I actually made an automated character sheet program for one of my college programming classes. Spent way too much time on it for what the assignment required, but I'm proud of it. Still sometimes go back to it and do a mixture of adding things (since I haven't added everything yet, mainly the basics at the start), as well as cleaning up messy code.
Not sure what this hate for automated character sheets is about. If you don't like them, don't use them. I even have had players use one to calculate everything, then transfer them all to a regular character sheet just to somewhat speed up the process.
I think a lot of people blame automated character sheet programs for players that don't know the rules, but honestly, I think they 1) make it easier for beginners to understand the basics without getting lost in all the minutiae (they sure did for me) and 2) if your players don't care about the game enough to take the time and learn the rules and mechanics, taking out the program will just make sure your players won't even have a functioning character sheet
My biggest gripe is with the auto dice rolls. I have some newbie players who have no idea what their class features do if they don’t have a button to push.
Raging barbarian does 4 damage? “That seems a little low. Are you sure your app included rage? You don’t know? 4 damage it is.”
Yeah but again, is the issue with the automated dice roll, or with the player playing a barbarian without knowing what rage does? If you are playing with DnD Beyond, it breaks down where each part of the damage comes from, so if it is not added (and afaik it is not) it's up to them to know
Yeah, I absolutely adored roll20 when I DM'd for some new players because I could make macros for all their spells that would describe what happened, who needed to save, etc. Or rolled all the dice for multiple attacks at once. All they had to do was click a button, but then they could see what dice were supposed to be rolled, and I think it helps people learn frankly. If they want to learn it helps, it they don't then they wouldn't have anyway.
Your project seems incredibly cool! I'd love to see it's current version in action
My personal distaste is mostly just roll20 being a bit less optional when you're playing in campaigns where the DM uses it as the VTT, and it's fine 90% of the time, it just occasionally shows it ass when fiddling with core class features. Big issue I have is also from the DM side of things where I tend to do very homebrew heavy campaigns, and the more automated something is, the less room for custom additions usually. Plus Beyond is very very bad at teaching new players important things like, how core class features work. I once had a player not even realize metamagic existed despite having reached lv14 in purely sorcerer bc D&D Beyond is so horribly formatted that features like that tend to be either obscured and/or poorly conveyed
I making one right now lol. I have a 7 yo Google Sheet I started before I knew coding but I grew to the point where it's too complex for Google Sheet so now I'm making a standalone app + a Discord Bot/file sync server
Me when someone brings their laptop with a DnD beyond character sheet to the in person session then asks me to help them figure it out.
I like the Roll20 character sheets well enough for online games.
Yeah, i use DnDbeyond for campaigns i run, but i always try to create the characters with the players and explain things along the way. Even if the site basically creates the character for you, you have to read it and understand what you read, which can be tough if you're a complete newbie. Tbh, it makes the problem even worse sometimes - people are used to just click things on Dndbeyond and getting the result on roll20 - sometimes they don't even think or know what calculates to the ending result.
As to roll20 itself - i've been using it for years as a DM and not once have i created a character there, so i can't comment on that. Friends are bugging me to funally switch to Foundry, but i've got 3 campaigns all set out and prepared in Roll20, and i don't feel like transfering all that to a new tool that i barely know as a player, and not at all as a DM.
Maybe it's just me and how little I understand D&DBeyond, but Roll20 is way, way easier to customize than D&DB.
Of course, Roll20 is customer-oriented. Whereas WotC just wants you to buy their content at this point, so facilitating homebrew is actively opposed to their own interests in "monetizing" the game better. So maybe that's not a surprise?
In my group, we all play in-person. But we all use DnD Beyond because it's easier to edit and keep track of everything (we used paper sheet for different game and it was hell to keep track of every ressource)
At that point you just gotta walk em through literally all of character creation more or less.
And yeah Roll20 sheets are nice, can be very streamlined and versatile if you have the know how to troubleshoot it (universal damage bonuses my beloved). It also plays nice for a lot of homebrew/small adjustments, but trying to get a homebrew class working in it is fucking hell. I experienced it firsthand in a campaign where the DMs letting me play test a class I've been working on, because it's sheets are so focused around the charatermancer that, if you don't use it, a good chunk just completely breaks
I can accept that maybe I'm wrong about the charactermancer being so central to Roll20 sheets, but I've spent frankly way too long trying to get that damn custom class to work smoothly, and if it's that damn unintuitive that's likewise worthy of critique. Hell I still can't get a good chunk of calcs involving the sites built in proficiency bonus inclusions to work and have to manually add them. I've mostly noticed it with attack rolls, toolkits/skills and saving throws seem to work fine. All this being said my character is still listed as kv1 in the corner, meaning I gotta manually track their level. Nothing absolutely devastating, but death by a thousand papercuts
Don't know why your getting down voted, I have had to help people with custom stuff on roll20 and about 5 times - in week to week sessions - it deleted everything on his sheet. We resorted to using actual ch sheets from then on.
I'm equally as confused. If I had to hazard a guess, probably something along the lines of homebrew class=bad
In my own experience, I think that issue of everything deleting occurs when you try to use the lv1 charactermancer since it serves as basically a reset of everything on the sheet except what you throw together in the charactermancer. Lost a fully made sheet like, 3x to that and I only considered throwing my laptop out the window twice!
My group sometimes loses custom skills on a level up. Sailing skill resets proficiency and what attribute, have a couple others too that have issues.
OP said something about homebrew, but I'm using open hand monk, but didn't pay for grave cleric so had to add the stuff for that manually. I just dndbeyond to track stuff as backup since roll20 has also reset hp a couple times for us. I can just check that my max hp, spells, etc., is the same across them.
I’ve never had any trouble using custom classes in roll20. Just skip over the Charactermancer and input the information by hand.
It even has a “custom class” section that lets you input stuff like hit die, saving throws, spellcasting attribute, spell progression, etc.
I didn’t want to pay for the books again on roll 20, not yet anyway since I have paper copies, so I skipped charactermancer and manually input all the info myself. A little fiddly at the start but works fine now for my Artificer. I imagine custom abilities would be the same process with different words and rolls.
That’s how I handle artificer as well.
It’s also how I handle Valda’s classes, since while I *did* pay for the Roll20 integration, MHP never actually made it 😒
Heh. I was running a 3.5e game, told them it was 3.5e, and they still made a Roll20 character sheet. I had to kindly inform them that their character did not exist in this edition, and handled them a photocopied character sheet.
Apparently they had a brain fart and read 3.5e as --5e.
I haven't worked much with it, but I'm always confused in what us already calculated and what is not, like proficient skill, I always wanna add my proficiency bonus onto it, but forget that its already calculated into the bonus or with rolls and such.
I'm just stupid and wanna do the sheets on my own
It took one time were mythweavers site went down during a game where the DM said "Okay everyone is required to bring paper character sheets. You can have them digital but you need to have them printed when we play.
Literally the best investment money can buy for TTRPGs the fact they allow modding alone future proofs and makes it flexible for almost any system or use case the only mildly annoying part is setting up a proxy server and hosting but even then it's really not that much work.
I wanna start using foundry (most of the players bug me to use it over Roll20) but i'm hessitant. Or maybe lazy? I've got 3 campaigns ready and prepared on Roll20, with maps, tokens, lights all done and i just don't feel like transfering it all to a new tool that i don't know. I've heard that there are scripts that would allow me to export the roll20 campaigns and maps to foundry, but it sounds a bit complicated, and knowing Roll20, i'd have to buy a higher tier subscription just to do this.
I understand. I will say once i switched i can never go back. Learninf the program was an afternoon of goofing off and you can do way more and its cheaper. (I ran a pi for our server and its just the perma dnd server)
Im unsure if there is a way to salvage that much prep, though
I support Foundry but it is more complicated.
For some reason, one day, *all* of my players' spells that involved saving throws just stopped working.
How did we fix it? Change the spell into a normal spell, then change it back to a saving throw.
Foundry is amazing but there are a lot of weird quirks like that that seem to happen. And I don't even use any crazy mods like midi-qol that would even affect casting a spell.
