I'm happy to share that the major changes we have been talking about for months with the character sheet revamp are here!

While the individual changes are too numerous to effectively list - we have overhauled the digital character sheet in fundamental ways - I will give a high-level summary of our feature goals and how the changes support them. This changelog entry is probably more of a philosophical treatise than a list of changes, but bear with me.



Before getting into that, I would like to take a moment to express my gratitude to the developers as they have crossed this threshold on an enormous undertaking. I love working with these folks every day!

Character Sheet Revamp Themes

We focused on several core concepts or themes during the development of the changes to the character sheet. These themes were shared back in September as we were conceptualizing the changes:

Feedback Focused

The primary theme from which all the others originate, we made these changes based on hundreds of thousands of points of feedback on our forums, social media, and internal and external playtesting.

When we started beta testing for the digital character sheet last year and through launch in August, we knew that it was not what we or the community truly wanted. The problem was we couldn't quite pinpoint what we did want out of a digital sheet. Once we understood that, we resolved that getting a prototype out for players to use in real games and collecting feedback to create the shape of things to come was the right call.

While much of the feedback resonated and got us to where we are now, perhaps the most compelling to me personally was shared early by TomWB:

Don't over think this! Characters don't have that many features! People have made do with paper sheets for decades! Just present a list of feature names, and add the only-possible-digitally benefits of collapsible full descriptions and tracking of uses/charges. That will represent a huge upgrade!

The subsequent themes spring from our focus on feedback.

Provide Proper Desktop Views

When the digital sheet was originally conceived, our assumption was that most players would use it on a mobile device. We felt so strongly about that assumption that we barely provided a desktop view of the sheet - it was essentially several mobile views stacked into place like a puzzle.

After millions of characters and hundreds of thousands of game sessions, our data tells us that almost 70% of the sheet usage is on desktop resolutions. Our first suspicion was players (and DMs) were viewing the sheet between sessions - which is still a great use case - but we still see that kind of percentage with other events that indicate it's used during play on those resolutions too. People are apparently playing on laptops or ultra-large tablets. On top of this data, feedback confirmed that desktop views needed a good bit of love. Armed with this information, we set out to dramatically improve the desktop look, layout, and feel, with an emphasis on utilizing the space much more effectively.

Although providing proper desktop views was a priority, we never lost site of providing the best possible experience on mobile. A D&D character is fairly complex, but we've worked hard to get all that information into the palm of your hand.

Better Access to At-a-Glance Information / Remove Collapsibles - Retain Access to Full Descriptions

To me, the most insightful category of feedback we received overwhelmingly early on was that players wanted to be able to see a better breakdown of essential or frequently-used information versus full/ expanded descriptions. You wanted to see the things that matter most at a glance, but still have the advantages of a digital platform to dig into the full context easily.

Enter "snippets" - short descriptions of all class features, racial traits, feats, and more. These short descriptions were added to give players all the information they need (or at least a solid foundation) without needing to read the expanded rules or descriptive text.

Oh, and everyone kind of hated the concept of "collapsibles" where full descriptions were tucked under header names, so we did away with them entirely. Now, since we are utilizing screen real-estate more fully, you can see more of the information you need to speed up play without clicking or tapping. If you need to drill down into an element on the sheet, click or tap it to reveal the new sidebar. The sidebar can be swiped in and out on mobile and dismissed or docked on desktop. You still have access to all the rules content you need in a more accessible way.

Allow for More Ad Hoc Customization

Dungeons & Dragons players like to create and customize (understatement). As DDB was created, we knew the homebrew system would be incredibly important, and while that system is powerful in what it can do with modifiers, filtering, and more, it is not conducive to on-the-fly customization, such as adding a strange trinket your DM just described.

The new sheet allows for considerably more flexibility, including creating ad hoc items, adding feats outside normal progression, adjusting skill or saving throw proficiencies, modifying passive skills, speed, or defenses, and creating custom attacks and actions.

We plan to introduce even more customization capability in the future, even getting to a point where you do not return to the builder to edit your character since it will all be done in the sheet. At that point, the builder will be used for one purpose - to initially create a character. We have also received considerable feedback requesting a comprehensive inventory management system with containers and party sharing. That is also on the roadmap in the future.

Provide a Familiar Feel - Neo-Retro

Character sheets have existed for 40+ years, and players instantly recognize the form factor as iconic. I started using the term "neo-retro" with the team early on to emphasize what we were trying to accomplish for this theme - to make a digital sheet that was familiar and proven but also convenient and powerful. I used the imagery of the new Ford Mustang or Dodge Challenger models that evoke the memory of classic models but have every modern convenience imaginable.

I believe the result speaks for itself!

Additional Points of Interest

Outside of the core themes above, a few more changes are worth mentioning:

Site Header Updates

The entire site has a new, more compact header. This gives us more screen real-estate on desktop, but it also allows for longer page titles to wrap (instead of getting cut off as they did before, especially on forum posts). In general, it's a cleaner interface that lays the ground work for exciting navigation changes in the coming weeks.

PDF Overhaul

The PDF export started as a stub during beta and we realized we needed major changes to the way the character sheet worked before we could really finish it. I'm thrilled to be able to say that the new PDF export can be labeled release-worthy. Snippets and page references are now on features and traits, expanded spell information is included, and other helpful breakdowns such as the Actions section are integrated. We will still have more improvements coming based on feedback, but this is a huge step forward. Take it for a spin!

