Attributes and Abilities

One mistake that sheet users and sometimes authors make is to pay any attention at all to the Attributes list on the Attributes and Abilities tab. This list here:

The abilities shown here are incomplete. The following attributes never show up there:

  • Any autocalc attributes (those used to calculate values)
  • Any attributes in a repeating section
  • Any hidden attributes

Furthermore, fiddling with these attributes sometimes creates corruption. It used to be pretty common that altering these values would break the link to the same attribute on the character sheet tab, leading them to have two different scores and act like two completely different attributes with the same name. That’s rare today, but it’s still something to be wary of.

Why Does It Exist?

The Attributes list dates back to a time before Character Sheets existed. It provides a very basic way to enter attribute values, but it’s massively inferior to the character sheet, and simply put:

You should not be using it if you’re using a Character Sheet.

Exceptions

You can use the Attributes list if you need to create attributes that don’t exist on the character sheet.

That’s really the only time you should pay any attention to that list. Let me repeat:

If you’re using a character sheet, pay absolutely no attention to the Attributes list.

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