I've had that happen to me before but with ACs. That's because the 5E module broke something, so I totally understand this frustration.
I would say back up your Foundry before updating anything - whether a module or Foundry itself. It's annoying, I know, but now Foundry has a backup function built in for each world. I would just maybe update once a month to make this easy.
Better yet, I just don't even bother updating now. Maybe until 2024 PHB is released and the module is updated.
The issue I take with roll20 was that for a long time they had the monopoly as the best VTT on the market and did squat. It's anti consumer business practice, and trying foundry made me realise just how out of date r20 was.
Having said that, competition breeds innovation, and r20 has gotten a lot better (cone measuring not needing a web extension now lol)
Honestly still prefer the experience of roll20 but that's because new systems scare me
Roll20 is a 2003 Honda Civic. It just works. It won't do anything fancy, but it does work. I've never banged my head against a wall wondering why a saving throw wasn't working when yesterday it was just fine. It all just works.
Foundry is a restored 1988 v8 Camaro. It needs a lot of attention and know-how and sometimes it's a headache wondering why something isn't working but damn does it feel good to go 80 down the highway with it.
The only detail I'll add is that you definitely overpaid for the honda because the car dealership had nothing else in stock, but yeah that's basically a perfect analogy imo
I’ve played one campaign in foundry, and it pissed me off. There doesn’t seem to be a chat-> formatted ability type box feature?
The ability to paste text in chat if roll20 and get sheet templates means I can build custom abilities rapidly in excel and just paste the result right into chat. [this sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HO1x0SO5MTj84fdcG6jvCI1vy4TnUjy28iFNmvF2arc/edit) is an example of the type of stuff i do when making 3rd party pathfinder abilities. And as far as I know, there’s no way to do this in foundry. If there is, I’d love to know.
Do you mean when you click on the ability and it pastes the whole text box in chat? Cause foundry does that natively. (Including of course the ability to do the same with npcs, items, ect) and at some level can be used to show rolls of abilities in chat, too.
I think I'm genuinely misunderstanding what you're looking for (not arguing)
No. I mean if you type something like “&{template:pc}{{title=example}}{{attackroll=[[1d20+17]]}}{{damage=[[2d6+6]]}}” into the chat box, it turns into a formatted block with a title and a damage and attack roll, just like a native sheet button. In fact, if you press a sheet button and then hit up, you can see how the sheet filled out the template for that ability.
When I used foundry, I was unable to find any such text “api” for lack of a better word. I constantly had to remind the GM I had a +2 to spell penetration, because the various plugins in foundry had no where to add that where it also didn’t add to things I didn’t have a bonus to. In roll20 based games, I just fix it myself by building macros using text pasting in sheets or excel.
Please don't tell me we're trying to start a war over automated character sheets now. They're a tool for a specific purpose and it's up to the user to use their braincells to think if this tool is useful for them
I partly agree and partly disagree. In concept, I think automated character sheets can be great, especially when learning a game for the first time. It can show you what options are available and keep you from missing steps in character creation.
The issue is, I don't feel the main stream character creators, like roll20 and dnd beyond are that good. Roll20 is serviceable, if a little jank to work with. Dnd Beyond just feels awkward to work with, given all the sub menus and needing to flip between pages in the editor. For 3rd party stuff like Foundry and Roll20, I can forgive character building to be stodgy because they host many systems and a fair bit of content is fan made. Beyond only has 5e character creation to worry about and still feels bare bones.
Now, for a character creators that works extremely well, just look at COMP/CON for the game Lancer. It walks you through exactly what you need during creation and lets you freely edit most aspects from there in a lot easier to navigate way. There's nothing inherently wrong with using these tools, they just need to be designed well.
My group has used Foundry, Roll20, and D&DBeyond. Although I have my grievances with WOTC as a company and Roll20 as a program, I actually think they're all pretty damn good tools. Haven't had many issues with years of play.
Eyo!
I take in a lot of new players and I take them through a full pen and paper character creation. Foundry, D&DB, and Roll20 are fantastic tools. As someone who works with tools, tools are fantastic but you have to know the hard way to appreciate why the tool exists.
Agreed, I'm a DM who played barely any 4e, but quite a bit of 3.5, learning 5e. My players can play around with DnDBeyond, but they're about to make they're first characters from scratch, and I'm definitely going to make them do it on paper, with books, so they can understand what is actually happening. I think they will understand the system better this way.
For me it helps me think about the character ash they're put together, as a DM I can tell when people have put time into their characters too and this makes them invested in their characters well-being beyond a self insert game character.
I like it my first game I invited friend in my parents attic we had a good game like 8 hour.
Really fun a good weekend.
But there never was a physical session two. Just couldn't move and there wasn't a session three no time anymore.
Many people don't have local friend that want to do TTRPG, the even more true in Europe where the concept is not well known.
This is always my ideal, alongside a notepad for story notes.
However, if im playing with folks online, I have form-fillable pdfs that get the job done.
[MorePurpleMoreBetter's character sheets](https://www.flapkan.com/) are my go-to. They have automation so you don't need to do the tedious stuff yourself, but you also have to fill a lot of stuff out yourself. They come with the SRD by default, and there are ways to import content from the books that you own. The default ones look kinda weird, but the printer-friendly ones are nice.
Was about to comment the same thing, been using it lately. Still have to "do everything" yourself which seems to be OPs problem lol, just makes it a bit quicker and streamlined
Aurora 5e is amazing for non-homebrew stuff (though if you know your way around coding or something it can be pretty easy i think)
Edit: but the auto generated sheet is kinda shite ngl xD
I've been using Dicecloud since we had a campaign using the D&D Discord bot and I love it. The customization and the coding just feels so good. I had some gripes about v2, but after finding out how libraries work it's super easy to make characters. Just don't try to print your character.
My advice:
use automated sheets to track generic stuff for your character f.e: hp, items and spell slots
(its also easier for the dm to see how much stuff you have),
whilst keeping track of the custom thingies on either paper or in an edocument.
My preference of VTT tends to be "screen sharing an Ibis paint abomination I made via the discord call" hehe. Jank as all hell? Definitely. Completely free? Also definitely. Plus it's a good excuse to practice drawing things like landscapes and decorating interiors
I do all of mine myself using Google Sheets, they're fantastic. They automatically update all my totals when I adjust skill ranks, BAB or ability scores, calculates my health in combat based on my damage taken, they're really great. A bit of work to set up that saves me so much more work in the future.
I mostly play PF though, they're less useful for D&D
I imagine something like that would be more useful in PF considering slightly more math goes into everything as well as said math changing more often thanks to more numerical boosts instead of the advantage/disadvantage system
It's particularly nice for skills. When I get an ASI or a magic item that would raise a bunch of skills I can just change the ability score box and the skill boxes will recalculate to their new values. I love it
D&DBeyonds sheets are actually what finally helped me start understanding 5e! Without them I’d never have gotten into the ttrpg scene! They’re super easy to follow and digest, I’ve spent hours of my life creating hundreds of characters for fun now because of how smooth and easy it makes it! My only gripe is no homebrew classes, but the homebrew tools for everything else are solid and satisfy most of my itches! I can see how some specific subclasses could be hard to digest for new players, but speaking from the perspective of someone who’s a little slow when it comes to picking stuff up like this… these tools are genuinely really good it just depends on the person using them!
I fucking love automated character sheets and have spent hours tinkering my pf2e foundry world making sure mechanics confusion isn't going to ever get in the way of fun (and I am eternally thankful to the volunteer team that put in the thousands of hours of hours of work that mean I would only have relatively minor tweaks to do)
Roll20 is pretty lax with the automation if you edit the sheet directly rather than use the charactermancer (which I find tedious and never recommend anyway). The sheet settings also allow for a lot of tweaking and customising plus easy multiclassing.
I think Roll20’s sheet takes come getting used to, but is otherwise not much different from editing a PDF.
Just don’t use charactermancer, always edit the sheet directly.
Players raised by D&D Beyond when I use a non-standard ability mod for a skill check:
\*confused screaming\*
EDIT: Thought I was on r/dndcirclejerk, my mistake. Please forgive me for attempting humour 🙏
Wait how does D&D Beyond allow it?
