If you don't use mini's for NPC's, what do you use?

Fiery Dragon's Counters, but now supplemented with about a hundred and fifty D&D Miniatures. In the old days, I used to use metal minis, but I only had a couple dozen, they never looked right for the part, and I damaged them horribly when carrying them around.
 

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Fiery James,

I'm definately interested in buying these Fiery Dragon Counters. I've read up on all of the different sets that are listed on Fiery Dragon's website.

One question though, It's kind of rough to make a decision on which packs I need to buy when there's not a full list of the creatures that are included in the packs.

I'd like to get a lot of counters for core races, but I'm not sure which pack (if any) has halflings, dwarves, elves, ect. I know the Collection 1 has humans and drow, and I could use some of the humans as elves. I was just wondering if the core races exist in any of these packs or if I'd need to substitute counters.

I'd like to buy counters for each creature in the SRD with multiples of the common creatures like the Collection 1 has (buy them all now and get it over with :) ). What is the best way to get all of these without buying the the digital format? Is there one big pack like this that I'm overlooking or do I need to buy each pack individually? I thought it might be cheaper if there was a complete pack I could buy.
 

Oryan77 said:
nicer than "pieces of paper taped to a poker chip".

To reinforce my counters (from Fiery Dragon), I cut out squares of
foam board and paste them to it. While good on their own, the
foam board gives them some substance on the battlemat.
 

THIS IS YOUR SOLUTION!
Our group uses these "counting/alphabet chips" we bought at Wal-Mart. These things are absolutely great.
They are white 1-inch by 1-inch plastic tiles with a screen-printed black letter or number on them. You can buy 88 in a bag for something like a $1.99!
Even better, If you buy the "letter version" you get 26 different tiles!
The tiles are very sturdy and are about the thickness of a standard ruler when its lying flat.
The tiles actually even have ridges around the edge so you can fit a miniature on its base inside the lip. When we use a combination of both, we set the minis on the tiles and use them to "call our defender" out to the DM to help his record-keeping.
Once again, you can find these at ANY Wal-Mart. Just go and look for them in either the kids' party supply area, the craft section or "the education section."
I can't gush enough, these things are GREAT!!!
(As an aside, I found multi-colored tiles at a Dollar Store, but it didn't have the actual screen printed letter on them. Instead it had an embossed number. These are especially good when you have a mini on top of the tile. You just call out "the green orc" or whatever.)
Go take a look for them. They are perfect!
 

Christian Walker said:
I like to find cool fantasy art, then I cut and paste a one inch head and shoulders shot. I print it out, then glue the one inch by one inch picture onto say, a piece of cardstock or foam core. It works very well and is cheap cheap cheap. :)

Same here. I also like to grab art from the MM v3.5 art gallery at the WotC site ( http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ag/20030712a ), crop the picture to the face/shoulder and size them to the creature size (1x1 inch for medium, 2x2 inch for large, etc)
 

mini woes

I wish I didn't have all the metal & plastic minis that I do have. I like the creativity of painting them, but it is too time consuming--especially when I DM. I'm to the point now that I just use a mini that "fits" instead of a specialized creation. I wish I had strated collecting minis with the D&D minis so they would be already painted and ready to go. I've realized that I like them as a game aid, not necessarily as a game unto themselves (except for Star wars minis which have a great deal of appeal to me).

One thing I have done is to scan a picture of a monster from a book, resize it to have a 1-inch bottom, copy it into Word 4 times in a row, print it on card stock, score the lines, and cut & tape it so it makes a sort of square piece for the game table. I have had great success with this method for offbeat games, and I think it would work great with the new Counter Collection Digital for D&D. A big help is to use an actual mini for the PCs & allies so the good guys are more distinguished from the bad guys. An added bonus is that they fold flat and go in an envelope when the game is over.
 

Our group uses these "counting/alphabet chips" we bought at Wal-Mart.

I wouldn't mind checking these out. I bet it'll be a pain in the butt to find these in Wal-mart since I'm not sure exactly what they are called or what department they'd be in :p
 


I once needed about 120 peasant cultists for a big battle scene so I collected the plastic caps from soda bottles and painted them in solid colors in roughly even groups. I then worked out a random table and rolled on it to determine three rounds worth of movement activity in advance for each color group once action started. Using regular minis for higher ranking cultists and other NPCs this gave me a great way to represent what was going on.

Visually it helped the players appreciate just what their characters were dealing with and it didn't cost that much to do.

The players also liked the way it helped with body count after the mayhem came to an end.
 
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