How to make a digital character sheet?

[BookTenTiger]

Let's say I've made my own custom stripped-down version of 5e, which folks often do. For those of you who have done so, how do I go about making a digital character sheet? Not just a sheet that can be printed (I've already done that), but one that can be interacted with by a player. Maybe even one that calculates things like attack bonuses and skill bonuses?

I really don't know what software is used for making custom digital character sheets these days. Any experience or advice is welcome!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I did a HERO character sheet in Excel that did all of the number crunching.

 

[Morrus]

Depends how slick you want it. At the lower end you could have an interactive spreadsheet, but it won’t look fancy. Won’t cost you anything but a lot of time doing data entry and finagling formulas. At the higher end you have D&D Beyond, a platform which cost millions to develop and is still being developed to this day. We’ve been working on Level Up Gateway for about 18 months now and it’s still a long way from a basic complete version.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Let's say I've made my own custom stripped-down version of 5e, which folks often do. For those of you who have done so, how do I go about making a digital character sheet? Not just a sheet that can be printed (I've already done that), but one that can be interacted with by a player. Maybe even one that calculates things like attack bonuses and skill bonuses?

I really don't know what software is used for making custom digital character sheets these days. Any experience or advice is welcome!

Usually they're either fillable PDF sheets (you can bake some calculations into those) or spreadsheets. The problem with both is making sure your players will have the software to properly use them.

 

[Li Shenron]

Let's say I've made my own custom stripped-down version of 5e, which folks often do. For those of you who have done so, how do I go about making a digital character sheet? Not just a sheet that can be printed (I've already done that), but one that can be interacted with by a player. Maybe even one that calculates things like attack bonuses and skill bonuses?

I really don't know what software is used for making custom digital character sheets these days. Any experience or advice is welcome!

I am still too much of a fan of pen-and-paper so I print out my custom character sheets, but if I were to make a digital version of them nowadays, the first thing coming to mind would be a simple HTML page with autocalculations, which should work in every browser (so that it can be used on laptop, tablet or phone). Vibe-code it with the help of your favourite LLM AI if you don't have the skills yourself.

 

[neceros]

Either a PDF writer like Adobe or good ol HTML.

 

[Nikosandros]

With a little patience, you can make a functional sheet in Google Drive and then share it online.

 

[Koloth]

As an example of what can be done, look at PCGen. PCGen :: An RPG Character Generator
Sadly, no longer supported but a very good char builder for D&D 3.x and PF1. May include 4th ed but never needed that.

Unless you want to go down that rabbit warren of coding your own, probably best to find a PDF sheet that lets you enter fields and call it good. Basic web browsers are getting pretty good at rendering PDF files so no special software needed.

 

[Cergorach]

A spreadsheet is probably the most simple one. You can do it in Excel, but people would need Excel, you can also use LibreOffice Calc, an open source spreadsheet program everyone can download for free on many platforms. Or use Google Sheets (also free, but proprietary), you can easily share it online with people.

You can make interactive PDFs, but that require specialized tools (Adobe Acrobat Pro isn't cheap for example).

It kind of depends on the purpose of why you want to do it. Is it just a tool people use before the in person session or do you want to use it during the session? If so, looking towards a VTT solution might help, and then depending on your VTT of choice (mine is Foundry VTT) it's either impossible or can be quite a bit of work...

 

[Bill Zebub]

Claude Code.

Q.E.F.D.