How DM Screen compares to other D&D 5e tools

Kobold Fight Club (encounter building)

Kobold Fight Club is a well-loved free encounter builder: pick monsters, set your party, and get an XP-budget difficulty rating. It is great at planning a fight, and it stops there; when the session starts you still need something else to track initiative, HP, and conditions.

DM Screen covers the same planning step with its own encounter builder and difficulty meter rated against your actual party's stats, then runs the fight it built: initiative, live HP, conditions, concentration checks, and clickable stat block rolls, without switching tools.

Improved Initiative (combat tracking)

Improved Initiative is a solid, focused initiative and combat tracker with SRD stat blocks and custom creature support. If pure initiative tracking is all you want, it does that job well.

DM Screen treats the tracker as the center of a full table kit. The stat block itself is interactive (tap an attack or save to roll it, with the result logged), concentration DCs are worked out for you, area effects resolve every target's save and resistances at once, and the rest of the night's tools (spells, items, shops, NPC names, dice, rules) are one command palette away in the same tab.

D&D Beyond (the official suite)

D&D Beyond is the official platform, and it is the best place for character building and for reading the books you have bought. Its DM tools lean toward prep and content management, and much of the content requires purchases and an account.

DM Screen is unofficial, free, and focused on the two hours you are actually behind the screen. It ships the Creative Commons SRD content for both the 2014 and 2024 rules, works without an account, and keeps your data in your browser. If your table lives on D&D Beyond character sheets, the two coexist fine: players keep their sheets, you run the fight here.

Roll20, Foundry VTT (virtual tabletops)

Virtual tabletops are built for online play: maps, tokens, fog of war, and player clients. They are the right tool when your group plays remotely, and they carry setup cost to match, from module configuration to hosting or subscriptions.

DM Screen deliberately is not a VTT. It is for the in-person table where the map is physical and the DM just needs the rules mechanics handled fast on one screen, with zero setup.

Frequently asked questions