I looked for apps related to both 5th Edition and Pathfinder because we use both systems. I haven't spent enough time with it to say these are the best apps or anything like that. I just wanted to share what I've found and give a brief review of each.
Apps for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons
D&D 5 Spellbook Cards by m&m Apps
This app is basically a digital version of the spell cards that I made or that you can now buy from Wizards of the Coast. It contains all the spells from the Player's Handbook and Elemental Evil. The spells are listed alphabetically and you can view all the spells or sort by class. Then you just click on the plus to add that spell to your personal list.
When you click on each spell you can see a card that lists all the information for that spell. You can also side swipe to move through all the cards in your spellbook. It's simple but I really like it. You don't have to search through the book to find what damage your spell does or flip through a bunch of spells you can't cast while trying to decide what you want to use.
Companions for D&D 5e by Ryan Stout
This one is all about animal companions. It has the stats for any of the creatures you can have as an animal companion or familiar as well as things you can change into using wild shape or polymorph. It let's you sort by a variety of categories including CR, movement type, and size.
I'm particular fond of this app because Druids are my favorite class, having this means I don't have to browse the Monster's Manual to see what my wild shape options are.
Apps for Pathfinder RPG
Pathfinder Grimoire OGL by Blank Snow
I looked at a couple of different spellbook apps for the Pathfinder system and this one way my favorite. It has Pathfinder spells from a large list of sources including the Pathfinder blog. It actually has a lot of options for sorting everything. You can filter the list by class, source, level, school of magic, or name. There's also an option to mark spells as favorites and you can filter to just show favorites. Then on top of that you can sort the filtered list by name, school, or level.
Again clicking on any given spell pulls up all the relevant info but unlike in the 5th Ed app it's not all contained on a single page so it's a bit less convenient. There's also not a way to create a unique spellbook. I suppose you could use favorites to chose only spells your character knows but that seems a bit of an awkward way to go about things.
Pathfinder Toolkit by Lateensoft
I've only started to play around with this one but it looks like it could be really useful. It has 6 features: Characters, Initiative Tracker, Party Skill Checker, Party Manager, Point Buy Calculator, and a Dice Roller. I'll discuss each on just a little bit.
Characters will let you fill in all the information making a mini character sheet. You can input multiple characters. The problem is that you have to actually type everything in. There's no drop down menus or anything like that. For example when you click to add a feat there's a line to type in the name of the feat and a box for description so if you wanted to see the details of the feat you'd have to type in the description yourself.
The Initiative Tracker is pretty straightforward. You add in whatever characters you want involved in the encounter and then click roll for initiative and it rolls for everyone, adds relevant bonuses and displays the results.
The Party Skill Checker rolls a save or skill check for the entire party and displays the results.
The Pointbuy Calculator shows the basic stat array and lets you add points and keeps a running tally of what you've spent.
The Dice Roller, obviously, rolls dice. It has options for a single roll, roll x number of y sided dice, and cumulative rolls. Single roll lets you choose a quantity and type of dice to roll. XdY Roll does the same thing but shows the individual rolls along the side as well as the total. With Cumulative Rolls you chose the dice and it show both the individual and total rolls as well as keeping a total of multiple rolls at the bottom.
I'm not sure yet what the Party Manager does because I've only entered one character. I know it let's you add characters to a party but after that I'm not sure.
The features that I like most are the Pointbuy Calculator and Dice Roller. I can never remember how many points it takes to increase a stat by how much and this would make it faster for me to create a character because I would have to be constantly referencing the chart. The dice roller I think would be good for times when you need to roll lots of dice and they don't really fit in your hand. I don't really see much reason to use the Party Skill Checker and I've seen better ways to manage initiative order. I also personally would never use the character sheet just because it seems like too much of a hassle to fill it all out. Possibly the skill checker or initiative tracker would be more useful to someone running the game but I've never game mastered before so I couldn't say. It's also possible that if I knew what the party manager did it would be super useful as well.
These are just some of the first apps I've downloaded and tried. There are many others out there especially dice rollers. Just scrolling through a search for Pathfinder there are apps for rules references, spellbooks, dice programs, name generators and more. So check it out, see if you can find just the right app to make the game easier for you or to make things run more smoothly for your particular group.
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