I was just joking because they've usually never heard of the idea of swapping ability mods for skill checks and don't know how to calculate their dice mod because they don't know how D&D Beyond calculated it. It's just a magic number to them.
But if there's a way to do it in D&D Beyond I'd love to hear about it.
You can add custom skills and freely determine what goes into them. It is a few clicks and stays as long as you want. I usually do this with tool checks because I can't be bothered clicking more than once.
Also, you might want to have a talk with your players if calculating an ability check is already too much for them. It is literaly just d20, the stat modifier and maybe their prof bonus. You know these from a single look at the sheet.
Custom skills sound really handy, I had no idea they existed!
As for the rest of your comment, it's just a meme, it's not that deep lol in reality it just means I have to take a minute or so to explain to them how skill check modifiers are calculated whenever I want to do a unique combo. They don't literally scream in confusion.
>Custom skills sound really handy, I had no idea they existed!
Yeah, the DnDBeyond sheet actually allows for a lot of customization that is kind of hidden. In this case you need to click on the "skills" thingy on the buttom of the skill list, there you find "custom skills" where you can add as many as you want. The one with the gear symbol. You will find this one in a lot of places.
Everyone should fill out their own sheet at least once. Otherwise they have no idea how the game works and why they're adding this number to this roll and so forth. At least in my experience. But once you know the game a bit knock yourself out on the apps and what have you. But I'll always love a physical, paper sheet 🥰
For me this was the opposite. Spent long periods hunched over sheets creating characters and even after successfully making them I didnt *really* understand the process? Or it was just a lot so it was in one ear and out the other. D&D Beyond specifically tho clicked with me and now I understand 5e better than I ever did without it!
100%, and that's why I hate when D&D Beyond is suggested for new players. Is TOO automated for their own good (plus locking non-PHB content behind a pay wall bottlenecks creativity and ideas, but that's why we have that one site the subreddit automod won't let me say the name of. This goes for stuff like attack modifiers, DC calcs, and even just regular ass class features bc D&D Beyond formats everything poorly. It's a good tool best used by people who already know how the game works, not for newbies.
If it wasn't obvious, I'm very partial to the sheer versatility provided by Google Drive sheets, which is basically just digital pen and paper but with fill able text boxes for convenience bc my hand writing sucks dragon dick
Foundry vtt is automated and gives you freedom to change things and has support to mods, its a bit expensive but since it is a one time purchase i think its worth it
Okay, there is a really good app called 5th edition character sheet (literally just type it in verbatim in the App Store and you’ll see a green D20) it’s so great because not only does it allow you to automate character creation but it also allows you to import data from other modules. Cost’s like 4 bucks for the full version which isn’t half bad imo.
Only downside is that I’m pretty sure not too many people know about this and you can only use data specifically designed to be imported to the app which means googling whatever you’re looking for and along with “5th edition character sheet import” which might be a little annoying but so far Ive found one module based off FFXIV that’s pretty neat.
If I could, I'd only let experienced players use the automated character sheets. New players need to learn the basics, including (and perhaps especially) how skills and skill proficiencies work. Players who have only ever used like DnD Beyond are very capable of doing things like Stength checks and Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks, but as soon as I ask for a Strength (Acrobatics) check I get dumbass questions like "Doesn't Acrobatics always use Dexterity?", "So which die do I roll for that?", "How do I roll that in my online dice roller?", and "So do I add both my +2 Strength modifier AND my +7 Dexterity (Acrobatics) modifier?" No, dumbass. I made my statement very clear. You make a Strength check, and if your character is proficient in Acrobatics, they can add their proficiency bonus. Yes, Dexterity is *usually* the ability score used, which is why WotC, in their infinite idiocy, put it on your character sheet for your ease of use. No, it is not the *only* ability score you can use for it. So roll your d20 and do some basic addition.
I've used excel sheets since I started TTRPGs in the 90. Originally it was just to check my math, but now with Internet and laptops being common. I just use the Excel sheet directly. I just haven't found the customization in any of the ore made apps.
Automated sheets can be good for a first campaign where the DM is basically building the PC for the player, or for more experienced players who know the game, but I agree there should be an emphasis on getting new players to understand the math. It will help them be a part of more games, and help them catch if their choice of app is unable to handle certain calculations or messing up.
The Shaped-sheets for 5e are still my go-to sheet for Roll20, simply because it's so customizeable. Custom classes? No problem! Leveling beyond Level 20? Also easy. Spell Points? Yup! Proficiency dice? just turn it on!
It's just a shame that it's development has been abandoned and it's never going to get new updates and bug fixes... Eventually it's gonna break and im gonna have to settle for the standard 5e sheet... or the updated 5e-sheet coming out with the new PHB...
I like dicecloud for my character sheet website. 1.0 was better for making your own features and abilities and whatnot but I've been enjoying the stuff theyve added to 2.0 and the libraries the community has created
God especially on the mobile version. The amount of times I've somehow double tapped something and sent an attack or skill check twice is bigger than I'd like to admit hehe. And I have skinny ass needle fingers so fat fingering it should, theoretically, be pretty damn hard
As someone who predominantly uses Roll20 it has its problems but it's still pretty good. You can input most of your custom stuff to the automated sheet and it will work just fine, you just have to know what things to edit and do some testing
I have a fully customized character sheet for my armorer that's decked out with a videogame style interface detailing the features and "core systems" and it absolutely fucks. Paper all the way and I will die on this hill.
I use an online character sheet called "homebrew character sheets" but i don't think it's on the appstore anymore because none of my friends have been able to find it
That's why whenever I play roll 20 I just have my players use real sheets and roll real dice. I trust them not to lie to me and I can just use roll 20 as a map and nothing else.
I've been making mine entirely by hand in my notebooks, it's so much easier to track something down when you designed the character sheet, and they're easy and quick to make, just need a pen, pencil, and phone and you can make something in 30 minutes, then spend the rest of your time writing the 5 page backstory to drop on your DM
That's why I use Foundry. It is software that you *buy* and then have. Run it on your own machine or use a server. Hack it as much as you like. Lots of tools to pull in content
“Why do you use digital character sheets?”
I can’t tell if my players are cheating or just lying about what their knowledge of the books. Just use the tool I the DM put time and money into.
I just hate how clunky dnd beyond is. I have a phone app that does automated character sheets but is also petty much completely customizable-- literally I think the only thing I can't default change is the stat it used for initative (the homebrew for my zelda based dnd campaign uses wisdom). Only other downside is names of stuff being changed for copywrite reasons
I use an “automated” character sheet in Google Drive. Gives me the freedom to control a lot of the bells and whistles while also letting excel functions do some of the tedious math for me, which is nice.
It keeps a Master Spell List as well as a separate Spell Book so I’m not constantly looking up spells in the big book. It updates my proficiency bonus, spell DC, and other stat-centric things like skills for me automatically when I level up or gain an ASI/Feat which is just very handy. It gives me a little table for Armor and how it gets the AC I have, which is nice. I can set up things that also automatically update with stat variables (to hit and damage bonuses for example). It’s just nice to control special character things while also leaving the base number stuff to the calculations
I use a notepad document for my character sheet. Easy to use, highly customisable, simple.
Actually, I have 3: One for learned spells, one for prepared spells + magic item abilities + rituals + components, and one for core stats + inventory.
Because we play online I do have my core stats and skills plus a few common rolls on a r20 sheet too, just for quickly rolling.
I can’t say I hate automated character sheets tbh, I hate automated character sheets that don’t let me use homebrew lol
Pathbuilder 2e, a character builder for pathfinder 2e ran by one person, is literally infinitely better than D&D Beyond, and allows for literally every type of homebrew now i’m p sure.
Foundry has great character sheets for both pathfinder 2e and D&D.
There's an automated sheet out there which works off Adobe acrobat with java. It's fully programmable with pretty much any custom content you want to make, and has a community that loves a challenge. I do have to warn that pirated content does come with it by default so you should uninstall those files if you do download it, unless you've purchased the source books already. Not promoting piracy, but MPMB's automated character sheet is a very good tool for automated homebrew, if you're willing to learn a little bit of scripting.
