PF2e deLight

A non-official, pencil-and-paper oriented, alternative character sheet for the Pathfinder Second Edition tabletop RPG

I hope you like it! If not, that's ok!

The above have skills grouped by base attribute. If you prefer skills sorted alphabetically, the traditional way, try these ones below. Sorry, the character builder section still has them grouped by base attribute -- it's a lot of effort to redo that, I'll see if I can.

Note: pages 5 & 6 are only necessary if you are either creating a character by hand instead of using Pathbuilder 2E or another tool to do the math and then copying the values, or you have a level 11+ character.

Changelog

• 2025-10-22: Revamped font and line weights to work better on low-end printers. Reworked Character Creation helper to better match order of information in Player core.

Why would you waste your time on this?

I created this out of dissatisfaction with existing character sheets. I wanted one that reduced visual noise to a mininum, making every bit of ink & graphite on the page count, especially the first page. Justin's character sheet is very good, but (1) I didn't know about it when I set out to do this, I only discovered it once I'd sunk in a good amount of effort, and (2) what I'm going for is different enough that I think having another character sheet makes sense. Maybe if I'd known about Justin's at the start I would have just used that and not bothered, but I'm glad that's not how things happened. If the deLight character sheet is not your jam, his might be. Also, I nicked the idea of making the commonly changed stats fit under a post-it note from him, as well as the circles for Base Attributes on the character creator page.

I actually stumbled onto a brutally honest Reddit post that sums up most of what I dislike about the official PF2e character sheet. I probably wouldn't have put it quite so harshly, but it was very useful both to confirm that I'm not crazy. Or I am crazy but at least I have company. There were lots of other posts where people mentioned what they'd change about the official sheet, with some common threads e.g. adding multiple boxes to record Multi-Attack penalty for weapon attacks.

The principles I ended up following for this design were:

• Avoid heavy, blocky boxes. Try as much as possible to reserve ink for useful information (thanks Edward Tufte!) - in other words, keep the visual signal-to-noise ratio as high as possible. This is also nice to save printer ink. And it also means that if you need to write a tiny bit outside of one of the boxes, it doesn't look quite as ugly.
  I did indulge a bit with the faint icons for Speed, Perception and Saves; sue me, I think they're neat.
• Aim for efficiency; make the ease of locating something proportional to how commonly it's used.
• Try to make something beautiful, where it doesn't impede functionality. Obviously, this is in the eye of the beholder. Some might feel the deLight character sheet has all the charm of a tax form.
• Optimize a little bit more for ease of use for beginner players / low level characters. Try not to make life hell for higher level characters in the process.

In practice, here are some of the design decisions:

• Split out stats and math used only for character creation and leveling onto a separate page. For that page give as much guidance to the player as can fit.
• Light lines for boxes. Slightly heavier lines only for things that tend to get erased a lot, so they last longer (HP, Shield, Conditions)
• Community peeves: ensure that we have space for the Multi Attack Penalty.
• Community peeves: put currency in order of most valuable to least valuable.
• Page 1, compared to the official PF2e character sheet: no calculations, bigger box for HP, conditions, resistances and immunities. Revamped Weapon attacks section, addition of Feat actions and reactions section. Reordered skills by base attribute, roughly from Brawn at the top to Brains at the bottom. Part of the reason for this was to put Lore at the bottom, but not split it from the other INT-based skills. It also makes it easier to calculate your skill modifiers by hand. As for visually locating a skill when you need to look it up, it's probably easier for some people, harder for others. Apologies: it is harder to copy them from a tool like Pathbuilder where they're ordered differently.
• Check out the Dying and Wounds section. Isn't it neat?
• I was *almost* going to not have the Base Attributes on the first page at all, but they are used in some cases in-game I believe, and I had a bit of space for them so they are included but given very little space or visual weight.
• Rest of the sheet, compared to the official sheet: Ancestry, Background, and Class are moved to page 2. Class feats and features are moved to page 3, under the assumption that there's really no difference between pages 2 and 3 in terms of looking things up; you just have to turn the page either way. More space for items, as well as more categories for items like Stowed, which is for items you have back at your base or whatever.
  For feats and features, give more space to write details, clearing the boxes out as much as possible. But split the levels 11-20 out onto an optional fifth page for higher level characters.
  Add ledger lines to keep writing tidy, for spells and inventory.