Copy Your Character

You can now create copies of any of your characters from the 'My Characters' section. This could be useful to "save" versions of your character at different levels (if you play it in different games for instance) or to be able to theorycraft without worrying about going too far to revert.

In the near future, you will also have the ability to create a copy of another player's read-only characters so you can use that character in your own game. We are still working out some of the security around this feature and will release it once we're confident in the results.

Sheet Appearance Customization

You can change your theme color, portrait frame, or character backdrop via the dropdown menu on your character's name. More theme options will come on a regular basis. Go wild!

Spell Level Scaling

During playtesting, we observed that many players struggled to remember or use spells with increased effects when cast at higher levels. To assist with this, we have included scaled spells in the listing in the Spells section. For example, you can learn fireball once you can cast 3rd level spells and will see it under your 3rd level list. Once you can cast 4th level spells, fireball will appear in that list too, but with the increased effects of casting at that higher level called out in "delta" blue text.

Character Sharing

You can now share your character URL with others and they can see a read-only version of your character's sheet. If you share that URL via social media, a character stat card will display as you share. If you are viewing your own character, the URL in the browser address bar will be your "edit" address. If you share the edit URL, others will still be redirected to a read-only copy of your sheet, but sharing that on social media will not always result in an updated stat card image due to the way those sites cache such images. For the most reliable sharing results, click the "Share" button in the header of your sheet (on desktop) or the "Share Character" option in the character name dropdown menu. A toast message will appear where you can click to copy the URL to your clipboard for sharing.

Snippet Code

The short descriptions on features, traits, and feats also include some simple code to auto-calculate a variety of numbers for ease of use. The syntax for this code is "{{inserthere}}" and can use math. The full list of available options are:

{{spellattack}} - your spell "to hit"

{{scalevalue}} - a class-specific value, such as Rage Damage for a barbarian

{{modifier:str}} - a modifier for an ability score (str, dex, con, int, wis, cha)

{{savedc:str}} - generates your Save DC using the specified ability modifier (str, dex, con, int, wis, cha)

{{fixedvalue}} - the fixed number from the feature or trait

{{classlevel}} - level in the contextual class

{{characterlevel}} - total character level

{{proficiency}} - your proficiency bonus

{{maxhp}} - your maximum hit points

{{limiteduse}} - total number of uses for the contextual feature or trait

For example, the Fallen Aasimar's Necrotic Shroud racial trait has the following snippet:

[3rd] Once per long rest as an action, you can transform, causing all within 10 ft. to make a CHA saving throw (DC {{savedc:cha}}) or be frightened of you until the end of your next turn. This lasts for 1 minute or until you end it as a bonus action. Once on your turn you can have one attack or spell deal {{characterlevel}} points of extra necrotic damage to one target.

which for a 12 level character with a Charisma modifier of +2 displays as:

[3rd] Once per long rest as an action, you can transform, causing all within 10 ft. to make a CHA saving throw (DC 14) or be frightened of you until the end of your next turn. This lasts for 1 minute or until you end it as a bonus action. Once on your turn you can have one attack or spell deal 12 points of extra necrotic damage to one target.

You can use snippet code in your homebrew creations where snippets are available. More help/ guidelines will come in the future, but a great starting point would be to take a look at how existing snippets are formed to get to what you need.

Pact and Hex Weapons

We see the data, and there are a whole lotta hexblades out there! We now have a simple and straightforward way to designate a weapon as a Pact Weapon or Hex Weapon. If you have the Pact of the Blade Pact Boon or the Hex Warrior feature, you will see new checkboxes in the sidebar whenever you equip (make active) a relevant weapon. Check the relevant checkbox for pact or hex and the effects (automatic proficiency for pact and use the CHA modifier for hex) are automatically applied to that weapon.

Update Your Homebrew

With changes this comprehensive, new options will be available for your homebrew content - especially snippets - that will impact how that content displays on the sheet. Unfortunately, there's no feasible way for us to automate adding these additional layers to existing homebrew and you will need to update yours to fully take advantage of some of the changes. While this will work well for private content, republishing that content will get easier in the days to come as we overhaul how sharing homebrew content works. We will provide updates on status on that front soon.

What's Next?

Now that the foundation of the new character sheet is in place, we will focus in the near-future on addressing any bugs or immediately-actionable feedback, as well as introduce smaller, quicker enhancement iterations. Some of these enhancements include copying other players' characters into your own character list, companions/ familiars/ mounts/ wild shape monster integration, improved character list organization, class-specific resource management support (ki, sorcery points, etc.), and more.

Following these follow-up enhancements, we will tackle the intended changes for the character builder, namely removing the need to return to it to edit an existing character, some alternate creation flows, and expanded options for quick building "optimized" characters of any level (as opposed to the not-so-optimized yet wonderfully fun results of 'Randomize').

Once we get there, character management will be in a good place and we will move with great excitement on to campaign and DM tools such as source management and encounter/ monster building.

For the latest updates on what we're working on at any given time, be sure to tune into our monthly development update/ Q&A session live streams on twitch.tv/dndbeyond.

We are grateful for the incredible community of D&D players that have joined us on this exciting adventure! Thanks for your support as we continue to work to make D&D Beyond everything we want it to be!