Help me design the ultimate electronic D&D 5E character sheet! [Survey]

[Ellisthion]

I'm currently doing a training course on User Experience Design, and for my project for the course I am attempting to design an electronic D&D character sheet that focuses more on playing using the electronic sheet, rather than just focusing primarily on creating the character.

As part of this, I'm trying to get some feedback from players who have used existing tools, be they PCGen, DDI, form-fillable PDFs, or whatever. I want to know your experiences, and what kinds of features you would find useful in a new tool. Even if you've never used any electronic character sheets, I'd still like your input!

If you've got 5 minutes, it would be great if you could fill out this quick survey. If you don't feel like that, or have any comments outside it, please comment here for great justice. :smallwink:

Click here to fill out the quick survey (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_F_474XG18cZHQi7NuICsjm0a7PAWnBUTm2E0BE4H7k/viewform?usp=send_form)

Thanks in advance! :smallbiggrin:

[HugeC]

So, one of the things I want to do IRL is make some tokens or cards to help me track my resources. Like if your character is a monk, you have a token for each Ki point, and when you use them you flip them over, and on the back it says, "Refresh on Short or Long Rest." Then when you finish a rest you flip them back over to use them again. Same thing for all the other resources in the game (spell slots, action surges, whatever). Something like that would, I think, be nice to have in an electronic character sheet.

Also, I play D&D 3.5 and one of my buddies has printed out all these Haste cards that tell you what the spell does, and he hands them out when you get Haste (or whatever) cast on you. You could do something like that, maybe an "effects" tab or something, and since it is electronic you could account for whatever bonuses on the character sheet itself. Might want to include a dice roller too, so that you can just click on "Attack" and it will roll the die and add your bonus in for you.

Hope that helps!

[pwykersotz]

If you can make a dice room that works between computers and mobile apps and has a way to ID the GM so secret rolls can be made, I kid you not I'll donate 50 bucks to you. It's my one regret with both Google Hangouts and Roll20 is their dice rooms are clunky when not on computers.

[Ellisthion]

track my resources

Absolutely. This is one of the things I want to emphasise. Equipment, spells, ki, everything. I'm hoping to be able to automatically parse rules texts to determine when abilities get refreshed, and then you can just hit a button saying "Short Rest".


Also, I play D&D 3.5 and one of my buddies has printed out all these Haste cards that tell you what the spell does, and he hands them [...] maybe an "effects" tab or something, and since it is electronic you could account for whatever bonuses on the character sheet itself.

Handing out cards is an awesome idea... but yes, I definitely want to be able to calculate these things automatically. I was originally just thinking things like Advantage / Disadvantage, but it's been pointed out to me that there are a lot of ways even in 5E that your rolls can be modified, so I want to be able to save different states of numbers. For example, you could have different stats stored for normal, hasted, enlarged, and then different weapons, and the beauty of an electronic sheet is you don't have to take up space with things are are using right at the moment.


If you can make a dice room that works between computers and mobile apps [...]

That's not really what I'm focusing on right now but it's a very interesting idea in itself. I might jot that idea down and see if I can hack something together. :smallsmile:

Thanks for the responses, guys!

[DevilsAttorney]

Filled. Heroforge 5E IMO.....!

[Laserlight]

More Purple More Better's PDF charsheet is very nice. Needs Adobe Reader rather than just any PDF reader, and has a bit of learning curve, but once you get past that, it's great for generating a character and has features for letting you play from the charsheet (eg there is a Heal button on the HP box, you can mark off expended ammo and spell slots, you can click the SR or LR button to refresh slots, etc)

[2D6GREATAXE]

More Purple More Better's PDF charsheet is very nice. Needs Adobe Reader rather than just any PDF reader, and has a bit of learning curve, but once you get past that, it's great for generating a character and has features for letting you play from the charsheet (eg there is a Heal button on the HP box, you can mark off expended ammo and spell slots, you can click the SR or LR button to refresh slots, etc)

I came here to make this exact comment. Its such a shame wizards have made him take down his content from the DM's guild it was the best PC designer in my eyes and was very user friendly for multi classing and using other books and UA.

[Keravath]

From a play perspective -
- ability to track resource usage in real time (hps, ammo, spells expended, abilities used and their refresh rate .. SR/LR/Daily)
- ability to track current conditions and their effects (e.g. poisoned, restrained, grappled, charmed etc)
- ability to track spell effects - apply bless/guidance etc to dice rolls, slow to casting times etc.,
- ability to roll dice within the UI (and which looks good) .. if you are focusing on playing the game rather than character building then a good dice roll simulator is an essential element.
- a good clean character sheet that lists stats/modifiers/skills/capabilities so that a player can figure out with a quick glance what they can do this turn, what dice rolls are required and be able to roll the required dice.

Finally, the rules to be used in the character sheet should be loaded from an external standardized resource file which will allow folks to generate their own content. A publicly distributed app can only include the SRD material but a flexible enough data base design can allow for players to create whatever content they wish to use with the app. The UI should support direct loading of these customized rules sets.

P.S. I would second the comments about MPMBs fillable javascript based pdf. It contains a number of the features you might be looking at.