Chapter 41

Homebrew: the Editors, Kind by Kind

Chapter 40 covered the editor as a machine: the Quill and Page split, the absence of a Save button, artwork, tearing a page out. This chapter is the other half. Each of the nine kinds asks for different things, and what it asks for is shaped by what its card prints.

Two rules hold across all nine, so they are not repeated below:

Only Name is required. Everything else can stay empty forever.
Fields follow the entry's own rule set, not the tab you opened it from. A 2024 entry keeps its 2024 fields even when you reach it from the 2014 shelf.

Every dropdown works the same way

Tap a dropdown and a sheet slides up. It holds, in order:

Leave blank, if the field already has a value.
Every value the shipped System Reference Document uses for that field.
Any value you have typed before, marked (yours).
Something else..., which opens a box and takes whatever you type.

So the dropdowns are suggestions, never a fence. Type a school of magic that does not exist and the app will offer it back to you next time.

Spell

The spell form is the archetype the others are cut from.

Name.
Level and School, side by side. Level 0 reads Cantrip in the list.
Casting Time and Range.
Components, as three chips: V, S, and M. Turning M on reveals a Material field. Turning M off clears that field, because a card must not carry a material footnote for a component it no longer has.
Duration, then Concentration and Ritual chips.
Classes, a row of chips, one per class in the rule set. Tap as many as apply. These become the tappable class chips on the card.
The description, written as blocks. See chapter 42.
At Higher Levels, free text, for what upcasting adds.

Monster

The longest form, and the one that types the way a printed stat block reads. You are not filling in separate numbers for armor class; you type the whole line the book prints.

Name, then Size and Type, then Subtype.
Initiative appears only on a 2024 monster, because only the 2024 stat line prints it.
Alignment and Challenge. Picking a challenge rating fills in the experience points from the book's table. An off-list rating carries no table value, so it clears the experience points instead of guessing.
Armor Class, typed whole: "14 (natural armor)".
Hit Points, typed whole: "22 (4d8+4)".
Speed, typed whole: "30 ft., climb 20 ft."
Six ability boxes in a row under a small ABILITIES heading, labeled STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA.
Saves and Skills, typed like the book: "Dex +5, Wis +3".
Damage Resistances, Damage Immunities, Damage Vulnerabilities, and Condition Immunities.
Senses, which opens its own full-screen page because the line gets long.
Languages.
Four repeating sections: Traits, Actions, Legendary Actions, Reactions.

The four repeating sections list the entries you have written, one row each, plus a ghosted add row. Tapping a row opens a whole screen with just a name and a description on it. That is deliberate: an action is a paragraph of prose, and a paragraph deserves the screen.

The hit point suggestion

Type a bare dice expression into Hit Points, like "7d10", and leave the field. The app fills in the whole line the way the book would: "59 (7d10 + 21)", averaging the dice and adding the Constitution bonus for every hit die.

Two details make this behave rather than annoy:

It only fires on a bare dice expression. If you typed a full line yourself, or a plain number, the app never touches it.
Hit Points sits above the ability boxes, so a top-to-bottom fill computes the suggestion before you have entered Constitution. When you later change Constitution, a value that still matches the old suggestion re-derives with the new score. A hand-typed value never matches, and so is never overwritten.

This is a DM-facing convenience only. It has nothing to do with what players see; the app still never shows monster numeric hit points at the table.

Class

Classes carry the most structure, and one genuinely different idea: you do not type the level progression table.

The form's top half:

Name, Hit Die.
Primary Ability, 2024 only.
Saving Throws.
Proficiencies, which split by rule set: - 2014 gives one merged Proficiencies field. - 2024 gives four fields matching its Core Traits block: Skill Proficiencies, Weapon Proficiencies, Armor Training, Tool Proficiencies.
Subclasses.
Starting Equipment, one option per line.
Becoming (entry / multiclass), 2024 only, one point per line.

Then Class Features, the same one-row-per-entry list the monster blocks use, with a + add feature button. A feature's own page adds a level dropdown, which starts at no level and runs 1 to 20. Levels matter here because a leveled feature writes itself into the progression table.

The two-question progression interview

Level Progression is not a table editor. It asks two questions and composes the table itself.

The first question is on screen before you have done anything: does this class cast spells? Four chips answer it.