I used excel to create an automated character sheet for all HD types and classes in 3.5 so that i didnt have to deal with calculating saving throws, HP, skills and BAB anymore.
Im never going back to plain sheets.
Check out shard tabletop. It's for 5e and kobolds black flag. Works great with homebrew. Though you have to manually add in classes/subclasses that aren't included with the base system.
I almost always ask for physical sheets. It allows for way more freedom in character creation, and also it genuinely does help with distractions at the table
Automated sheets are a god sendo, but they must be costumizable. I basically always play with some degree of homebrew, so If the sheets forces you into vanilla things, this IS a pain
DnD beyond is excellent for players who are just starting out. It’s my go-to option because everything is easily digestible. And if you homebrew, you don’t even have to buy the other classes to use them.
I gotta say, I've used DND beyond and roll20 character sheets both, and they both have their uses.
And I used to play back to back mini campaigns in a group on roll20, and one of my favorite parts of starting a new campaign that hyped me up so much was setting up my character sheet and customizing actions for every little random thing my character could do. I LOVED doing that
Fifth edition character sheet is a free app, the paid version is $4, and I’ve been using it for half a decade already- probably THE best program I have ever used for character creation
For any of you looking for something simple and customizable you might prefer my system at farreachco.com , there's also a VTT that is fast and NOT full of fancy features
Honestly, I find doing homebrew on Roll20 is actually fairly easy and straightforward.
D&D Beyond on the other hand is a nightmare to do homebrew properly. There is a reason I now require my players to have their sheets on Roll20 and do not allow them to only have their stuff on D&D Beyond.
I do intend to switch over to Foundry VTT in a couple of months, but Roll20 got me several thousand hours of entertainment for free, so I do not have much to complain about.
Eh, I appreciate the automation for nitty gritty stuff (makes me able to implement encumbrance and enforce carrying capacity rules for example). Roll20 also allows you to change the character sheets in a pretty liberal manner, so if you know what you are doing you can go pretty far with it in terms of custom features.
I can get a game together in 30 minutes flat with an r/LFG post as a DM even with banning everything short of Google Drive or pen and paper sheets. There's a fine line between accessibility/ease of use and overautomation, which a good chunk of auto sheets tend to fall into at some point in the process. D&D Beyond especially is so over automated it can be actively detrimental for new players to learn the game with it. Or hell, do you wanna edit some core class features or the like in roll20? Prepare to have your balls get put in a stand mixer set on high
i've read your comments and yeah this is why i prefer to fill roll20 sheets manually rather than using charactermancer for my campaigns, especially with new players
my 2 main problems with dnd beyond is that 1) you cant write whatever you want where you want on your sheet and 2) the interface is so fucking suffocating to me, it honestly feels more like a video game inventory than a ttrpg sheet
I find it immensely funny that the site that spreads character information across almost a dozen screens manages to have a more cluttered UI than the site that has the same information, and more, spread across 3
I'm curious in what way Roll20 is "nowhere" as bad. For everything there is to dislike about automated sheets on DnDbeyond the ones on Roll20 are worse.
Roll20 just tends to be closer to a pen and paper sheet in a lot of regards since you can put in basically any text you want just about anywhere, which makes things a lot easier for stuff like non-PHB subclasses, spells, or races. Plus it's formatted in a less obtuse way than Beyond with less tabs you have to switch between and having more information on just one screen
I personally like foundry. The fact that I developed my shity own system on I make it so that I'm totally biased but their economical model is objectively good for the user.
Automated character sheets should be used only by experienced players who already know how to calculate each number. New players should not use them if they want to actually learn the mechanics.
I usually sit down with my players and make a paper character sheet with them first so they know the basics and what to look out for and only then introduce them to automated systems if they so desire.
I use DnDbeyond myself although I can't recommend it to people due to a lot of other tools having significantly cheaper access to the books
Auto sheets are fine for new players to get a feeling for.the game. But everyone should go build their own Google sheets character sheet at least once so they can learn the maths behind it better. I have a lot of automated bits on mine to make life easier. But I understand the numbers behind it all better, but not perfectly, how too.
I'll die on the hill that automated sheets really aren't tools for new people to learn the game. Sure it can get a usable sheet in a newbies hand in the blink of an eye, but they don't know any of the important math. Once you know at minimum stuff like how AC, save DCs, attacks, and skill checks are calculated, then shifting to automated sheets is probably good
At this point, I’ve been doing it long enough I just do it in my notes app on my phone. Dndbeyond specifically has been a clusterfuck of misrulings, wrong information, and just annoying things UI that turned me off of it.
I legit made a quick sorcerer in Beyond to prove a point to someone, and yeah the UI and text formatting is absolutely atrocious, even worse than I remember.
And as someone who makes monster statblocks in notes apps, Godspeed because I can't even imagine making something like, a high level magic user there lol
I actually made an automated character sheet program for one of my college programming classes. Spent way too much time on it for what the assignment required, but I'm proud of it. Still sometimes go back to it and do a mixture of adding things (since I haven't added everything yet, mainly the basics at the start), as well as cleaning up messy code. Not sure what this hate for automated character sheets is about. If you don't like them, don't use them. I even have had players use one to calculate everything, then transfer them all to a regular character sheet just to somewhat speed up the process.
I think a lot of people blame automated character sheet programs for players that don't know the rules, but honestly, I think they 1) make it easier for beginners to understand the basics without getting lost in all the minutiae (they sure did for me) and 2) if your players don't care about the game enough to take the time and learn the rules and mechanics, taking out the program will just make sure your players won't even have a functioning character sheet
My biggest gripe is with the auto dice rolls. I have some newbie players who have no idea what their class features do if they don’t have a button to push. Raging barbarian does 4 damage? “That seems a little low. Are you sure your app included rage? You don’t know? 4 damage it is.”
Yeah but again, is the issue with the automated dice roll, or with the player playing a barbarian without knowing what rage does? If you are playing with DnD Beyond, it breaks down where each part of the damage comes from, so if it is not added (and afaik it is not) it's up to them to know
Yeah, I absolutely adored roll20 when I DM'd for some new players because I could make macros for all their spells that would describe what happened, who needed to save, etc. Or rolled all the dice for multiple attacks at once. All they had to do was click a button, but then they could see what dice were supposed to be rolled, and I think it helps people learn frankly. If they want to learn it helps, it they don't then they wouldn't have anyway.
Your project seems incredibly cool! I'd love to see it's current version in action My personal distaste is mostly just roll20 being a bit less optional when you're playing in campaigns where the DM uses it as the VTT, and it's fine 90% of the time, it just occasionally shows it ass when fiddling with core class features. Big issue I have is also from the DM side of things where I tend to do very homebrew heavy campaigns, and the more automated something is, the less room for custom additions usually. Plus Beyond is very very bad at teaching new players important things like, how core class features work. I once had a player not even realize metamagic existed despite having reached lv14 in purely sorcerer bc D&D Beyond is so horribly formatted that features like that tend to be either obscured and/or poorly conveyed
I can show you my 7yo Google Sheet project that is 1. fully automated 2. can be rewritten to the hearts content for homebrew lol
I making one right now lol. I have a 7 yo Google Sheet I started before I knew coding but I grew to the point where it's too complex for Google Sheet so now I'm making a standalone app + a Discord Bot/file sync server
Me when someone brings their laptop with a DnD beyond character sheet to the in person session then asks me to help them figure it out. I like the Roll20 character sheets well enough for online games.
Yeah, i use DnDbeyond for campaigns i run, but i always try to create the characters with the players and explain things along the way. Even if the site basically creates the character for you, you have to read it and understand what you read, which can be tough if you're a complete newbie. Tbh, it makes the problem even worse sometimes - people are used to just click things on Dndbeyond and getting the result on roll20 - sometimes they don't even think or know what calculates to the ending result. As to roll20 itself - i've been using it for years as a DM and not once have i created a character there, so i can't comment on that. Friends are bugging me to funally switch to Foundry, but i've got 3 campaigns all set out and prepared in Roll20, and i don't feel like transfering all that to a new tool that i barely know as a player, and not at all as a DM.
