Characters and Tags

This is the part where a real die meets a character. Making the sheet itself — which game, which steps — is in Make a Character Sheet.

Tap-to-roll, which is the good bit

On a D&D 5e sheet, three places ask your phone for a roll:

• Ability scores — 4d6 drop lowest, six times. Needs a registered d6.
• Starting gold — your class's formula, which is always some number of d4 multiplied up.
• Hit points on level up — one roll of your class's hit die.

The web page fires a prompt to your account, your phone picks it up and opens the tap screen, you hold it to a die. The tap says which die you used; the roll itself is generated on the server, comes back down the same connection, and lands in the field you were looking at. No reading a number off one screen and typing it into another.

Roll is the default on the ability-score step, so landing there immediately pings your phone. If you didn't want that, the other three methods are right there.

Three rules on the tap, and the error messages are worth recognising:

• The die must be registered — otherwise Die not registered.
• It must be yours. Character generation isn't a borrowing scenario.
• The faces must match. Tap a d20 for a 4d6 stat roll and you get Wrong die: spec needs a d6 but you tapped a d20. If a d20 could roll your 4d6 the gimmick would stop being honest.

This is the iPhone app's job. The Android app doesn't answer roll prompts.

When the prompt doesn't show up

• The phone must be awake, with the app open and in front. The app drops its connection when it's in the background, and a prompt fired while it's asleep is simply missed — there's no going back to fetch it from the phone.
• The connected indicator on the web page reflects the web page's connection, not your phone's. A green dot is not proof the prompt arrived.

Nothing here is a dead end. Ability scores fall back to the array, point buy or typing; gold falls back to the starter pack; level-up HP has Average and Manual next to the roll option.

Levelling up

The Level Up button sits in the sheet header until you hit 20. Three ways to get HP: Roll (tap die), Average: +n, Manual. In roll mode you can't confirm until a tap lands, so switch pills if you'd rather not wait on a phone.

Applying it writes five things: level, max HP, current HP (it heals you by the gain), proficiency bonus, and your hit dice pool. It does not touch class features or spell slots — the modal says so, which is better than pretending. Check your class and add anything new through Edit Character.

At the table

A Basic Fantasy sheet goes further: at the table, its saves, its melee and missile attacks, a thief's skills and turning the undead sit on the sheet as buttons. Press one and your phone asks for the die — a d20, or a d10 read twice for a percentile — and the server reads it the way the book does ("Saved, needing 7") and puts the result in the table's roll log. The GM gets the same for a Basic Fantasy monster's morale, reaction, attack and saves.

A tag as a character

A tag can be a character — tap it and that's who you are. What goes on the tag is an identity and nothing else: no name, no class, no hit points. A snapshot on the fob would go stale the moment the character levels, takes a hit or burns a spell slot, and re-encoding a physical object because someone lost 3 HP is not a product. The sheet lives on the server; the fob is a pointer to it.

Binding a tag to a character isn't something you can do yourself yet. Your sheet's read-only NFC Token panel shows which tag is bound, once one is.

Two different characters, and they are not the same table

Worth heading off, because the words collide. A character sheet — 5e or any of the other games — is the one you take to a campaign: as many as you like, bound to a game, the thing a token on the map points at.

The RNGESUS character is something else entirely: who you are in the tavern. A name, a people, a class from the room's own seven, ability scores the house rolls once, an appearance and a wardrobe. You make them in the looking glass in Your Room — up to seven, one of each class (a head count, not a rule) — and they're the you that walks around downstairs and goes down the cellar stairs, rather than a sheet you play a game with.

They share no data and neither can turn into the other, which is on purpose — a tavern regular is a person in a pre-industrial room with no magic in it, and a 5e sheet is a tiefling warlock holding a flaming sword. Asking one table to hold both would break both.