What Far Table Does Not Do

Every app is defined as much by what it refuses as by what it ships. Far Table refuses a lot. This chapter is the honest list, gathered in one place so you stop looking for things that were never coming.

None of these are gaps waiting on a future release. Each one is a call that was made on purpose, and each one buys something the app would otherwise lose.

No accounts and no sign-up

There is no login screen. There is no email field, no password, no profile, no "continue with" button. Install the app, pick a hat on the first screen, and you are working.

Why: an account is a thing that can be locked out, forgotten, or switched off by somebody else. Your campaign is yours. The app knows nothing about who you are, so there is nothing to sign in to and nothing to lose access to.

The nearest thing to an identity is the Characters list on the launch screen, which is a local convenience so you do not retype your character's name, class, and species at every join. It lives on your device only.

No campaign server

Your campaign lives in your device's storage. Maps, encounters, photos, handouts, and homebrew pages sit there and go nowhere on their own. Backing up, restoring, and moving a campaign to another device are things you do deliberately, covered in chapters 31 and 32.

One honest footnote. When a DM starts hosting, the session code is registered with a small introduction service, and joining players use it to find the DM and swap the technical details needed to open a direct connection. That service holds a session code and connection details for the life of the session, and nothing else. It never sees a map, a photo, a character, or a word of your game. When you end the session, the entry is deleted.

Why: keeping campaign content off the network keeps it private, keeps it working when a service is having a bad day, and keeps the app honest about who owns your prep. It also means there is no subscription, because there is nothing running that would need paying for month after month.

The cost is real, and you should know it: if you lose the device and have no backup, you lose the campaign. Read chapter 31.

No digital dice

There is no roll button that produces a number. There is no random number generator anywhere in the app, and no camera trick that reads your pips and turns them into a total. When a roll matters, you photograph your real dice and the photo goes to the whole table, which reads it by looking. Chapter 20, Dice Are Photos, covers the whole flow.

Why: a number on a screen is a claim. Dice on a table are an event. Far Table keeps the event.

The cost: a Mac or a Windows PC has no camera pointed at your dice, so on desktop you pair a phone to act as the dice camera. Without a paired phone the roll buttons do not appear at all. Chapter 34 covers pairing.

No monster hit points during combat

The combat tracker never stores or shows a monster's hit points. Monster records in combat carry no hit point field at all. Every combatant instead carries one of five plain status words: Healthy, Wounded, Heavy, Mortal, Dead. The DM sets them, and that is what the table sees.

The rules reference is a separate thing and does show hit points, right there on the monster's stat block where the book puts them. That is a book, not a scoreboard. Chapter 37, Reading a Card, covers it.

Why: numeric monster health on a shared screen changes how a table plays. Players start doing arithmetic instead of describing what they see, and the DM loses the freedom to fudge a bruiser into one more round of menace. Statuses give the table the same information a description would: this one is hurt, that one is nearly done.

The DM keeps the real numbers on paper or in their head, the way DMs always have.

No character sheets

Far Table does not hold your character sheet. A saved character in the app is five fields: your name, your character's name, class, species, and darkvision range, plus your speed at join time. That is it. No ability scores, no inventory, no spell list, no prepared spells, no experience points, no leveling.

Why: character sheets are a solved problem, and you almost certainly already have one you like, whether it is paper, a PDF, or another app. Far Table's job is the shared table, not your private bookkeeping. Duplicating your sheet badly would only give you two places to keep the same thing up to date.

The fields it does keep are the ones the shared table actually needs. Darkvision, for instance, is there because the map has to decide what you can see in the dark.

No rules automation

The app does not know the rules of D&D and never applies them. It does not calculate attacks, resolve damage, track spell slots, enforce conditions, or tell anyone what is legal.

Where it looks like it might be doing rules work, look closer:

• Condition chips are labels. Marking a combatant Restrained puts an orange chip on their card. It does not stop anyone from moving.
• The movement string measures the distance you dragged and shows the DM how it compares to your speed. If you ask for more than your speed allows, the DM's request toast says so in red and still offers Accept. It warns. It does not veto.
• Action, bonus action, and reaction markers are a scoreboard for the turn. They record what you say you have used. They never gate a roll or an action.

Why: rules automation makes the app an authority, and the moment it is an authority it starts arguing with the DM. Far Table is a storytelling aid, not a game engine. The DM adjudicates and the app records what they decided.

The rules reference does carry the System Reference Document text, the official 5e rules, so you can look a rule up mid-session, and chapter 35 covers it. Looking a rule up is not the same as the app applying it.

No player-to-player connection

Every player connects to the DM's device and to nothing else. There are no direct player-to-player channels. When one player's dice photo reaches another player, it went through the DM.

That shape holds all the way down. Players propose, the DM's device decides, and every device draws from what the DM broadcasts. Moving your token is a request. Ending your turn is a request. A target you mark appears for the table only once the DM's device has said so.

Why: one device holding the truth means the table can never end up in two states arguing about which one is real. It also means the DM keeps control of what is seen, which is the whole point of a reveal.

No voice or video

Far Table carries maps, dice photos, handouts, and combat state. It does not carry your voices, your faces, or a text chat.

Why: your table already has a voice call it likes. Rebuilding one badly, inside an app whose real job is the shared view, would help nobody. Keep your usual call running alongside Far Table.

No dungeon generation and no story help

The app will not roll you a dungeon, populate a room, generate an encounter to match your party, or suggest what happens next. There is no generator anywhere in it.

Why: this is the sharpest version of the same principle. Far Table shows the table what the DM wants the table to see. What that is stays the DM's business, and the app has no opinion about it at all.