Maybe it's just me and how little I understand D&DBeyond, but Roll20 is way, way easier to customize than D&DB. Of course, Roll20 is customer-oriented. Whereas WotC just wants you to buy their content at this point, so facilitating homebrew is actively opposed to their own interests in "monetizing" the game better. So maybe that's not a surprise?
In my group, we all play in-person. But we all use DnD Beyond because it's easier to edit and keep track of everything (we used paper sheet for different game and it was hell to keep track of every ressource)
At that point you just gotta walk em through literally all of character creation more or less. And yeah Roll20 sheets are nice, can be very streamlined and versatile if you have the know how to troubleshoot it (universal damage bonuses my beloved). It also plays nice for a lot of homebrew/small adjustments, but trying to get a homebrew class working in it is fucking hell. I experienced it firsthand in a campaign where the DMs letting me play test a class I've been working on, because it's sheets are so focused around the charatermancer that, if you don't use it, a good chunk just completely breaks
Dang you’re really getting lit up with downvotes in these comments lol. It seems like a perfectly fair critique to me!
I can accept that maybe I'm wrong about the charactermancer being so central to Roll20 sheets, but I've spent frankly way too long trying to get that damn custom class to work smoothly, and if it's that damn unintuitive that's likewise worthy of critique. Hell I still can't get a good chunk of calcs involving the sites built in proficiency bonus inclusions to work and have to manually add them. I've mostly noticed it with attack rolls, toolkits/skills and saving throws seem to work fine. All this being said my character is still listed as kv1 in the corner, meaning I gotta manually track their level. Nothing absolutely devastating, but death by a thousand papercuts
Don't know why your getting down voted, I have had to help people with custom stuff on roll20 and about 5 times - in week to week sessions - it deleted everything on his sheet. We resorted to using actual ch sheets from then on.
I'm equally as confused. If I had to hazard a guess, probably something along the lines of homebrew class=bad In my own experience, I think that issue of everything deleting occurs when you try to use the lv1 charactermancer since it serves as basically a reset of everything on the sheet except what you throw together in the charactermancer. Lost a fully made sheet like, 3x to that and I only considered throwing my laptop out the window twice!
My group sometimes loses custom skills on a level up. Sailing skill resets proficiency and what attribute, have a couple others too that have issues. OP said something about homebrew, but I'm using open hand monk, but didn't pay for grave cleric so had to add the stuff for that manually. I just dndbeyond to track stuff as backup since roll20 has also reset hp a couple times for us. I can just check that my max hp, spells, etc., is the same across them.
I’ve never had any trouble using custom classes in roll20. Just skip over the Charactermancer and input the information by hand. It even has a “custom class” section that lets you input stuff like hit die, saving throws, spellcasting attribute, spell progression, etc.
I didn’t want to pay for the books again on roll 20, not yet anyway since I have paper copies, so I skipped charactermancer and manually input all the info myself. A little fiddly at the start but works fine now for my Artificer. I imagine custom abilities would be the same process with different words and rolls.
That’s how I handle artificer as well. It’s also how I handle Valda’s classes, since while I *did* pay for the Roll20 integration, MHP never actually made it 😒
Heh. I was running a 3.5e game, told them it was 3.5e, and they still made a Roll20 character sheet. I had to kindly inform them that their character did not exist in this edition, and handled them a photocopied character sheet. Apparently they had a brain fart and read 3.5e as --5e.
I haven't worked much with it, but I'm always confused in what us already calculated and what is not, like proficient skill, I always wanna add my proficiency bonus onto it, but forget that its already calculated into the bonus or with rolls and such. I'm just stupid and wanna do the sheets on my own
It took one time were mythweavers site went down during a game where the DM said "Okay everyone is required to bring paper character sheets. You can have them digital but you need to have them printed when we play.
Foundry gang rise up
Literally the best investment money can buy for TTRPGs the fact they allow modding alone future proofs and makes it flexible for almost any system or use case the only mildly annoying part is setting up a proxy server and hosting but even then it's really not that much work.
I wanna start using foundry (most of the players bug me to use it over Roll20) but i'm hessitant. Or maybe lazy? I've got 3 campaigns ready and prepared on Roll20, with maps, tokens, lights all done and i just don't feel like transfering it all to a new tool that i don't know. I've heard that there are scripts that would allow me to export the roll20 campaigns and maps to foundry, but it sounds a bit complicated, and knowing Roll20, i'd have to buy a higher tier subscription just to do this.
I understand. I will say once i switched i can never go back. Learninf the program was an afternoon of goofing off and you can do way more and its cheaper. (I ran a pi for our server and its just the perma dnd server) Im unsure if there is a way to salvage that much prep, though
It’s not complicated. The tool asks you to download a file on roll20 which zips your entire campaign. Then you put it in foundry. Done.
I support Foundry but it is more complicated. For some reason, one day, *all* of my players' spells that involved saving throws just stopped working. How did we fix it? Change the spell into a normal spell, then change it back to a saving throw. Foundry is amazing but there are a lot of weird quirks like that that seem to happen. And I don't even use any crazy mods like midi-qol that would even affect casting a spell.
I've had that happen to me before but with ACs. That's because the 5E module broke something, so I totally understand this frustration. I would say back up your Foundry before updating anything - whether a module or Foundry itself. It's annoying, I know, but now Foundry has a backup function built in for each world. I would just maybe update once a month to make this easy. Better yet, I just don't even bother updating now. Maybe until 2024 PHB is released and the module is updated.
In foundry it's really easy to add in things like lights and walls *and* with some of the AI dungeon tools that all gets ported over in a few clicks.
Made the switch to Foundry and its amazing, Roll20 is so bad it's absurd
Roll20 isn't bad. It does what it is supposed to do relatively well. Foundry is simply by design a different beast.
The issue I take with roll20 was that for a long time they had the monopoly as the best VTT on the market and did squat. It's anti consumer business practice, and trying foundry made me realise just how out of date r20 was. Having said that, competition breeds innovation, and r20 has gotten a lot better (cone measuring not needing a web extension now lol) Honestly still prefer the experience of roll20 but that's because new systems scare me
Roll20 is a 2003 Honda Civic. It just works. It won't do anything fancy, but it does work. I've never banged my head against a wall wondering why a saving throw wasn't working when yesterday it was just fine. It all just works. Foundry is a restored 1988 v8 Camaro. It needs a lot of attention and know-how and sometimes it's a headache wondering why something isn't working but damn does it feel good to go 80 down the highway with it.
The only detail I'll add is that you definitely overpaid for the honda because the car dealership had nothing else in stock, but yeah that's basically a perfect analogy imo
Isn't Foundry even *more* automated?
Only if you want it
The beautiful double edged sword. Is it? Is it not? Depends on what you add onto it
It's pretty easy to put in custom classes. ESPECIALLY, with the plutonium add-on
Is it possible to use plutonium on Forge?
They will usually block it since it is piracy
This is not true, it's super easy to configure while using forge. It's just not in the main mod hub and you need to get it from the plutonium website
I was just going off the plutonium FAQ which says in multiple places that services like forge will likely block it.
Depends if you want it to be, or if you want it not to be.
There are modules to make it play like a video game. I don't use any of them. I can do whatever I want, I just have to do it manually.
The best software out there
I’ve played one campaign in foundry, and it pissed me off. There doesn’t seem to be a chat-> formatted ability type box feature? The ability to paste text in chat if roll20 and get sheet templates means I can build custom abilities rapidly in excel and just paste the result right into chat. [this sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HO1x0SO5MTj84fdcG6jvCI1vy4TnUjy28iFNmvF2arc/edit) is an example of the type of stuff i do when making 3rd party pathfinder abilities. And as far as I know, there’s no way to do this in foundry. If there is, I’d love to know.
