Stat Block Doodles

Messing around with a few ways to visually display character stats and dice mechanics.

Radar Map Stat Block, D6+N Dice Mechanic

I like the presence of this one, I always think I’m clever for recognizing that the silhouette of a D6 at the right angle is a hexagon.

Overall, I don’t think it’s very practical. The numbers need some work. Your eye is all over the place. On its own, it doesn’t necessarily relay that you add the numbers to your D6 roll.

It also takes up a lot of space, laying out a few of these would eat up page real-estate pretty quick. Might be kind of cool on a character sheet, but would need to be reworked so that the variable stat numbers could be adjusted.

Vertical Bar-graph Stat Block, D6 Dice Pool Mechanic

I played with this one for way too long, trying all kinds of things to represent the outcome of a dice pool roll, incorporating a pass/fail visual, even a “plinko” board where you’d see how the dice might drop. In the end I scrapped it and opted for the basics.

I like the what-you-see-is-what-you-get aspect of this. Your character is doing a luck roll? Grab 3 dice.

The dice cubes themselves could use a little more contrast.

Horizontal Bar-Graph Stat Block, 2D6 Roll-Under Mechanic

Visualizing roll-under always reminds me of those old Marvel cards that display the power level of your friendly neighborhood spider fellow. Strength, speed intelligence, etc., using meters. With roll-under, if the challenge lands within range of your meter, you do the thing.

I’ve highlighting the 7 as a milestone when leveling up, since that’s the sweet spot for a 2D6 system.

Probably the most practical, though the granularity of 12 numbers is a bit much I think. Maybe this would work better as a single D6 system.

No idea what I’m going to do with these or if they’ll end up in a future project, but it was an interesting experiment.