The DM Screen vs Fantasy Grounds: which one fits your table?

What Fantasy Grounds is

Fantasy Grounds has spent years building the deepest rules automation in the category. Drop in a licensed ruleset and the app knows the math: it applies modifiers, rolls attacks against the right defense, tracks effects and durations, and updates the sheet as combat unfolds. Its store sells officially licensed D&D, Pathfinder, and other content as ready-to-run modules, so a published adventure arrives with its monsters, maps, and encounters already wired for automation. For a crunchy tactical game run online, especially one where you want the rules enforced rather than remembered, it is a powerful machine.

Where The DM Screen wins

The DM Screen trades automation depth for speed and reach. There is nothing to install: it opens in a browser tab, drops you into a guest sandbox, and runs on a phone first, so the tool you run the table from is the one in your pocket. The battle tracker keeps HP, concentration, death saves, legendary actions, and one-tap rests within a thumb's reach. The dice are simulated physics you throw across the sheet. Table mode puts initiative and party status on a TV for the room.

It also covers eight systems with their real mechanics, from D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e to Draw Steel, Daggerheart, Blades in the Dark, and Fate, and it switches between them without a separate purchase or a separate app. Real-time multiplayer is free on every tier, players join from a phone with a link or a six-character code, and everything exports.

Where Fantasy Grounds wins

For rules-heavy online play, Fantasy Grounds automates more than anything The DM Screen attempts. If you run a high-level 5e or Pathfinder fight where every creature has a stack of conditional modifiers, having the app compute all of it is a real gift, and the licensed content store means you can buy an official adventure and run it that night with the numbers already in place. Its Ultimate license also lets your players connect for free, which suits a long-running crew.

The honest cost is friction. Fantasy Grounds is a desktop install with a UI that shows its age, and the learning curve is steeper than any other tool here. Getting comfortable takes a few sessions of fumbling before it feels fast. If your table is in person, or anyone in your group is on a phone or a Chromebook, that weight works against you the whole night.

When to pick which

If you run a crunchy system online and you want the software to enforce the rules so you never look up a modifier mid-fight, pick Fantasy Grounds. Its automation and its licensed-content store are the reason it exists, and no lightweight tool matches them.

If you meet in person, run more than one system, or want to open a phone and be tracking a fight thirty seconds later without an install or a manual, pick The DM Screen. It will not roll every conditional modifier for you, but it keeps the bookkeeping close and it never gets in the way.

Pricing side by side

Approximate and in USD. Fantasy Grounds offers both one-time licenses and a subscription, and sells content per title; check fantasygrounds.com for current pricing.

Common questions