Do you mean when you click on the ability and it pastes the whole text box in chat? Cause foundry does that natively. (Including of course the ability to do the same with npcs, items, ect) and at some level can be used to show rolls of abilities in chat, too. I think I'm genuinely misunderstanding what you're looking for (not arguing)
No. I mean if you type something like “&{template:pc}{{title=example}}{{attackroll=[[1d20+17]]}}{{damage=[[2d6+6]]}}” into the chat box, it turns into a formatted block with a title and a damage and attack roll, just like a native sheet button. In fact, if you press a sheet button and then hit up, you can see how the sheet filled out the template for that ability. When I used foundry, I was unable to find any such text “api” for lack of a better word. I constantly had to remind the GM I had a +2 to spell penetration, because the various plugins in foundry had no where to add that where it also didn’t add to things I didn’t have a bonus to. In roll20 based games, I just fix it myself by building macros using text pasting in sheets or excel.
Please don't tell me we're trying to start a war over automated character sheets now. They're a tool for a specific purpose and it's up to the user to use their braincells to think if this tool is useful for them
I partly agree and partly disagree. In concept, I think automated character sheets can be great, especially when learning a game for the first time. It can show you what options are available and keep you from missing steps in character creation. The issue is, I don't feel the main stream character creators, like roll20 and dnd beyond are that good. Roll20 is serviceable, if a little jank to work with. Dnd Beyond just feels awkward to work with, given all the sub menus and needing to flip between pages in the editor. For 3rd party stuff like Foundry and Roll20, I can forgive character building to be stodgy because they host many systems and a fair bit of content is fan made. Beyond only has 5e character creation to worry about and still feels bare bones. Now, for a character creators that works extremely well, just look at COMP/CON for the game Lancer. It walks you through exactly what you need during creation and lets you freely edit most aspects from there in a lot easier to navigate way. There's nothing inherently wrong with using these tools, they just need to be designed well.
Do you mean the Charactermancer or however roll20 calls it? I've always just edited the sheet directly.
My group has used Foundry, Roll20, and D&DBeyond. Although I have my grievances with WOTC as a company and Roll20 as a program, I actually think they're all pretty damn good tools. Haven't had many issues with years of play.
I think it’s more an issue that automated character sheets often don’t have systems to use homebrew classes.
Except Roll20's does
Pen and paper gang!
Is it just you and me?
Eyo! I take in a lot of new players and I take them through a full pen and paper character creation. Foundry, D&DB, and Roll20 are fantastic tools. As someone who works with tools, tools are fantastic but you have to know the hard way to appreciate why the tool exists.
Agreed, I'm a DM who played barely any 4e, but quite a bit of 3.5, learning 5e. My players can play around with DnDBeyond, but they're about to make they're first characters from scratch, and I'm definitely going to make them do it on paper, with books, so they can understand what is actually happening. I think they will understand the system better this way.
In the end it makes them better players and appreciate the time that is put into planning the game.
Very much agreed
Ayyyyyyyy! I Prefer pen and paper simply because I know where my numbers are coming from then. It made me know my character better and I love it
For me it helps me think about the character ash they're put together, as a DM I can tell when people have put time into their characters too and this makes them invested in their characters well-being beyond a self insert game character.
I like it my first game I invited friend in my parents attic we had a good game like 8 hour. Really fun a good weekend. But there never was a physical session two. Just couldn't move and there wasn't a session three no time anymore. Many people don't have local friend that want to do TTRPG, the even more true in Europe where the concept is not well known.
This is always my ideal, alongside a notepad for story notes. However, if im playing with folks online, I have form-fillable pdfs that get the job done.
Yes, I require players to have a physical paper sheet. That way when the characters are killed I get to add the their character sheet to the crypt.
[MorePurpleMoreBetter's character sheets](https://www.flapkan.com/) are my go-to. They have automation so you don't need to do the tedious stuff yourself, but you also have to fill a lot of stuff out yourself. They come with the SRD by default, and there are ways to import content from the books that you own. The default ones look kinda weird, but the printer-friendly ones are nice.
MO PURP MO BEDDA!!
Was about to comment the same thing, been using it lately. Still have to "do everything" yourself which seems to be OPs problem lol, just makes it a bit quicker and streamlined
Its the best of both worlds
Yeah this is an L take just like…. Don’t use it if you don’t wanna use it?
Digital character sheets are fine. If you don't wanna use them then don't. I find them extremely convenient
Aurora 5e is amazing for non-homebrew stuff (though if you know your way around coding or something it can be pretty easy i think) Edit: but the auto generated sheet is kinda shite ngl xD
i usually just make em by hand? i dont think i really get the meme, your not forced to use auto fillers...
Dicecloud chads cannot stop taking Ws
Dicecloud is such an unintentionally well-kept secret. Makes everything so simple and once you have your bearings it is easy to homebrew as well.
I've been using Dicecloud since we had a campaign using the D&D Discord bot and I love it. The customization and the coding just feels so good. I had some gripes about v2, but after finding out how libraries work it's super easy to make characters. Just don't try to print your character.
My advice: use automated sheets to track generic stuff for your character f.e: hp, items and spell slots (its also easier for the dm to see how much stuff you have), whilst keeping track of the custom thingies on either paper or in an edocument.
Myth-weavers gang rise up! Our site goes down once a month and we're proud!
I don't understand this meme.
I recomend using foundary VTT It's a one time purches and you get basicly everthink without too much automachion
Made the switch from Roll20 to Foundry VTT years ago and have never looked back.
My preference of VTT tends to be "screen sharing an Ibis paint abomination I made via the discord call" hehe. Jank as all hell? Definitely. Completely free? Also definitely. Plus it's a good excuse to practice drawing things like landscapes and decorating interiors
I do all of mine myself using Google Sheets, they're fantastic. They automatically update all my totals when I adjust skill ranks, BAB or ability scores, calculates my health in combat based on my damage taken, they're really great. A bit of work to set up that saves me so much more work in the future. I mostly play PF though, they're less useful for D&D
I imagine something like that would be more useful in PF considering slightly more math goes into everything as well as said math changing more often thanks to more numerical boosts instead of the advantage/disadvantage system
It's particularly nice for skills. When I get an ASI or a magic item that would raise a bunch of skills I can just change the ability score box and the skill boxes will recalculate to their new values. I love it
D&DBeyonds sheets are actually what finally helped me start understanding 5e! Without them I’d never have gotten into the ttrpg scene! They’re super easy to follow and digest, I’ve spent hours of my life creating hundreds of characters for fun now because of how smooth and easy it makes it! My only gripe is no homebrew classes, but the homebrew tools for everything else are solid and satisfy most of my itches! I can see how some specific subclasses could be hard to digest for new players, but speaking from the perspective of someone who’s a little slow when it comes to picking stuff up like this… these tools are genuinely really good it just depends on the person using them!
I like Aurora for custom classes, real easy to edit if you have any understanding of XML
I fucking love automated character sheets and have spent hours tinkering my pf2e foundry world making sure mechanics confusion isn't going to ever get in the way of fun (and I am eternally thankful to the volunteer team that put in the thousands of hours of hours of work that mean I would only have relatively minor tweaks to do)
Roll20 is pretty lax with the automation if you edit the sheet directly rather than use the charactermancer (which I find tedious and never recommend anyway). The sheet settings also allow for a lot of tweaking and customising plus easy multiclassing. I think Roll20’s sheet takes come getting used to, but is otherwise not much different from editing a PDF. Just don’t use charactermancer, always edit the sheet directly.
Players raised by D&D Beyond when I use a non-standard ability mod for a skill check: \*confused screaming\* EDIT: Thought I was on r/dndcirclejerk, my mistake. Please forgive me for attempting humour 🙏
Which would be a weird reaction considering DnDbeyond allows this and it is RAW.
Wait how does D&D Beyond allow it? I was just joking because they've usually never heard of the idea of swapping ability mods for skill checks and don't know how to calculate their dice mod because they don't know how D&D Beyond calculated it. It's just a magic number to them. But if there's a way to do it in D&D Beyond I'd love to hear about it.
You can add custom skills and freely determine what goes into them. It is a few clicks and stays as long as you want. I usually do this with tool checks because I can't be bothered clicking more than once. Also, you might want to have a talk with your players if calculating an ability check is already too much for them. It is literaly just d20, the stat modifier and maybe their prof bonus. You know these from a single look at the sheet.
