Newbie Seeks Comparison Of Pathfinder 1e Character Sheets: Roll20 Official Vs. Community

Hi, brain trust! My group (like so many others) is just starting with Roll20 to keep playing during quarantine. I absolutely  am not trying to start a ruckus...but I see two very capable-looking character sheets for Pathfinder 1st Edition--Roll20 Official and Community--and don't know how to choose. We're only using CR + APG (and some homebrew that we can live without). I want to make learning curve easy for the DM (me!) and the players. The main reason we're even considering using Roll20 character sheets at all are to help the help the (relatively inexperienced) players who PCs swing swords or shoot bows correctly roll their attacks and damage, properly and easily adjusting for buffs, crits, precision damage, etc. Thanks in advance for your more experienced help. Apologies in advance if I'm raising a sensitive subject. Allen

Welcome to Roll20 Allen, Upfront, I have helped on the the PF community sheet for many years alongside some awesomely-talented volunteers, so I may be a little biased... The community sheet has been around a longggg time and includes the most options/customizations bu far.&nbsp; This makes the sheet both good and not so good.&nbsp; Since it's been around a long time, it went through many changes over the years to accommodate roll20's ever increasing feature set which often required extra code/features for backward compatibility. Couple that with the huge amount of options and features found on the sheet, it can be slowww, especially so at mid to higher levels where your characters and monsters will have lots of additional attributes.&nbsp; It also includes a steeper learning curve and can be confusing to players/gm's coming from playing IRL whether using pen/paper and/or HeroLab.&nbsp; That said, once you are familiar with the sheet and its many, many, features and options, I think it's still a very good sheet.&nbsp; It allows drag/drop from roll20's free PF compendium(equipment, spells, monsters, feats), but be aware that the sheet's drag/drop options are &nbsp;not compatible with the commercially available paizo/roll20 products. PF Community wiki guide:&nbsp; <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Pathfinder_Community_Sheet" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Pathfinder_Community_Sheet</a> On the flipside, the official Pathfinder sheet by Roll20 is an excellently written and streamlined sheet.&nbsp; Many of the features that people enjoyed from the community sheet have been implemented in the official sheet and it works with all the 1e commercially available piazo/roll20 merch that you can purchase from the marketplace.&nbsp; Great sheet. Official PF wiki guide:&nbsp; <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Pathfinder_Official" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Pathfinder_Official</a> I would recommend trying both.&nbsp; ;-)

Like Vince, a disclaimer: I have contributed to a number of Roll20's official sheets, albeit not this one. Around two years ago, my group and I, as complete newbies (to Pathfinder, not RPGs) decided to play Pathfinder using the CRB. We created characters in both of these sheets, and played a oneshot with each, and ultimately decided to use the Roll20 official sheet for our campaign. The community sheet is excellent , very well developed and supported, but it's so feature rich and works with so much content, that it was frankly overwhelming. Simply creating characters in the community sheet took us a full 4 hours. That said, I am 100% sure that veteran Pathfinder players using all of the myriad of sources will find this sheet incredible. By comparison, the Roll20 sheet is much simpler, and comes with it's own set of fantastic tools. The charactermancer is specific is a huge boon for new players. We were able to put together a set of characters in roughly an hour and a half (admittedly with the advantage of being more familiar with the system).&nbsp; In summary, both are excellent, but I think the official sheet is a better introduction for new players.

Guys...thank you so &nbsp;much for this. You've given me just the info I needed. Just to be clear...do both sheets have the charactermancer, or just the Roll20 official? Allen

So far, I'm not aware of any community created sheets that have a charactermancer. A charactermancer is A LOT of work. That said, in its current iteration, the PF charactermancer is only usable for CRB content. Personally, if you're using additional books and homebrew, I'd not use the character mancer except for basic character creation. I'd also vote for the community sheet as it really is the most powerful option. EDIT: Also, my disclaimer; I've worked on both Roll20 official sheets (although not the PF one) and the Pathfinder Companion Script for the Pathfinder Community sheet. The pathfinder companion script has a lot of features in it that allow pro users to really power up and streamline their Pathfinder experience.