DIY D&D Monster Tokens - Fast, Easy, & Cheap! 

Really wish wizards of the coast just had a mass miniature pack covering all the monster manual monsters. I get that It'd be pricey, but man do i want it.

You could also make a duplicate of the monster with a red 'X' across it, paste that to the flip side, and use it to mark difficult terrain due to dead monster.

oh FINALLY, free minis for my campaigns, THANK YOU!!!

I've been doing this for a little while for my D&D group. I don't have loads of tokens, but if anyone was interested I could link PSD files for the correct D&D map/grid size tokens for all the different monsters, and some of the tokens I use myself.

I know this is old now but it was a huge help. I used Photoshop since I have it but the steps were easy to translate and simple to follow. Thank you!

This is awesome. Knocked out around 40-45 distinct mini's today :D

I know that this video is old, but instead of using the polyline tool, what you can do is click the tiny arrow beside the crop tool on the toolbar, to get the mask tool, and you can crop the image to be a circle.

Even 4 years down the line this is still a super nice and simple way of making pngs look a little more refined in play. Thanks for the assistance :)

This is a great idea. So much better than just printing off pictures of the monsters and cutting them out.

Thanks for the tutorial! I used your template and made about 90 tokens (I also made some generic ones for initiative order and inspiration), my only real complaint is that they are a little hard to pick up off the table since they are flat. I'm new to d&d so I'll be using these while I slowly build a collection of mini's, just wanted to drop a message and say thank you for your videos. They have been very helpful!

Thank you very much for this video! Super easy guide to follow and great looking results ^^ My group just bought a battle map and I can't wait to make tokens for all the characters/monsters in our campaign! :D

Big THANK YOU! We're just about to start playing and these Tokens will surely help us. Just tried it, and it's so easy!

this is very easy to do once you get the hang of it and the trimmers you put into the linked token template make this a breeze honestly this is a DMs best friend

I've seen suggested the use of circular plastic coin holders for tokens. You can get some which are around an inch wide which would let you print out the tokens and stick them inside the coin holders. This has the added benefit of being easily reusable. You could even get some large ones for creatures which are larger than medium sized.

Thank you! I have very few minis and not enough money to buy more, this is extremely helpful!

Thank you for this tip. I didn't even know about Google Drawing until I see this video. Now I will have mini's for my campaign.

Thank you for this tutorial. My son is 9 and just getting into D&D and I'm not ready to spend a ton on the game just yet. This will make our adventure a little more fun while still keeping some coins in my purse.

Awesome video man. Thanks for showing me how to do this, ever since I learned this technique it’s my go-to for token creating when running tabletop games. Super fast, easy as could be. Best of all: FREE!!!!

Amazing! This helped me a lot with creating tokens for my upcoming campaign. Thumbs-up!

Awesome video man! I'm a new DM, about to take my friends through there first adventure and this is going to help immensely!

My husband and I played the sunless citadel. Thanks for the tutorial

Nate, thanks so much man! This never occurred to me and its so bleeding obvious! I'm DMing on such a tiny budget but I wanted to give my new players visual aids to keep track in battle. You have just provided a solution to my problem. I've just made tokens for the entire starter set. Keep up the good work Sir!

Thank you for this video! I needed miniatures for a D&D group I want to make at my school this is a really affordable option.

Wow that's pretty sick. I'll definitely have to make some of these if I decide to make any maps. Shoot might even just make them for the hell of it.

Wow! Using washers is ingenious!! Thanks so much :)

Wonderful tutorial! I bought some wooden discs and some epoxy resin dome stickers and my tokens look sturdy and expensive!

amazing! Really useful, specially because minis are so expensive here and we need to get around that to create battles

This is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thank you so much.

