Walkthrough: The Homebrew Forge

The Homebrew Forge is a single wizard for authoring your own compendium cards — monsters, NPCs, magic items, spells, and classes — and saving them into the shared library that the whole DND family reads. This walkthrough takes you from an empty Concept step to a forged card, then through the private → pending → public lifecycle that gets your creation in front of other DMs.

One thing to set straight first: the Forge authors compendium cards (rows in the shared srd_cards library), not playable characters. For player characters, use the separate character builder. The Forge is the homebrew counterpart to the read-only SRD compendium.

What you'll need: a DNDCards.com sign-in. Opening the Forge while signed out redirects you to /login.

Build a homebrew monster

The full Monster walk has the most steps; the other four types are shorter variations covered below.

1. From the left sidebar, click Homebrew Forge. This opens the full-screen wizard at /homebrew/new. (A ?type= query param can preselect a type; Monster is the default.)
2. On the Concept step you'll see a pill bar of the five types — Monster, NPC, Item, Spell, Class. Leave Monster selected. Enter a Name (e.g. Cinder Hound), an optional Description, and pick a Target CR, Size, and Type from the dropdowns.
3. (Optional) Click Draft with AI (enabled once the name is at least 2 characters). The Forge fills in a balanced statblock and jumps you to the Identity step to refine it. You can skip this and click Next to fill things in by hand.
4. Identity step: set Armor Class, HP, and Speed. The form shows DMG balance targets for your CR (suggested AC, HP range, attack bonus, save DC, damage per round) as guidance. Next requires CR to parse and AC and HP above 0.
5. Abilities step: set STR through CHA (each 1–30); the modifier shows beside each score.
6. Defenses & senses step (optional): senses, languages, damage vulnerabilities / resistances / immunities, condition immunities, and a skills list.
7. Actions step: add actions, special abilities, bonus actions, reactions, and legendary actions. Write weapon attacks the way a 5e statblock reads — +N to hit … Hit: (XdY) <type> damage — so the combat engine can parse them. A monster needs at least one filled-in action to advance.
8. Flavor & art step (optional): write flavor text and optionally click Generate art to paint a card illustration. A board mini is painted automatically the first time the card is invoked.
9. Review step: a card preview plus a Before you forge list of advisory validator notes — balance advisories in gold, unparseable-attack warnings in red. None of these block you.
10. Click Forge it. This inserts your card with source = Homebrew, owner_id set to you, and visibility hard-coded to private. You're routed to the Compendium, filtered to your Homebrew source, with a Forged. banner.

Per-type differences

Item, Spell, and Class follow the same Concept → … → Review arc with their own steps and forge rules. Switching between Monster and NPC keeps your draft (they share a shape); switching to or from Item / Spell / Class resets the draft to a fresh start for that type.

For Items, the Mechanics step is where homebrew earns its keep: the synthesized attack/save line is run through the same combat parser the VTT uses, so you see either an engine-readable confirmation or a red unparseable warning before you forge.

Publish to the community

A forged card starts private — only you can see it. The visibility badge and the publish control appear only on cards you own.

1. In the Compendium, find your card under its Homebrew source. It shows a Private badge.
2. Click Publish (the globe icon). The badge flips to Pending review.
3. An admin approves it out of band (in DND.chat's admin tools). Once approved, the badge shows Public and the card becomes world-readable in the virtual Community source that anyone can browse.
4. At any pending or public state, click Withdraw (the undo icon) to pull the card back to private.

You can never set a card public yourself — that's an admin decision, enforced by row-level security that forbids an owner from ever writing visibility = public. Your private homebrew stays private until you submit it and an admin approves it.

// What "Forge it" writes to srd_cards
{
  "category": "monster",
  "source": "Homebrew",
  "owner_id": "<your user id>",
  "visibility": "private",
  "slug": "hb-<owner8>-cinder-hound-<6char>"
}

Where your homebrew shows up

Once forged, a card is reusable across the family — that's the point of writing it into the shared compendium:

• Immediately, for you: under the Homebrew source in your Compendium, and in your own Invoke picker.
• For everyone, once approved: in the virtual Community source (cards with an owner that are publicly visible).
• In tactical play: in DNDWar.com's My Homebrew tab, and rollable in combat — the Forge writes canonical stat-row labels (Challenge, AC, HP, Speed, etc.) and the type-specific combat data precisely so the VTT can seed a fight from your card.

Gotchas

• Monster vs NPC: NPCs can be forged with zero combat actions (a soft gate); monsters require at least one filled-in action. Switching between the two preserves your draft, but switching to Item / Spell / Class resets it.
• "Zero" sentinels collapse to nothing: for items, a 0 attack bonus, 0 save DC, or 0 charges is treated as none (no attack, no charges) rather than a literal +0. Spell level 0 is a real cantrip, not a sentinel.
• Validator notes don't block you: an unparseable-attack warning is advisory. Your card forges anyway, but the VTT won't be able to auto-roll that attack until the line reads like a 5e statblock.
• No-op publish actions: submitting an already-pending card or withdrawing an already-private one just returns the current state without changing anything.
• Editing official cards is different: SRD/official cards aren't freely editable. To tweak one, clone it as homebrew first — see the Cards & Compendium reference.

When you're ready to use a forged card at the table, see Running a Connected Group Session, or the FAQ if you hit one of the messages above.