A free alternative
A different approach to the same evening.
If you came looking for a free alternative to D&D Beyond for your character sheet, this page is the straight answer. Steward is an unofficial fan-made companion for D&D 5.5e / 2024 tables. It is free, it needs no account, and it keeps your character on your own device. It is also one person's project in early alpha, which is the part most pages like this leave out.
The approach
Free, and the free part is not a trial. There are no premium classes, no paid subclasses and no locked features. The support page exists because hosting costs money, and it says out loud that donations never unlock playable content.
No account. You open a URL and you are building. Nothing to create, nothing to remember, nothing to log into at the table.
Your character stays on your device. No server holds it, which means no server can lose it or change the terms later. The trade is real and worth stating: clearing your browser data clears your character, so Steward tells you to export it. The legal page describes this in present tense rather than in marketing tense.
It explains the choice, not just the number. The thing Steward was actually built for is the moment a new player asks why a number is what it is. It shows the arithmetic behind a modifier instead of only the result.
Mobile first, because that is where the table is. It is made for a phone next to your dice, not for a desktop you left at home. The install guide covers adding it to your Home Screen.
What Steward is not
An alternative is only useful if it is honest about its own shape.
Not official, and never will be. Steward has no licence to the rules content. Everything it knows was built by hand from freely available rules or written from scratch. When a new book comes out, it will not appear here.
Not a platform. No campaigns, no parties, no sharing a sheet with your DM. Steward is one character on one device, and that is the whole scope on purpose.
Not a company. It is one person: a DM, a player, a designer and a father, which the about page says in plain words.
Not finished. Early alpha. Offline support is unfinished and one character is the current limit. The roadmap shows what is next and the changelog records what changed, including the known limits of each release. Neither page rounds up.
On D&D Beyond
D&D Beyond is the official digital toolset, made by the people who publish the game, with the licensed content inside it. If your table runs its campaign there, or you have books in your library, that is a good reason to stay. Steward is not here to argue you out of a tool that already works for you.
The two are also not mutually exclusive. Plenty of tables keep their library in one place and their working sheet in another.
Steward might fit if
- You want a character sheet that costs nothing and stays that way.
- You are teaching someone the game and want the maths shown, not hidden.
- You would rather not create another account.
- You want your character data to stay on your own device.
- You play from your phone at the table.
- You are fine using something that is still being built, and saying so when it breaks.
Steward advises: the fastest way to find out is to build a character. It takes no account and costs nothing, so the only thing at risk is a few minutes.