Absolutely genius, I don't know why I hadn't thought about this before

Great video nate! Never knew about that google photoshop, totally going to take this advice

love these tokens there so cheep and versatile whats not to like. seen a few comments saying that a problem to these tokens was picking them up from the middle of a table is fiddly (because there flat) so just a small recommendation if your using metal washers and finding it hard to pick them up off middle of table grab a travel chess set and use the pieces like a magnetic handle to pick them straight up the reason i suggest the magnetic chess set is a fridge mag will probably be to strong and mark or damage the art or might grab multiple tokens at once . problem if you can call it that is solved

Something that would make your life easier when using this is filling the transparent space outside of the circle in white on the template. That way when you bring in your image and send to back you don't need to bother worrying about tracing out any excess

This video was a huge inspiration and help. Although I don't use this for the enemies as much as I would like to, easier to adjust combats on the fly if I don't have to have every enemy have a print out, it is great for the player characters and NPC's.

Wow, randomly started this and I am running the sunless citadel for my group right now. I love it so far and I hope you will also!

Absolutely fantastic tutorial. You are a true hero of the people.

I appreciate the simplicity of this. I use transparent peel-n-stick covers from Hobby story (concave design) that stick on the face side of the token and give a subtle round top to the token that protects it from damage. I get these fairly cheap and like the design. I'll have to make bases for these like you show to give them some heft and keep them from sliding about so much. Make a great room saver in my mini-case as well. I like that they set lower than my player's minis on the tabletop as well. Though I'll have to think about the "Dragon' token a bit more. The ferocity is kinda lost when the token is a flat piece compared to the PC mini. LOL !

Thank you for this video. I think the rainbow monsters would make it easy to know which "bad guy" a player was attacking. Especially since seeing tiny numbers on the token might be hard.

Huge help! Literally. I don't have any huge sized creatures or tokens for my combat and I'm running Storm King's Thunder lol

I appreciate the upload - good stuff thanks!

Great video. Kids and I used to make tokens. Thanks!

Thanks for the video!! Definiteley a help for someone who has neither the time nor the skill for minitures.

I know its damn late, but I just used this today. Very easy and fast. Thanks for the great tip!

You amazing person! this is just what I needed.

thank you so much i am new to D&D and i am running my very first game soon with a few friends and i have NOTHING but i wanted to use a map you are a lifesaver

Congrats on 25k subs!

Thank you for making this video, I am doing a podcast campaign using these types of tokens. We'll be using your circle template because we are on such a budget with 6 players.

Awesome and really useful! Thanks Nate!

Wow, I was just looking at a local store to see what minis they had but I couldn't find it on the website. I was debating a 45 minute drive and then this video got recommended. Making my own, ftw

A 1" circle punch makes the cut out process a Lot easier :-) seem to be at most any craft shop

I love you man. This is sooo effin useful!!!!

I just made some of these using a free online token maker, printed that image out on card stock, cut it out then glued onto 1” wood crafting circles which I painted black. Not heavy but easy to pick up and move around. (200 wooden discs for $6 on Amazon).

Thanks so much for this video. Great looking tokens and so easy even i can do it. I'll probably use minis for the bigger monsters, but man these make for great cannon fodder.

thanks Nate you just made my life really easy, nice instructional

What a great idea. I need some more "gribblies"... this is perfect!

I don't have the patience to do this despite your guide being very helpful. I just ordered Hero Set Tokens from SidequestTTM. Worth checking out. (It is cool you are playing Sunless Citadel, one of my favourite modules)

I know this is a few years back, but YEAH!!! thanks a Bazillion times over!!! This is a genius idea, now to make some monster minis and not getting confused at who is the "good guy" and who is the monster! Thank you thank you thank you by the heavens thank you!!

This is excellent. I am trying to make something called a piecepack and this si just what I needed. Many thanks.

great video! excellent tip! Thanks!

Great tutorial! Thanks a lot.

Great video and super useful. Thank you.

THANK YOU!!! I've been trying to find more token to fit with the default Edge of the Empire tokens and now I won't have to buy minis.

you are awesome, this saved my ass, i totally forgot about making enemy figures so thanks

I use wooden circles. You can buy 1 inch to 2 inch.

Thank you very very much! You are amazing and a life saver! And I love your channel!

This is awesome! Thanks a lot!