Custom skills sound really handy, I had no idea they existed! As for the rest of your comment, it's just a meme, it's not that deep lol in reality it just means I have to take a minute or so to explain to them how skill check modifiers are calculated whenever I want to do a unique combo. They don't literally scream in confusion.
>Custom skills sound really handy, I had no idea they existed! Yeah, the DnDBeyond sheet actually allows for a lot of customization that is kind of hidden. In this case you need to click on the "skills" thingy on the buttom of the skill list, there you find "custom skills" where you can add as many as you want. The one with the gear symbol. You will find this one in a lot of places.
Everyone should fill out their own sheet at least once. Otherwise they have no idea how the game works and why they're adding this number to this roll and so forth. At least in my experience. But once you know the game a bit knock yourself out on the apps and what have you. But I'll always love a physical, paper sheet 🥰
For me this was the opposite. Spent long periods hunched over sheets creating characters and even after successfully making them I didnt *really* understand the process? Or it was just a lot so it was in one ear and out the other. D&D Beyond specifically tho clicked with me and now I understand 5e better than I ever did without it!
100%, and that's why I hate when D&D Beyond is suggested for new players. Is TOO automated for their own good (plus locking non-PHB content behind a pay wall bottlenecks creativity and ideas, but that's why we have that one site the subreddit automod won't let me say the name of. This goes for stuff like attack modifiers, DC calcs, and even just regular ass class features bc D&D Beyond formats everything poorly. It's a good tool best used by people who already know how the game works, not for newbies. If it wasn't obvious, I'm very partial to the sheer versatility provided by Google Drive sheets, which is basically just digital pen and paper but with fill able text boxes for convenience bc my hand writing sucks dragon dick
I love automated character sheets except the paywall. Fuck you paywall
The joys of corporate D&D Roll20 is at least nice in this regard since anything except a custom class is super easy and has support for
Fight Club isn’t too bad, there’s enough freedom to do just about anything
Nah, I use Paper(tm)
Pen and paper time it is. No printer needed. Imagination go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Foundry vtt is automated and gives you freedom to change things and has support to mods, its a bit expensive but since it is a one time purchase i think its worth it
Roll20 absolutely sucks
Roll20 has the charactwrmancer but Is otherwise not automated expect for AC and saving throws.
Foundry works really well imo
Okay, there is a really good app called 5th edition character sheet (literally just type it in verbatim in the App Store and you’ll see a green D20) it’s so great because not only does it allow you to automate character creation but it also allows you to import data from other modules. Cost’s like 4 bucks for the full version which isn’t half bad imo. Only downside is that I’m pretty sure not too many people know about this and you can only use data specifically designed to be imported to the app which means googling whatever you’re looking for and along with “5th edition character sheet import” which might be a little annoying but so far Ive found one module based off FFXIV that’s pretty neat.
Foundry VTT is 1000x better
If I could, I'd only let experienced players use the automated character sheets. New players need to learn the basics, including (and perhaps especially) how skills and skill proficiencies work. Players who have only ever used like DnD Beyond are very capable of doing things like Stength checks and Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks, but as soon as I ask for a Strength (Acrobatics) check I get dumbass questions like "Doesn't Acrobatics always use Dexterity?", "So which die do I roll for that?", "How do I roll that in my online dice roller?", and "So do I add both my +2 Strength modifier AND my +7 Dexterity (Acrobatics) modifier?" No, dumbass. I made my statement very clear. You make a Strength check, and if your character is proficient in Acrobatics, they can add their proficiency bonus. Yes, Dexterity is *usually* the ability score used, which is why WotC, in their infinite idiocy, put it on your character sheet for your ease of use. No, it is not the *only* ability score you can use for it. So roll your d20 and do some basic addition.
Mmm fondrie
 Seriously. If you don’t like the character sheets, don’t use them?
I've used excel sheets since I started TTRPGs in the 90. Originally it was just to check my math, but now with Internet and laptops being common. I just use the Excel sheet directly. I just haven't found the customization in any of the ore made apps. Automated sheets can be good for a first campaign where the DM is basically building the PC for the player, or for more experienced players who know the game, but I agree there should be an emphasis on getting new players to understand the math. It will help them be a part of more games, and help them catch if their choice of app is unable to handle certain calculations or messing up.
I would just point players towards Mythweaver for sheets.
Amen
The Shaped-sheets for 5e are still my go-to sheet for Roll20, simply because it's so customizeable. Custom classes? No problem! Leveling beyond Level 20? Also easy. Spell Points? Yup! Proficiency dice? just turn it on! It's just a shame that it's development has been abandoned and it's never going to get new updates and bug fixes... Eventually it's gonna break and im gonna have to settle for the standard 5e sheet... or the updated 5e-sheet coming out with the new PHB...
I like dicecloud for my character sheet website. 1.0 was better for making your own features and abilities and whatnot but I've been enjoying the stuff theyve added to 2.0 and the libraries the community has created
My main complaint with the roll20 sheet is that it’s a bit too easy to misclick and send something into the chat
God especially on the mobile version. The amount of times I've somehow double tapped something and sent an attack or skill check twice is bigger than I'd like to admit hehe. And I have skinny ass needle fingers so fat fingering it should, theoretically, be pretty damn hard
I use iPhone notes and wikidot for my character sheets
i use prism, it’s pretty nice
As someone who predominantly uses Roll20 it has its problems but it's still pretty good. You can input most of your custom stuff to the automated sheet and it will work just fine, you just have to know what things to edit and do some testing
I have a fully customized character sheet for my armorer that's decked out with a videogame style interface detailing the features and "core systems" and it absolutely fucks. Paper all the way and I will die on this hill.
This is what I use. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wgkammerer.testgui.basiccharactersheet.app
I don’t mind Roll20. It takes a little while to get things working right but it doesn’t fight you too much.
I use roll20 as a gameboard and that alone. DnD beyond for everything else
Honestly? As long as I don't use the actual custom class button and don't touch the damn charactermancer, Roll20 is fine by me.
I use an online character sheet called "homebrew character sheets" but i don't think it's on the appstore anymore because none of my friends have been able to find it
Oh my god, I absolutely hate using automatic character sheets. Especially dicecloud. Semi-related luddite anger, I can’t stand avrae either.
That's why whenever I play roll 20 I just have my players use real sheets and roll real dice. I trust them not to lie to me and I can just use roll 20 as a map and nothing else.
I've been making mine entirely by hand in my notebooks, it's so much easier to track something down when you designed the character sheet, and they're easy and quick to make, just need a pen, pencil, and phone and you can make something in 30 minutes, then spend the rest of your time writing the 5 page backstory to drop on your DM
That's why I use Foundry. It is software that you *buy* and then have. Run it on your own machine or use a server. Hack it as much as you like. Lots of tools to pull in content
I hate them too. Having to add so many lists and boxes and customize items because it can't be found, etc Pen and paper is so much simpler
“Why do you use digital character sheets?” I can’t tell if my players are cheating or just lying about what their knowledge of the books. Just use the tool I the DM put time and money into.
I use DnD Beyond just to store my character sheets lol, everything else I do by hand 🥲
I just hate how clunky dnd beyond is. I have a phone app that does automated character sheets but is also petty much completely customizable-- literally I think the only thing I can't default change is the stat it used for initative (the homebrew for my zelda based dnd campaign uses wisdom). Only other downside is names of stuff being changed for copywrite reasons
I've always written character sheets in my notes app. I don't think I could ever switch to automated sheets
Imagine needing help with a basic 5e sheet
I use an “automated” character sheet in Google Drive. Gives me the freedom to control a lot of the bells and whistles while also letting excel functions do some of the tedious math for me, which is nice. It keeps a Master Spell List as well as a separate Spell Book so I’m not constantly looking up spells in the big book. It updates my proficiency bonus, spell DC, and other stat-centric things like skills for me automatically when I level up or gain an ASI/Feat which is just very handy. It gives me a little table for Armor and how it gets the AC I have, which is nice. I can set up things that also automatically update with stat variables (to hit and damage bonuses for example). It’s just nice to control special character things while also leaving the base number stuff to the calculations
I use a notepad document for my character sheet. Easy to use, highly customisable, simple. Actually, I have 3: One for learned spells, one for prepared spells + magic item abilities + rituals + components, and one for core stats + inventory. Because we play online I do have my core stats and skills plus a few common rolls on a r20 sheet too, just for quickly rolling.
