In general, when my group is playing we each have a die that counts as a character that we position to get a feel for where everyone is. For monsters, we sort of use the same outline, since I keep my monsters numbered, making it easier for me to track health and who's targetting what. But I've been looking into a better system for keeping track of all of it and I remember in fourth edition, monsters had little cardboard pop outs and was thinking of something like that.
How do you keep track of where monsters are? I don't want to deal with minis for every monster I have and don't want to spend a whole lot of money either.
the first few weeks I just bought a bag of candy that has different colors. kill the opponent and you get to eat it as well. the colors help to keep it apart.
My wife is pretty "crafty" so she has round-cut punch dies and sheets of "craft foam" in multiple colors.
She punched out a dozen circles in every size/color combination she had on hand ( or rather, she chose the appropriate die sized for small/medium/large creature sizes ), notched the edge of the circle with another punch tool she had on hand to indicate a "facing direction", and wrote numbers 1-12 on each with a a sharpie.
You could do the same with colored paper - but the craft foam gives them a little body, and makes them easier to gather up.
"OK - the red circles are the Lizard folk ( 1-6 ) and this big green one is the T-rex ..."
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We had some felt furniture feet that I just left the paper on the back and numbered them. Also made some for the player characters as well since we have so many. Thanks all.
My DM uses plastic gaming pawns. He'll color code them so that we know which is a minion and which is a boss. When he needs to indicate a Large-sized creature, we hand over our empty Chessex cases. Adds some scale, and easy to store. We like to keep our Table clean and worry free. We prefer to spend our hard-earned cash on food and drinks for everyone to share. :D
If you have access to a 3d printer I whipped these up recently and they worked wonderfully. I plan to print a couple more colors to differentiate between mob types and/or bosses.
I'm buying multi colored gaming stones for this exact purpose. Each character can have their own gaming stone and each monster type can share the same color .
I just want to add that I flip over the monster tokens for monsters that hide or go invisible etc to indicate their last known position and keep track of their current position in my head. Previously I just told players “they are invisible so you don’t know exactly where they are.”. But human nature being what it is my players always “just happened” to place their fireball where it would just catch the unseen monster. Haha. Meta knowledge is so hard to ignore.
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In general, when my group is playing we each have a die that counts as a character that we position to get a feel for where everyone is. For monsters, we sort of use the same outline, since I keep my monsters numbered, making it easier for me to track health and who's targetting what. But I've been looking into a better system for keeping track of all of it and I remember in fourth edition, monsters had little cardboard pop outs and was thinking of something like that.
How do you keep track of where monsters are? I don't want to deal with minis for every monster I have and don't want to spend a whole lot of money either.
Thanks in advance.
the first few weeks I just bought a bag of candy that has different colors. kill the opponent and you get to eat it as well. the colors help to keep it apart.
My wife is pretty "crafty" so she has round-cut punch dies and sheets of "craft foam" in multiple colors.
She punched out a dozen circles in every size/color combination she had on hand ( or rather, she chose the appropriate die sized for small/medium/large creature sizes ), notched the edge of the circle with another punch tool she had on hand to indicate a "facing direction", and wrote numbers 1-12 on each with a a sharpie.
You could do the same with colored paper - but the craft foam gives them a little body, and makes them easier to gather up.
"OK - the red circles are the Lizard folk ( 1-6 ) and this big green one is the T-rex ..."
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
You can print out paper minis for free, but there is not a ton of them available
There's Printable Heroes here: https://printableheroes.tumblr.com/post/155421067402/where-are-all-the-minis
Never used it myself, but they produce a fair number ( and looking at their Patreon page, it's a damn lucrative gig! :o ).
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
We had some felt furniture feet that I just left the paper on the back and numbered them. Also made some for the player characters as well since we have so many. Thanks all.
You can use plastic gaming pawns. Either use different colours for different monsters or write a number on them with a permanent marker pen.
There are also a lot of paper minis available for sale, for example at DriveThruRPG. They work really well with plastic stands.
A small amount of work with cardboard, scissors and stands will look surprisingly professional at the gaming table.
My DM uses plastic gaming pawns. He'll color code them so that we know which is a minion and which is a boss. When he needs to indicate a Large-sized creature, we hand over our empty Chessex cases. Adds some scale, and easy to store. We like to keep our Table clean and worry free. We prefer to spend our hard-earned cash on food and drinks for everyone to share. :D
If you have access to a 3d printer I whipped these up recently and they worked wonderfully. I plan to print a couple more colors to differentiate between mob types and/or bosses.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2989088
(I'm also contemplating selling printed sets; if you have an idea of how much you'd be willing to spend on these let me know!)
I'm buying multi colored gaming stones for this exact purpose. Each character can have their own gaming stone and each monster type can share the same color .
I just want to add that I flip over the monster tokens for monsters that hide or go invisible etc to indicate their last known position and keep track of their current position in my head. Previously I just told players “they are invisible so you don’t know exactly where they are.”. But human nature being what it is my players always “just happened” to place their fireball where it would just catch the unseen monster. Haha. Meta knowledge is so hard to ignore.