The character builder on a phone

The character builder is a wide, cinematic thing on a desktop: a step ribbon across the top, a portrait beside a form, a strip of your picks along the bottom. A phone has room for about a third of that at once. Rather than shrink it all, the builder rearranges — the controls that matter come to your thumb, and the ones that were only ever scenery step aside.

Everything on this page happens automatically on a small screen — a phone in either orientation, and a narrow split-screen window on a tablet. Nothing is missing: every step, every choice and the full sheet are all there.

The frame

Two bars stay put while the step itself scrolls between them.

At the top: which step you are on. Instead of ten pills across the screen, you get one: 1/10 · Identity. Tap it and the full list drops down, so you can jump straight to Ability Scores or back to Species without stepping through everything in between. Tap a step to go there; the list closes behind you. The genre switcher sits beside it, so you can re-skin the builder mid-flight the same way you can on a desktop.

At the bottom: Back, Next, and whether your work is saved. The builder autosaves as you go, and this bar is where it tells you — Draft saved means you can close the tab and come back to exactly this point.

Both bars stay put whatever you do. That is the point of them: the step scrolls between them, and the controls never scroll away with it.

On the last step, Next is gone on purpose: the review step has its own Bring them to life button, and two buttons that do the same thing is one button too many.

The strip of picks

Just above Back and Next is a row showing the character as they come together: their name and portrait, then species, class and level, then ability scores and HP/AC once those exist. On a phone the row scrolls sideways — a soft fade on the edge means there is more that way.

The expand button at the right end stays put no matter how many chips fill in, and opens the full character sheet over the whole screen. That is the same sheet you get on a desktop, laid out in one column instead of two.

Turning your phone sideways

Landscape gets the same two bars, but the strip of picks disappears. A phone on its side has very little height to spare, and a row you only glance at is not worth a sixth of it. Sheet moves up next to the step name instead, so the full character sheet is still one tap away.

Everything else is the same. Turning back to portrait brings the strip back.

What is different from a desktop

Three deliberate changes, none of which remove anything:

No scenic backdrop. On a desktop each step has a photographic backdrop behind it. On a phone that is a large download, a real drain on the battery, and contrast the text has to fight. You get a flat wash in the genre’s own colours instead — the theme still changes when you switch genre.
The portrait frame is sized to the screen. It takes about a third of the height rather than a fixed width, so the name and the rest of the step are visible without scrolling first.
Bigger taps. The − and + on ability scores, and every row in the step list, are sized for a fingertip rather than a cursor. This follows the pointer, not the screen size — a touchscreen laptop gets the roomy targets too, and a phone with a mouse attached does not.
A gentle tap back. Moving between steps, choosing one from the list and placing an ability score each fire a short haptic on devices that have one.

Ability scores without dragging

On a desktop you drag a value onto a stat. That is a fussy gesture on a phone, so there is a second way that needs no dragging at all:

Standard array — tap a number in the pool to pick it up, then tap Place 15 on whichever stat you want it on. Tap the number again to put it back.
Roll 4d6 — tap swap on one stat, then swap here on another, and the two trade places.
Point buy already worked by tapping: it is just the − and + buttons.

Dragging still works everywhere if you prefer it.

Editing later

Everything above applies to editing an existing character too — the builder and the editor are the same screen. Open any character and tap Edit.

If something looks wrong

The builder is checked on an iPhone-sized screen, both ways up, every time it changes — including that every step’s Back and Next can actually be tapped rather than merely being on screen. If you hit a control you cannot reach, or a step that runs off the edge, that is worth reporting: tell us the device, which way up you were holding it, and which step you were on.