Connecting your other tools
Which tools DM's Familiar links out to today, how the pieces fit together, and what this one deliberately doesn't do.
Supported today
DM’s Familiar sits beside two other tools and links out to both. It doesn’t replace either.
| Job | Supported today | What the link does |
|---|---|---|
| Character sheets | D&D Beyond | Each character can carry a sheet URL; Open D&D Beyond sheet ↗ in the profile drawer opens it in a new tab. |
| Map scenes | Owlbear Rodeo | Each place can carry a scene URL; Open Owlbear scene ↗ on the Campaign tab opens it in a new tab. |
Others — Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, World Anvil — may follow. When they do, they’ll appear as a row in this table; the way a link is stored and opened doesn’t change.
What comes from a character sheet
Nothing, automatically. You read the sheet and type the name, AC and three passive scores into the card yourself — a snapshot, taken by hand, on the day you took it. There is no live sync and no API integration; the sheet URL is a deep link out and nothing is scraped from it.
That’s a smaller job than it sounds. Four numbers per character, once, and then again when they level. What you get for it is a card that’s yours: annotated with conditions, effects and secrets that no sheet has a field for.
Why there’s no HP here
The encounter tracker your players type into is the only place hit points stay right. It’s the one they update when they take damage, and a mirrored copy in a second app is wrong by round three — not because anyone forgot, but because two places to write a number is one place too many.
So DM’s Familiar holds no hit points, no temporary hit points, no death saves, no initiative order and no dice. That’s a product decision, not a gap. Everything on screen is either static reference or something only you know, which is why it can stay open through a fight without competing with the tracker for your attention.
Map scenes
A place on the Campaign tab can carry a scene URL. Set that place as the current location and the pulse card offers Open Owlbear scene ↗; every place row has its own scene ↗ link as well. Scenes open in a new browser tab and are never embedded — the map belongs to the tabletop, and the tabletop is better at showing it.
Keeping snapshots fresh
Because the numbers are typed rather than synced, they drift. The app counts sessions: once three have started since a character’s snapshot was taken, the profile drawer shows an amber warning with Update snapshot and a link to the sheet, and it keeps showing it until you re-enter AC or the passives.
The habit worth building is simpler than the warning: before the first session at a new level, open each sheet and check the four numbers. It takes two minutes for a party of six, and it means the warning rarely fires.