Extra tips: If you size the image to 1 inch by 1 inch, it will be sized perfectly in the document. Get some way to make a really consistent 1 inch circle. For example, a Fiskars 1" hole punch. After doing the previous one, oversize your tokens a little bit so you don't risk a little white along an edge when you miss by a tiny bit. "Laminate" your tokens to protect them a little. You can do this by actually laminating the sheet you printed, coating the sheet in clear packaging tape, or by doing a coat of Mod Podge over the entire token.

I got 3 sheets of cardstock and a 17 dollars worth of fender washers and made every mini for lost mines of phandelver this is great

Great video indeed! i was wondering what i could use as minis and this pops out, thanks man, i've only got one doubt, where can i glue this into? i know you say washers but do you have any other idea? Maybe even greater than 1-inch, you know, for huge monsters and stuff like that.

Great idea! Love it

These are much nicer than the ones I made. I printed out a bunch of images on card and then used 19mm fold back/bulldog clips (they were the smallest I could find in the shop) to hold them and then took the arms off the clips (they can be reattached later to remove the card cause those things grip hard) to use as bases so I had reusable bases. They're somewhat unwieldy when it comes to swapping over the bits of card though.

I used google images and powerpoint to make one inch wide minis that I cut out and glued to pennies!

BRILLIANT!!! *Clinks beer glass*

You really helped me out

Thanks man. Nice.

Hi - late to the game (get it - game! Ha, I crack myself up) for this but THANKS! Quick question. After printing, how did you cut them prior to gluing to the painted washers? Looks like they are perfect circles, which I feel would be difficult with scissors or with an XActo knife?

this helped me so much

Thanks for this one! I'm really a fan of this method, though as you say, GDrawings could be more helpful. I opted for beer bottle caps and quarters in lieu of card stock. Bottle caps for PCs and quarters for monsters and NPCs. Bottle caps from one session can be recycled into new monsters for future sessions!

All I would need is a good base for the images, I wonder what other alternatives I should look for...

Looks good, maybe add 1 inch round epoxy stickers to protect them

I'm gonna try to use round 1" magnets from staples for bases :)

Something that seems it would make this a bit easier is setting your image size to 1 inch by 1 inch at the start. This (theoretically) would cut out the resizing step when you add the image to the printing sheet. Also, if someone wanted to use the color changing tool more heavily, using a grey-scale monster image (and border color) would make the color change much cleaner.

These would look really good on inkjet heat shrink paper. That would turn them into real plastic tokens.

I would use Photoshop mix & Photoshop Express for this instead. Both free apps on the App store, they have far more features and Functions. Great video!

Thanks dude.

Cool !!! gonna try this! thnx for sharing sir. ;-)

Thanks for the video, this will really help me in my games! Hey what would you recommend as a base for a large creature, a bigger washer? And what screen capture software do you use? Any way thanks again!

Great tutorial man

thank you sir

Great video! I love the idea of using google drawings to make minis. I have a few tips and little things I would like to mention for those who would like to use this. 1) You can crop images in google drawings. If you double click on the image, you will be given the ability to crop the image. This however only works in a rectangular shape. 2) The reason why you can not click on the inner circle is that although you made the inside clear, the software still recognizes it as a full circle. If you wish to avoid this, I would recommend using the donut shape instead. This would allow you to click the inner circle, but you can not define the width of either circle with this method. I would also recommend you make the line transparent as the donut shape already acts like a circle and using the lines makes this method even less precise than it already is. I hope this helps some of you guys make your own cheap minis

Is there an art file size that one should stay above so that the print quality can be good?

What size washer are you all using? Is it considered a flat washer?

You are awesome!

So here's a late question, could these same tokens be used for a virtual campaign (not roll20/fantasy grounds)? Say google slide?

Where did you get the pictures of the creatures from? the fact that they have a white background makes them very good looking in tokens

How will the tokens be used - physical or digital games? Where does the artwork come from? Do you have a license to use the copyrighted art work? Does anyone else?

Muito bom, ajudou bastante valeu mesmo amigo.

Wooooo hoo awesome

Muito bom! Maravilhoso!

Cool video 😉Big like👍😱

How large are your token bases? I'm not from England so I'm having trouble looking for appropriate bases since I don't really know what is it that you use.