Having problems with character sheets

I'm making my own zombie survival rpg to host in the next week or 2. Players will be playing average humans. No magic, no powers. I want it to be a more skills based game. Perhaps you were a police officer before the outbreak, u would have a certain set of skills learned from that occupation. The problem I'm having is finding a character sheet or game for that matter on myth-weavers that goes well with my game. I tried to do everything in roll20. The attributes are fine there. When i tried to do the skills I had to make them as handouts if a player was to choose say 6 of them i would have to give them 6 handouts with the skill and description on it. I realized this would make for a lot of clutter latter on at higher levels. So my question. What are some good options for me here. I can't be the only one who has wanted to run a game thats straight from my imagination and not based off a core book of some other game. I can handle the rules and attributes in game but the skills seem to be my main problem here. Any ideas? Thanks for any replies.

Skills are really no different than any other attribute. There's just more of them. List out all available skills and set them to -10 (or some other negative value to distinguish them as "unlearned") During character creation just have your players change your "six" selected skills to some positive value of your choice. Maybe have a handout to describe what each skills does and represents, explain what they have to do, etc. This will also allow you to prep your game with token actions or player macros that refer to these attributes and skills without much fuss from the player's perspective. At your own leisure between games you can edit the player sheets and un-check any token actions that don't apply. Alternate 1 *************** You can always leave it in your player's hands. (The GM should never be expected to do *everything* after all). Possibly create that handout explaining all the skills or however you want them to select them (grouped by past professions maybe?) You could then make a generic macro for players to use these skills. Something like: /me falls back on their former ?{Name of the Skill?} training ( [[1d20 + ?{Rank of the Skill?} ]] ). Alternate 2 **************** Depending on how you group your skills (if they're clustered around professions like "Police" or "Shoe Salesman") you may be able to just a single token action or macro for each Profession. /me remembers with a grimmace his days as a shoe salesman... Guessing Sizes:[[1d20 + 5]] Withstand Odor: [[1d20 +10]] SmallTalk: [[1d20+5]] Willpower/Patience: [[1d20+30]]

The Roll20 character sheets are very rudimentary (though a major update is coming in May to spruce them up). However, you can still use them for skills. The character sheet has two types of stat: Attributes and Abilities. Attributes is for all numerical ratings - Statistics, Skill Ratings, Saving Throws, Hit Points. One approach is to make a blank character sheet, add all Skills used in the game to the Abilities column and set starting value for each at zero. To separate the stats and skills, or skills in groups, you can add an Ability called "----" (for instance) and leave its score blank. You can also create a matching Ability for each, with includes the roll. So, if for instance you have an Attribute called Guns, you could also add an Ability called Guns, and give it a value of: /roll 1d20+@{Guns} This is a lot of work to set up, but once it's done, you just need to copy the sheet for each player, and let them enter the values in the Attributes column. Players have a number of ways to access these skills: Have the character sheet open, and just click the dice icon next to the Ability Tick the "Show in Macrobar" box, and they will have a button floating at the bottom of their screen for that skill Edit the Ability, and tick "Token Action" and the skill will be visible at the top of the screen any time the player's token is selected. Type in chat #SkillName and click enter.

Great information GG Thanks a lot. I think that will work. And Mark thanks again so much for helping me last night. Great community here