No spellcasting, which gives you the spine plus your own columns.
Half caster, slots 1st through 5th.
Full caster, slots 1st through 9th.
Pact magic, one slot pool.

Choosing one builds the whole table, prefilled with the standard slot progression for that style. You are never asked about Level, Proficiency Bonus, or Class Features: the first two are formulas, and the third comes from the feature blocks you wrote above.

The second question is the + Resource chip, for columns the standard block does not cover: Rages, Sneak Attack, Ki Points. A resource column is authored as a record of changes, not twenty cells.

Give the column a name, for example Rages.
Under Changes at..., state a level and a value. Barbarian rages are five statements, not twenty.
Levels in between keep the last value stated, which the page says under the list.
A blank next statement always waits at the bottom. Once you fill it in, its level is fixed and a fresh blank appears below.
Correcting a statement means striking it with the x button and stating it again. Levels already used drop off the dropdown, because a fact cannot be stated twice.

Below the chips sits the real rendered table, zebra stripes and all, not a preview approximation. Every cell in it is tappable, which is the escape hatch for deliberate deviations from the standard block. Level and Proficiency Bonus stay untappable, since they are formulas. Remove table at the bottom right takes the whole section away.

A class with no progression table is a normal class. The card just hides the section.

Species

Species, background, and feat exist only under the 2024 rules, as chapter 40 explained. Species gets its own structured form; the other two share a simpler one.

Name.
Creature Type and Speed, side by side.
Size, which takes the descriptive form the 2024 book prints, for example "Medium (about 4-5 feet tall)".

Those three vitals compose the bold header line on the card.

Under them, Traits is a reorderable block list. Each row is one trait, one table, or a leftover paragraph carried in from a fork. Drag to reorder, tap a gap between rows to insert there, or use + add trait and + add table at the bottom. A trait opens the same full-screen name-and-description page the monster actions use.

One quiet touch: the intro sentence ("As a Kobold, you have these special traits.") composes itself from the name and keeps up when you rename. A fork that arrived with its own intro keeps it verbatim instead.

Equipment

Equipment's form changes shape based on what you say the thing is.

Name, then Category.
If the category is a weapon, you get Weapon Category, Weapon Range (2014 only, since the 2024 category already names the range), Damage, Properties, and Mastery (2024 only).
If the category is armor, you get Armor Category, Armor Class, Strength Minimum, and a Stealth Disadvantage chip.
Everything gets Cost, Weight, and Description.

The two stat blocks never appear together, and gear, tools, and vehicles show neither. Switching category does not just hide the other block; it sweeps those fields out of the record, so a half-filled weapon flipped to armor does not leave damage dice buried in the entry.

Damage takes the versatile parenthetical the 2014 book prints, "1d8 slashing (1d10 versatile)", and splits it correctly. Under 2024, versatile is a property instead, so the hint is just "1d8 Slashing".

Magic item

Short, because the card is carried by its subtitle.

Name.
Item Type and Rarity.
A Requires Attunement chip.
Stat line, free text. Leave it blank and the card composes a line from your three picks above. Fill it in and yours is printed verbatim.
The description, written as blocks. See chapter 42.

That free-text stat line exists because real items say more than type plus rarity plus attunement: "Weapon (any sword), legendary (requires attunement by a paladin)" is not something three dropdowns can rebuild. When you copy a shipped item to your library, its real line arrives intact.

Condition

The simplest form in the app. Two fields.

Name.
Effects, one effect per line. Start a line with a hyphen and a space to make it a bullet on the card.

There are no dropdowns here at all.

Background and feat

These two share one form.

Name.
Category, on feats only, from the 2024 list: Origin, General, Fighting Style, Epic Boon.
Description, one line per entry.

The Description hint tells you the shape the card expects, and it differs by kind:

A background wants one labeled row per line, for example "Ability Scores: Intelligence, Wisdom". The card parses those bold labels into its rows.
A feat description wants one paragraph per line, with named benefits written as an italic run-in label.

Markdown table rows written into these boxes stay together as one entry rather than shattering into a row per line, so a forked entry that carries a table in its prose survives editing.

Description blocks, the table builder, and roll tables, the machinery that most of these forms lean on, are chapter 42, Homebrew: Description Blocks and Roll Tables.