Chapter 37

Reading a Card

A card is what you get when you tap an entry: a spell, a monster, a suit of armor, a condition. Rule pages are prose, covered in chapter 35, The Rules Reference. Cards are records, and every one of them is laid out the same way, whichever kind it is and whoever wrote it.

The skeleton

Top to bottom, every card runs:

Name. The entry, in large maroon type.
Subtitle. One line saying what kind of thing this is. On a spell it is the school and level; on a magic item it is the composed line like "Wondrous Item, Uncommon (requires attunement)"; on a condition it just says Condition.
The meta grid. The at-a-glance numbers, as labeled rows. This is the part you actually read mid-session: casting time, range, armor class, weight, cost. Kinds differ in what they put here, and that is most of what distinguishes one kind from another.
Prose. The description, set as book text with bold and italic run-in labels where the rules use them.
The source line. A small capitals line at the foot, over a gold rule, saying where the entry came from.

The source line is worth trusting because it never lies about provenance:

Shipped content reads "Source", then the chapter and name, then the edition it came from, either SRD 5.1 or SRD 5.2.
An entry you wrote reads "Homebrew" and nothing else. It never claims to be official.
An entry you copied from a shipped one and then changed reads "Homebrew", the name of the entry you forked, and the edition that original came from. Chapter 40, Homebrew: Your Own Pages, covers making both kinds.

Links in the prose

Terms that point at another rule or entry are underlined in gold. Tap one and you land on the target; press Back and you return. The links are not decoration and they are not everywhere: they exist where the rules text genuinely refers you somewhere else.

The first time you follow one, the app says so once, and then stops mentioning it.

What each kind adds

The skeleton holds. The differences are what fills the middle.

Spell. Casting Time, Range, Components, and Duration in the meta grid. The classes that get the spell appear as chips you can tap through to the class card. At Higher Levels sits under the description, and a material component gets a footnote.
Monster. The whole card sits inside a maroon-bordered stat block. Armor class, hit points, and speed first, then the six ability scores with modifiers, then a second grid of saves, skills, resistances, immunities, senses, languages, and challenge. Then Traits, Actions, Bonus Actions, Reactions, and Legendary Actions, in the order a printed book puts them.
Equipment. Cost, weight, damage, armor class, strength minimum, stealth, range, properties, whichever apply. A pack lists its contents as plain rows.
Magic item. Carried by its subtitle: type, rarity, and whether it needs attunement.
Condition. Short by design. A bulleted list of what the condition does to you.
Class. The longest card in the reference. Hit die in the subtitle, then starting equipment, the multiclass section, the full level progression table, class features level by level, subclass write-ups, and for spellcasters a spell list grouped by level with every spell linked.
Species. A short vitals grid of creature type, size, and speed above the prose.
Background. Labeled rows for ability scores, feat, and skill proficiencies. The feat is a link.
Feat. The subtitle names its category, for example Origin Feat.

Some kinds only exist in the 2024 rules. Chapter 39, Two Editions: 2014 and 2024, covers what the edition pill changes.

Paging between siblings

When you open a card from a list, whether that is an A to Z list, a shelf, or a set of search results, the card knows what came before and after it.

A header above the card carries the entry name and a pair of chevrons, previous on the left and next on the right. They gray out at the ends of the list.
On a phone or tablet, swipe left or right across the card to do the same thing.
On a Mac or Windows machine, the left and right arrow keys page, and so does a horizontal trackpad drag.

Paging this way does not pile up history. Read through eight monsters in a row and Back still takes you to the list you started from, once, not back through all eight.

Illustration plates, reference tables, and the DM's Show to players control are chapter 38, Plates, Tables, and Showing the Table.