planned for the night BUT i can see its use in that example. Well put

dvang said:

For a so-called short term crit you would have the card right there when you unpacked your Keeper next time, not to mention have it listed on your Card Inventory, so recording it in the crit area of the char sheet would then be redundant, no? If it is to track permanent injuries, like loss of limb, does that not have some effect on performance/Skill use? If so, why isn't it on the front? If the effects of permanent crits recorded on the back is a permanent reduction to (some of) your Characteristics, which would then just be updated on the front of the sheet, I can see it not being needed on the front. If the effect of a permanent crit is a modifier of some type (additional misfortune dice for example) to certain tasks, that's info you need in front of you as a constant reminder that may be forgotten or at least be a pain if you have to remember to flip your sheet over to the back to double check.

The way I see it, you don't get to keep your Wound and Crit cards, but have to give them back right after the combat (after noting your crits on your sheet of course). Letting the player keep these cards would be stupid, because they're probably long time conditionals (not resolved in a few turns), but also, if one player has a certain Crit, it means that, as long as he has the card, no other player can have it (so, if one character has broken his arm, no one else ever can until that arm is healed).