D&D Beyond

Review by eFreeware

Wizards of the Coast LLC publishes this official companion app for Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition. It bundles character sheets, a dice roller, spell and monster references and digital books into one app, and it is free to download. For anyone who plays fifth edition regularly, having the official toolset in the same place as the rules they already use is the main draw.

The app has been available since July 2020 and sits at a 4.6 average from more than 130,000 ratings, with over 5 million installs. Those numbers suggest it has settled into a routine role at many tables rather than being a novelty. There are no ads, though the app does offer in-app purchases.

What I find worth noting up front is the scope. This is not a generic dice app with a fantasy skin. Everything in it, from character sheets to monster stat blocks, is built around fifth edition play.

Character sheets and the dice roller at the center

The feature the developer leads with is the character sheet, and it is the part most players will open first. You can reach your characters whether you have a connection or not, which matters at tables where the Wi-Fi is unreliable or nonexistent. The sheet tracks health, spell slots, equipment and proficiencies, so the bookkeeping that usually eats into a session stays in one place.

The built-in dice roller covers the standard polyhedral set: D20, D100, D12, D10, D8, D6 and D4. The app handles the arithmetic, which is the small but constant friction of tabletop play. For skill checks, attack rolls and saving throws, rolling inside the app keeps the result and the modifier together rather than making you do the sum in your head.

If you have a favorite set of physical dice, the app also offers themed digital dice sets, so the roller is not limited to plain numbers. That is a cosmetic layer rather than a mechanical one, but it is the sort of thing that makes a digital roll feel less like a spreadsheet and more like part of the game.

Premade characters, the creator and reference material

Getting started is handled in two ways. There are premade characters drawn from Baldur's Gate 3 and Lost Mine of Phandelver, which means a new player can sit down with something usable rather than spending an evening on paperwork. There is also a Guided Character Creator for building a character from scratch, which the developer presents as a way to start playing quickly.

Beyond characters, the app carries adventures, sourcebooks and other Dungeons & Dragons content. Monster stat blocks are included too, covering creatures such as owlbears, dragons and mimics, including ones that have appeared in films like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. For a Dungeon Master running a session on the fly, having that reference in the same app as the party's sheets is a genuine convenience.

Search and bookmarks tie the reference material together. You can look up rules, spells, items and monsters when a question comes up mid-session, and bookmark the entries you return to. It is the least glamorous part of the app and probably the one that gets used most often once a campaign is underway.

The developer pitches the toolset as suitable for beginners, regular players and experienced Dungeon Masters alike, and notes that digital tools of this kind have been used on shows such as Critical Role. That is a marketing claim rather than something I can verify, but it does describe the intended audience accurately enough: this is built for people already playing fifth edition, at any level of experience.

What the app asks of you

The app is free to download and contains no ads. It does offer in-app purchases. Anyone weighing the app should treat the free download as the starting point and look at what the purchases cover before committing to a campaign's worth of use.

Offline access is one of the stated strengths, and it applies to your characters and your library. That means books and sheets remain reachable in places without Wi-Fi, which is a meaningful difference from tools that assume a constant connection. If your group plays in a basement, a cabin or anywhere with poor signal, this is the feature that keeps the app useful.

The other requirement is simply that you play fifth edition. The content, the terminology and the character options all assume that rule set, and the app is positioned as the official companion to it rather than a system-neutral utility. That focus is what makes it coherent, and it also defines the audience.

How I would use it at the table

My instinct would be to set characters up before the session rather than during it. The premade options or the Guided Character Creator give you something ready to play, and doing that work in advance means the first hour at the table goes to the game instead of to numbers. Once a sheet exists, keeping it updated as health and spell slots change is the habit that makes the rest of the app worthwhile.

For Dungeon Masters, the reference side is where the time savings show up. Searching for a spell or a monster stat block mid-scene is faster than flipping through a book, and bookmarks mean the creatures and rules you use repeatedly are a tap away. I would expect that to be the pattern for most groups: sheets for the players, search and bookmarks for whoever is running the game.

The dice roller is the piece that changes how a session feels. Rolling for skill checks, attacks and saving throws inside the app removes the mental arithmetic and keeps the result visible, and it means a forgotten twenty-sided die is no longer a problem. Themed dice sets are there if you want the roll to look the part.

The most recent update is described as minor bug fixes and improvements, which suggests the app is still being maintained. More features are said to be coming, so the toolset is one the developer intends to keep extending.

A companion for fifth edition tables

D&D Beyond does one thing with real focus: it supports Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition play. Character sheets, the dice roller, monster and spell references and offline access to your library all serve that single purpose, and the app is free to download with no ads. The in-app purchases are the part to look into before you build a campaign around it.

It suits players who already run fifth edition games and want their sheets, rolls and rules in one place, and Dungeon Masters who need to look things up without breaking the flow of a scene. Newcomers are catered for as well, through the premade characters and the Guided Character Creator, which lower the barrier to a first session.

With a 4.6 average from over 130,000 ratings and more than 5 million installs, it has clearly found its audience. If fifth edition is the game you play, this is the official companion for it, and the offline access and built-in roller are the reasons I would keep it on my phone.

What's new in version 2.92.1

• Minor bug fixes and improvements