DnD 5e GM Character Tents [PRINTABLE]

I spent all bloody day designing, arranging, and putting this silly thing together for tomorrow's campaign.

We're going to use them once or twice, then never touch them again.

Pretty much all of the individual parts are crop-mangled straight out of the vanilla character sheet then resized/reshaped/edited as needed, but placement, sizing, and other matters were a royal pain in the ass, so rather than just let the effort go to waste, I'm going to make the setup available to whoever can make use of it.

These are not full character sheets and should not be used in place of them.

These are character tents and are used in a variety of ways, but typically folded in half and hung from the GM screen in initiative order with the character's information facing the GM while the portrait and name are drawn or printed on the side that faces your players.

There are four tents in a file that should be optimally sized to make the most use out of the available space on standard A4 (8.5 inches wide by 11 inches tall) printer paper or cardstock. Cut them apart like bookmarks, then crease along the line in the centre, and hang atop your screen.

When your players roll initiative, adjust the order of the tents on your screen to reflect that in the way that is either most useful to you, or is most useful to your players - unfortunately, there isn't a convenient way to use tents so that it shows initiative for both you and your players - it only works one-way, and you have to pick which way works best for you and your table.

You can hand-make some additional tents for enemies, but they would display different information than what I have accounted for on these.

This layout was made quickly for my friend as he's hosting the 5e starter campaign tomorrow to warm up a new player, and we are intending to make more campaign-personalized tents later. We would have used the vanilla tents, but they didn't have all of the information we thought would be useful on a tent, and thus, have made our own (temporary) version. If you like these tents, whether it's because they mesh well with the vanilla character sheet, or some other reason, you are welcomed to download and try them out.

The download file is ready-to-print, though you may want to make sure your printer is able to print right up to the very edge of your paper in order to get the intended image quality out of the print. It should work equally well in colour or black-and-white. They are intended to be printed on cardstock for extra durability, but will still work as intended on regular printer paper. Making laminated copies will allow you to make slightly more reusable tents. Most of the information that would be put on these tents can be typed into place and printed off with the tent as a permanent indicator that likely won't change much - if at all - over the course of your session or campaign. Edits can be done using the image-editing software of your choice - however, I lack the knowledge to make a .pdf version, so some text editing will be a little less user-friendly than might be preferable.

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Some things are not explained clearly directly on the tents because the design is somewhat in-house and meant to be disposable, so I'll explain them here:

The Level bubble above the Proficiency Bonus field is meant for your character's Overall Level rather than your class level, because class levels are covered alongside the name(s) of your class and multiclass(es) on the scroll in the right.

The ability scores on the left side of the tent actually display four different things per ability score. The first bubble, where the ability abbreviation is, is where you but your base score, such as 15 or 17 or 12, because you actually won't need that very much but it does occasionally come up. The main box is where you put the base modifier, such as +1, or +3, and make it nice and big since you will reference these numbers a lot. The secondary box is for your saving throws, and the little bubble is to mark whether the saving throw gets your proficiency bonus or not. ((Typically your saving throw is simply the same as your modifier. If a character is proficient, put the sum of the modifier + proficiency bonus in the box, and fill in the bubble.))

Initiative is divided in half at the request of my roomie. I'm not entirely sure why, and I vaguely recall something about "bonus" and "passive" or some such amidst the mental trainwreck of working on this thing. I could be mistaken as to what the purpose of that is, but you can use that how you wish.

Passive Perception is a little complicated to figure, but it goes a bit like so...

• Perception bonus = [wisdom modifier] + [proficiency bonus (if proficient in perception)]
• Passive perception = 10 + [perception bonus] + [other bonuses (Feats like "Observant", which gives a +5 to passive perception.)]
• Active perception = 1d20 + [perception bonus]

Languages are included in this tent so you can keep tabs on which characters know what languages and use that to discreetly slip notes to your players bearing capable characters without announcing to your whole table "WHO HERE CAN SPEAK GOBLIN?" and therefore announcing to everyone that they are encountering goblins. Some players are simply incapable of separating player knowledge from character knowledge, and this can be an additional tool to curb that issue at your table.

ARMOR CLASS IS MEANT TO BE DIVIDED. I forgot to add a line. Sue me. At any rate, some characters will have two separate numbers to put in this area - specific examples include [Dwarf cleric with shield] versus [Dwarf cleric when shield is NOT equipped and ready], or things like [squishy wizard] versus [wizard is not AS squishy because mage armor]. It is recommended to ask your players to put both numbers here if they have two numbers to put here.

The additional space at the bottom is for other notes - particularly things like resistances and permanent effects and whatever else you deem necessary.

Keep in mind that these are intended to be folded in half like a tent - hence the name of this utility - so remind your players that if they draw their character the wrong bloody way, the portrait and name will be upside-down when hung from the screen or arranged on the table, and that they will look silly and are to be playfully mocked for the entire time the tent is in use by referencing the upside-down-ness of their character as much as possible, as absurdly as possible. The information half faces one direction. Turn it 180 degrees before drawing your portrait. The thin "header-like" space at the very top of the image is actually the bottom of that half and should be under the character portrait.

ONLY Max HP is listed, because at most tables, it is the players' job to keep track of their own HP and spells per day and other such information. That certainly doesn't mean you have to follow that as a rule - it is a big enough space to easily divide in twain for denoting current HP alongside the max - though at that rate I would recommend using counter methods such as mini-tents for counters and status effects like I do, or MtG counters, or counter tokens/chips. When you start keeping track of current HP, you'll be making a LOT of editing that is probably better kept track of via other means - probably ones that are slightly less obvious to your players when edits are being made.

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Dungeons and Dragons 5e, as well as the art assets I peeled from the character sheet all belong to Wizards of the Coast.

Some free-use clipart was snagged via google.

Placement, editing, and other personalization can be credited to my roomie and I.

Please have fun, and tabletop responsibly~