Wizards of the Coast recently released a new character sheet folio for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. I recently previewed this in an article a couple week ago, but here is a “full review”.
The D&D Character Sheets contains a folder with a ampersand dragon artwork, 4 copies each of 3 standard character sheet designs (12 total), 8 copies of the "newbie" character sheet, and 4 copies of the spell sheet. Basically, a folder with 24 sheets of paper.
Don’t buy this crap. Seriously. Just don’t.
With two exceptions, the character sheets included in this folio are all directly downloadable for free from the Wizards.com website. If you don’t have a printer, go to the library. They have internet and printers. I just saved you $10.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/character_sheets
The folder? It's a folder. It's glossy. It's made of card stock. It's basically the same as any other glossy folder at an Office Depot (are those places still around?), but with the ampersand artwork seen above on the cover (originally a Dragon+ cover) which I find less than inspiring. Looks a bit like an 80's metal hair band album cover. These are character sheets. Why doesn't the illustration contain characters? Inside, it has a list of actions in combat, but MPMB's combat reference sheet is much better -- see below.
If you want more pictures, you can check out Grand DM's blog.
"Newbie" Sheets
One exception to the freely downloadable clause is the character sheet designed for new players. It uses a larger font with a larger layout area for the most basic numbers a new player would need (AC, Initiative, Saves). It leaves off ideals, bonds, flaws and the full skill list for a shortened fill-in-the-blank one. It also includes two sections called "Things You Should Do" and "Things You Shouldn't Do" to help the players take notes on good and bad idea.
Under "Things You Shouldn't Do" it should have listed "Buy these character sheets" as the first entry. These newbie sheets are not a terrible redesign, but they don't really bring anything new to the table.
Where is the Value?
Is a glossy folder with an ampersand logo really worth the $10?
If you want a fancy folder, buy a 3-ring binder. Print out your own custom artwork for the cover sleeve. Wizards.com even provides the same artwork on their folio as a wallpaper… but you can also just search “D&D wallpaper” on Google image search and find all kinds of awesome imagery... many of which actually contains characters doing character-y things.
Want help making your own character sheet folio with a player reference? Try these links:
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/character_sheets
https://crobi.github.io/dnd5e-quickref/preview/quickref.html
http://swshinn.com/dnd-5e/rules-summary/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2Fbq7v8pucJVENWZlE5Z2h1T00/view
https://olddungeonmaster.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/combat-reference-sheet_b.pdf
Final Thoughts
If you really want to waste $10, go for it... but this just encourages Wizards of the Coast to put out crappy products when they should be focusing resources somewhere else. If they had come up with some interesting character sheet designs that weren't available online, then maybe this might have been worth a look... but as a product, this whole thing is an underwhelming money grab.
If you want a truly useful character sheet, download MPMB's fully-automated printer friendly character generator (mobile link) which is Pay What You Want from DMsGuild.com. This sheet is truly worth $10, but all that is asked is a voluntary donation.
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