We are building a character sheet app. Native: Swift on iPhone and iPad, Kotlin on Android. Not a website in a shell, not a web view with an icon on it. The real thing, so it opens instantly, works with no signal in a basement, and feels like the rest of your phone.
Before we build the wrong thing, we want to hear from you.
What we have so far
The plan is the sheet people already use, the one that fills in your browser [2], with the parts a phone does better:
- Opens offline. Your character lives on your device. No account to make, nothing to sync before you can play.
- Tap a bonus, roll it. The same dice as the 3D roller, in your hand.
- Hit points, spell slots and death saves you can change with a thumb while holding a drink in the other hand.
Paper never runs out of battery. It just runs out of eraser, somewhere around the cleric's third heal.
Why a phone, and not the PDF
A paper sheet is built for the numbers that never move. The trouble is the handful that change every few minutes, and they are all in the rules [1]:
| What changes | How often | What the rules say |
|---|---|---|
| Hit points | Every hit, every heal | Can't go above your maximum or below 0 |
| Death saving throws | Every turn at 0 HP | Three successes stabilise you, three failures kill you; a natural 1 counts as two failures, a natural 20 brings you back with 1 HP |
| Spell slots | Most spells above a cantrip | Most casters regain them all on a Long Rest |
| Concentration | Every time you take damage | Constitution save, DC 10 or half the damage, whichever is higher |
| Heroic Inspiration | When the DM hands it out | Reroll any one die; you can't hold two |
Five boxes, rubbed out and rewritten all night. That is the part of a sheet a thumb should do, and the part a pencil tears through by level 5.
- Your whole party, if you are the one who ends up holding everyone's sheets.
- Print or export to the same four A4 pages as the browser sheet and the PDF [2], so nothing traps your character inside an app.
What we do not know
This is where you come in. The questions we keep arguing about:
- Do you want an account at all? Keeping everything on the device means nothing to hack and nothing to leak. It also means a new phone starts empty unless you export. Which would you rather?
- One character or a shelf of them? Most people play one at a time. Some run six NPCs and give every one of them the same accent.
- Do you want the DM view? Initiative order, monster hit points, the whole table on one screen.
- Homebrew. Custom classes, custom spells, custom dice. How much do you actually use?
- Other systems. Pathfinder 2e, Shadowdark, Call of Cthulhu. Worth it, or do people want D&D 5e done properly first?
- What makes you delete a character sheet app? This one is the most useful answer you can give us.
Tell us
Send it to us through the contact page. A sentence is plenty; a list is better. If you have used a character sheet app you loved or threw across the room, name it and say why.
We will publish what we learn, build what people actually asked for, and say here when the first build is ready to test.
Until then, the browser sheet, the fillable PDF and the living sheet you can roll from are free and need no account. Our guide to free character sheets says which one suits which player.
Table Talk
Arthur: Five boxes change all night: hit points, death saves, spell slots, Concentration, Heroic Inspiration. That's the whole case for the app.
Rohan: Paper doesn't need a charger.
Arthur: Paper also lets you write hit points above your maximum. The rules say you can't.
Rohan: So the app enforces the rulebook. Fine. No account, though.
Arthur: Agreed. Nothing to hack, nothing to leak. But a new phone starts empty.
Rohan: Then export. Same four A4 pages as the PDF.
Arthur: My tip: a Concentration save is DC 10 or half the damage, whichever is higher. Check before you roll.
Rohan: Mine: tell us what makes you delete an app. That's the answer worth sending.
Arthur: And if any app lets you hold two Heroic Inspirations, report it. I will.
References
- Wizards of the Coast. (2025). System Reference Document 5.2.1 (CC-BY-4.0). Sections used: "Playing the Game" (Damage and Healing, Death Saving Throws), "Rules Glossary" (Concentration, Heroic Inspiration, Hit Points) and the spellcasting class features. https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd
- RPG Creator. (n.d.). Character sheet (browser version and fillable four-page A4 PDF). https://rpgcreator.net/sheet/; https://rpgcreator.net/pdf/character-sheet.pdf