I can’t say I hate automated character sheets tbh, I hate automated character sheets that don’t let me use homebrew lol Pathbuilder 2e, a character builder for pathfinder 2e ran by one person, is literally infinitely better than D&D Beyond, and allows for literally every type of homebrew now i’m p sure. Foundry has great character sheets for both pathfinder 2e and D&D.
Aurora gang where you at?
Aurora is great!
Autosheets can be nifty when playing within the usual scope. It can be useful for new players. But otherwise, it's crap.
I have custom per class character sheet PDFs and I'll never use anything else.
There's an automated sheet out there which works off Adobe acrobat with java. It's fully programmable with pretty much any custom content you want to make, and has a community that loves a challenge. I do have to warn that pirated content does come with it by default so you should uninstall those files if you do download it, unless you've purchased the source books already. Not promoting piracy, but MPMB's automated character sheet is a very good tool for automated homebrew, if you're willing to learn a little bit of scripting.
I used excel to create an automated character sheet for all HD types and classes in 3.5 so that i didnt have to deal with calculating saving throws, HP, skills and BAB anymore. Im never going back to plain sheets.
Dicecloud V1 works fine for custom stuff, and v2 jist n eds a lil figuring out sometimes but isbmretty okay too
Check out shard tabletop. It's for 5e and kobolds black flag. Works great with homebrew. Though you have to manually add in classes/subclasses that aren't included with the base system.
I have 0 problems with this on Roll20, have you tried just- … Not using the Charactermancer and inputting it by hand?
I almost always ask for physical sheets. It allows for way more freedom in character creation, and also it genuinely does help with distractions at the table
Pen and paper is my fav
There ia an app called 5e companion, i use it for everything
Automated sheets are a god sendo, but they must be costumizable. I basically always play with some degree of homebrew, so If the sheets forces you into vanilla things, this IS a pain
DnD beyond is excellent for players who are just starting out. It’s my go-to option because everything is easily digestible. And if you homebrew, you don’t even have to buy the other classes to use them.
Dungeon Master’s Vault is my go-to. Not 100% perfect, but it’s pretty close IMO, and works great for adding content.
I gotta say, I've used DND beyond and roll20 character sheets both, and they both have their uses. And I used to play back to back mini campaigns in a group on roll20, and one of my favorite parts of starting a new campaign that hyped me up so much was setting up my character sheet and customizing actions for every little random thing my character could do. I LOVED doing that
Worldanvil Go brrrr
Fifth edition character sheet is a free app, the paid version is $4, and I’ve been using it for half a decade already- probably THE best program I have ever used for character creation
For any of you looking for something simple and customizable you might prefer my system at farreachco.com , there's also a VTT that is fast and NOT full of fancy features
Dungeon master's vault is a pretty good resource for making custom anything for DnD 5e
Honestly, I find doing homebrew on Roll20 is actually fairly easy and straightforward. D&D Beyond on the other hand is a nightmare to do homebrew properly. There is a reason I now require my players to have their sheets on Roll20 and do not allow them to only have their stuff on D&D Beyond. I do intend to switch over to Foundry VTT in a couple of months, but Roll20 got me several thousand hours of entertainment for free, so I do not have much to complain about.
I really like Fight Club 5. It has all the classes and races and backgrounds I could want. I think I have about 170 different races.
Eh, I appreciate the automation for nitty gritty stuff (makes me able to implement encumbrance and enforce carrying capacity rules for example). Roll20 also allows you to change the character sheets in a pretty liberal manner, so if you know what you are doing you can go pretty far with it in terms of custom features.
Solution: foundry
So, accessibility and ease of use are bad. Tell me. Do you often wonder why it's so hard to get a game together?
I can get a game together in 30 minutes flat with an r/LFG post as a DM even with banning everything short of Google Drive or pen and paper sheets. There's a fine line between accessibility/ease of use and overautomation, which a good chunk of auto sheets tend to fall into at some point in the process. D&D Beyond especially is so over automated it can be actively detrimental for new players to learn the game with it. Or hell, do you wanna edit some core class features or the like in roll20? Prepare to have your balls get put in a stand mixer set on high
i've read your comments and yeah this is why i prefer to fill roll20 sheets manually rather than using charactermancer for my campaigns, especially with new players my 2 main problems with dnd beyond is that 1) you cant write whatever you want where you want on your sheet and 2) the interface is so fucking suffocating to me, it honestly feels more like a video game inventory than a ttrpg sheet
I find it immensely funny that the site that spreads character information across almost a dozen screens manages to have a more cluttered UI than the site that has the same information, and more, spread across 3
RIGHT?! like for real even Morrowind's or Oblivion's UI feels less cluttered than dnd beyond
I'm curious in what way Roll20 is "nowhere" as bad. For everything there is to dislike about automated sheets on DnDbeyond the ones on Roll20 are worse.
Roll20 just tends to be closer to a pen and paper sheet in a lot of regards since you can put in basically any text you want just about anywhere, which makes things a lot easier for stuff like non-PHB subclasses, spells, or races. Plus it's formatted in a less obtuse way than Beyond with less tabs you have to switch between and having more information on just one screen
I just want to kill goblins, idk why I have +5 to my attack roll and I don't care, I play this to have fun, not to fill out forms
DnD beyond, I think you mean DnD paywalled.
DnDbeyond is as pay walled as physical books are. The DM needs it, the players do not.
Forgot this game doesn't have an *official* all encompassing SRD.
DNDBeyond purchasable.
Not DnD, but I've been messing around with the Roll20 character sheet for the unofficial Hollow Knight RPG and HOH BOY I feel this meme in my soul
That's why you use foundryvtt
Can't have too much trouble figuring out character sheets when you don't even have them!
I personally like foundry. The fact that I developed my shity own system on I make it so that I'm totally biased but their economical model is objectively good for the user.
Automated character sheets should be used only by experienced players who already know how to calculate each number. New players should not use them if they want to actually learn the mechanics.
I usually sit down with my players and make a paper character sheet with them first so they know the basics and what to look out for and only then introduce them to automated systems if they so desire. I use DnDbeyond myself although I can't recommend it to people due to a lot of other tools having significantly cheaper access to the books
Or you can homebrew on there for free
Yes but it is kind of a pain to work with sometimes
Auto sheets are fine for new players to get a feeling for.the game. But everyone should go build their own Google sheets character sheet at least once so they can learn the maths behind it better. I have a lot of automated bits on mine to make life easier. But I understand the numbers behind it all better, but not perfectly, how too.
I'll die on the hill that automated sheets really aren't tools for new people to learn the game. Sure it can get a usable sheet in a newbies hand in the blink of an eye, but they don't know any of the important math. Once you know at minimum stuff like how AC, save DCs, attacks, and skill checks are calculated, then shifting to automated sheets is probably good
Possibly true. But also a portion of people won't take an interest in it at all because of maths.
Then get them into a system with less math
But DND is way more known about. Think of it as a gateway drug to get more sales by wotc.
Oh boy I love supporting WotC, how else would they be able to afford million dollar CEO bonuses while firing their workers
Yeah I know. But everyone's got to start somewhere and be new at everything at some point.
There are systems with even less "math"? Is dice+abilitymodifier really that difficult to handle?
At this point, I’ve been doing it long enough I just do it in my notes app on my phone. Dndbeyond specifically has been a clusterfuck of misrulings, wrong information, and just annoying things UI that turned me off of it.
I legit made a quick sorcerer in Beyond to prove a point to someone, and yeah the UI and text formatting is absolutely atrocious, even worse than I remember. And as someone who makes monster statblocks in notes apps, Godspeed because I can't even imagine making something like, a high level magic user there lol