D&D 5e Integration in Foundry VTT is Pretty Good

I've been pretty busy with not-strictly-TTRPG projects, so blogging cadence has slowed down a bit — but my regular RP Group is switching games again, and we're going to play 5e with a reasonably modified Curse of Strahd Module. This is probably the first time I've played a modern D&D game in a decade or so? Closest was probably a Pathfinder 1e game in 2014?

Now, normally, we just use Foundry VTT for a subset of its features. For example, it's rare that we use tactical grid combat or initiative trackers directly in the system, but I think that's going to change this time around, and I might just use every feature Foundry has to offer!

So what's special about the D&D Module?

Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition | Foundry Virtual Tabletop

Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, a Game System for Foundry Virtual Tabletop

Foundry Virtual TabletopAtropos

For one, it's really polished. The character sheets look fantastic. Just look at this thing (borrowed from the above page):

It packs a lot of information into not a lot of space, and generally the whole thing is very intuitive. If a character has a condition resistance, it's right there to remind you. You can favorite basically any "Item" in Foundry's parlance, and have it right on the first page.

There are multiple tabs for managing the complexity of a 5e character (which itself is less complex than 3.5), memorizing spells, biography, full inventory, and so on and so on.

They've done a lot of automation work

A lot of systems in Foundry handle calculations for you, but I feel like the 5e system goes a bit out of its way to make things nice and smooth. For example, if you make a custom Background (which you have to do if you want 2014 content that isn't included in the SRD, and the only background in the SRD is the Acolyte), you can set up "advancements" which grant you items, abilities, skill proficiencies, languages, and so on. For each of those, you can additionally add a choice which appears to the player as they're adding the background.

As an example, here are the advancements for the Entertainer Background (which I manually entered by using my eyeballs and a physical copy of the 2014 PHB):

And here are the steps when selecting that background:

The same holds true for any other character options, like Classes, Races (Species in 2024), Subclasses, etc.

There are a couple of rough edges, though. You do have to manually add the gear from your class in many cases even though it appears you could program it to do so. Likewise, adding "kits" through that advancement feature doesn't really work since you cannot automatically add a container with its contents, unless those contents are money.

But, there's a lot of other stuff it'll calculate for you too, if you use the token features:

• Did that attack just hit the proper defense? Select the token you're targeting and click your attack.
• How many hit points did it deplete? Auto-tracking of damage.
• Auto tracking of spent spell slots and limited-use resources.
• Spending hit die on a short rest to recover hit points
• XP distribution / Money distribution from the GM.
• Random encounter tables.

I'm sure there's more than I've encountered so far.

Other things you should know

So one major thing about the 5e integration is that for the 2014 version of the game, there is no official content available. The data that is bundled from the system comes from the SRD, which includes enough information to play, but just enough information.

Since we're playing a hacked setting, I've added a bunch of content we'll need to play, along with the extra backgrounds from the PHB. It was a few hours worth of work and testing to ensure I got everything right when I was doing the data entry and creating the right advancements.

For the 2024 version of the game, there are 3 official modules that you can purchase. Those are listed on the page I linked above.

Why FoundryVTT, Generally?

For me, Foundry VTT is a really nice mix of features and complexity. It's not the easiest VTT to use, but you can do basically anything in it.

You can run it on your computer and have folks connect directly to it, or you can run it on a server (which is what I do).

It's a single purchase. $50 normally. But if you buy before May 31st, 2025, it's $10 off.

All of that makes it very handy, even if you don't use the token movement features for most of your games.