6th Edition Character Sheet Format

'This page is intended as a discussion document for 6th Edition. Please feel free to make suggestions on this page. To avoid confusion, please sign any comments and use indentation to nest comment (by putting a colon at the start of a line).'

It is important in 6th edition that Base Points and points for Adders be shown, not only to make things easier for approval staff as Adders become more common, but because Range is now usually Base Points x10m.

However, we need a clear way to mark what these are: just putting unmarked numbers in parentheses is sometimes confusing, and some people have tried the even more confusing thing of marking them with +, thus making them look like Advantages. I propose the prefix ^, which doesn't look too busy and might suggest "raise by" for Adders (we can use the same symbol for Base and Adders: the Base will always be the first one). Other possibilities include !, = (but maybe better saved for totals?), ~. Opinions?

Also, do we want to standardize or change any notation while we're at it? In particular I wondered if we could, for the sake of brevity, change the standard way of showing Active Points from "<62 AP>" to "<@62>" or even "(@62)" - saving angle brackets for more specialised purposes. @ should function reasonably mnemonically for Active Points and I think "(@62)" is clear, less obtrusive and of course a bit shorter. Opinions?

Any other suggestions?

Well, several months later I have another suggestion which I should have come up with the first time. If we use, e.g., "(@62)" for Active Points then angled brackets are free - so use them to indicate Base Points - this is brief and distinctive.

Example: Flashback: Clairsentience Sight and Sound Groups <30> Retrocognition <20> 1/2 END (+1/4) Vague and Unclear (-1/2) (@62)


 * Or even just @62 at the end, without parentheses, should be clear enough. Probably wants parentheses if nested between Advantages and Lims.

--Stephie 15:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm liking this more and more. The bracketed values serve very well by themselves to delimit the Adders, Advantages and Limitations and even the Base Power (we need to show base points now anyway because of Range); this reserves commas for use within the text of the individual element unambiguously. So I'm going to be so bold as to suggest a "standard" format (even if we choose to allow variation so long as its clear:

Power entry consists, in this order, of:


 * 1) f or v if slot in Multipower
 * 2) optional (but recommended): designation of power, terminated by colon (optional becasuse sometimes, as with +2m Running, naming seems a pointless exercise
 * 3) the formal name of the Power, with the number of dice and other such, terminated by Base Point in angle brackets
 * 4) zero or more Adders, terminated by their points in angle brackets
 * 5) zero or more Advantages, terminated by their values, prefixed by +, in parentheses
 * 6) zero or more Limitations, terminated by their values, prefixed by -, in parentheses
 * 7) any other information, with no brackets needed and without terminator (unless PLUS or TOTAL: see below), including
 * 8) * (obligatory) Active Points prefixed by @
 * 9) * (optional) Damage Divisor prefixed by DD
 * 10) * (optional) notes on the power

For compound powers, use PLUS between the parts and TOTAL before the section with overall APs and anything (capitals because this is heavy punctuation and should stand out).

Colored text using [ansi] is allowed and recommended to add clairity, but the writeup must be clear even without the color.

f Pool Minds: Telepathy 8D6 <40> Also Animal Minds <5> AoE 8m Radius Nonselective (+1/4) Half END (+1/4) Communication Only (-1/4) @67 DD1.25

--Stephie 11:55, 28 January 2010 (UTC)