On the tabletop with a battle mat, a tall mini (or paper mini) really looks tall and it adds a lot to the excitement. Does anyone have suggestions for bringing that to Roll20?
These were some cheesy war elephants, but the fact that they were about 2.5" tall really made them feel substantial.
What do you do to make tall seem tall?
Most human sized tokens use one grid space or 70 pixels by 70 pixels so for the larger tokens just increase the size appropriately by either right clicking, choosing advanced, set dimensions or just dragging a corner to fit the correct number of spaces (if grid is enable, token will snap to grid).
My suggestion is a little bit more niche, but I've used it successfully. I use Affinity Designer to make tokens. One of the features lets me give the image a shadow, making it seem lifted off the board just slightly. If you were to make a token with a decent shadow, even having that shadow be semi transparent so it can 'cover' player tokens, that will provide an illusion of height. Using a specific perspective in your tokens would also help. As far as I know, there isn't really anything in roll20 that can duplicate this effect, but maybe Plus or Pro users know something I don't.
This sounds like an approach I'd like to try. I don't really like the top-view tokens at all, compared to the side-view art that you might get for paper minis or most art. I've been using round portrait tokens for my players, and I'd like to try something else for the NPCs and monsters. But I have image editing software, but no art skills. Do you have an example to share? Tips on the values for skewing and opacity and things like that?
I hacked around with your suggestion, just now, and came up with this. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.
Crystalon said:
One of the features lets me give the image a shadow, making it seem lifted off the board just slightly. If you were to make a token with a decent shadow, even having that shadow be semi transparent so it can 'cover' player tokens, that will provide an illusion of height. Using a specific perspective in your tokens would also help.
One thing to bear in mind is the interaction of your token and the amount of grid it should consume (assuming D&D 5e): http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop/dm-basic-rules
A large creature should cover 2x2 squares on a 5ft grid. If your creatures are elongated on the grid it might not accurately represent the amount of space they control. Perhaps you could use the shadow to make the token stretch out appropriately in the x-axis?
I agree there is a tactile and psychological effect that comes with big minis, but that's also a facet of them existing in 3d space. Perhaps one day will we get a 3d VTT with Roll20 (or there are alternatives if you look online) and in that case you can utilise the height to provide the feeling you want.
Anecdotally: I often struggle when I'm describing a monster's height as the stat blocks rarely explain how "tall" a Large or Huge creature is ;) I think there's some charts out there that try to express this but they are not exhaustive. I know it might be asking a lot, but it would be cool if future editions had some basic height/weight stats included.
Isometric might tackle these problems -- you wouldn't need 3D models, you could use art from standard paper minis, etc. But I'm sure it has it's own problems, like not being able to click on figures "behind" or northwest of other figures. Or the extra details might be lost when shrunk to a playable size.
Anyway, while I like the extra features of the side-view, they're lost when shrunk to grid size. Maybe I'll just save the side-view for the chat box and go with round tokens, but bigger round tokens for large creatures, and avoid the top-view.
Evan said:
One thing to bear in mind is the interaction of your token and the amount of grid it should consume (assuming D&D 5e): http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop/dm-basic-rules
A large creature should cover 2x2 squares on a 5ft grid. If your creatures are elongated on the grid it might not accurately represent the amount of space they control. Perhaps you could use the shadow to make the token stretch out appropriately in the x-axis?
I agree there is a tactile and psychological effect that comes with big minis, but that's also a facet of them existing in 3d space. Perhaps one day will we get a 3d VTT with Roll20 (or there are alternatives if you look online) and in that case you can utilise the height to provide the feeling you want.
Anecdotally: I often struggle when I'm describing a monster's height as the stat blocks rarely explain how "tall" a Large or Huge creature is ;) I think there's some charts out there that try to express this but they are not exhaustive. I know it might be asking a lot, but it would be cool if future editions had some basic height/weight stats included.
FWIW, I've settled on this for now. For a 20' tall monkape I'm using a token that's double size. You can click on the token with a macro to display the full art in the chat box, and I added a silhouette of a man to provide scale. 
You've basically touched on all the reasons I've stuck with round tokens (and probably why Roll20/WotC do so).
Isometric has a lot of charm but you always have to remember that there's a lot less resources for it as well (maps, tokens etc).
In the end the token just needs to represent the creature on the VTT. It's up to you to make it truly terrifying to the players ;)
Going to copy paste a trick a DM i know posted in a DM tips and tricks post:
Taking a 3D modeled giant and giving it its perceived size, (Right Giant) you get a Huge Giant.
However....
If you take the token, make the aura visible to players, and give it a NEGATIVE aura size (Bottom Right) you can make a token appear to have a base size of HUGE, while you expand the token so those spaces near the Huge Token are very clearly threatened. (Left Giant)
Psychologically, this hits me, and for a rather litteral BBEG battle, it can make an impact for the players, stepping up monster.
SO
RIGHT GIANT: The original version. The "intended" size of the model, considering the length of his weapon taking up squares, etc.
LEFT GIANT: The new improved version. The model is bigger, but it is very obvious that its size is still huge.
Which one do you prefer? I personally like the bigger giant, so how do we do that?
1) Take a look at the Aura setting I have for the bigger giant.
2) I dragged the giant model to be bigger than what D&D considers "huge," but
3) I gave it a negative aura (-5 to be exact), which gives it a shadow that makes it easy to understand its actual size.
4) Make the Aura visible to players.
This doesn't work for all tokens, not even all 3d topdown view tokens, but with larger enemies. It works especially well for models with weapons or long arms that limit the size of their box.
Try it out sometime!
Daniel M. said:
Going to copy paste a trick a DM i know posted in a DM tips and tricks post:
Taking a 3D modeled giant and giving it its perceived size, (Right Giant) you get a Huge Giant.
However....
If you take the token, make the aura visible to players, and give it a NEGATIVE aura size (Bottom Right) you can make a token appear to have a base size of HUGE, while you expand the token so those spaces near the Huge Token are very clearly threatened. (Left Giant)
Psychologically, this hits me, and for a rather litteral BBEG battle, it can make an impact for the players, stepping up monster.
SO
RIGHT GIANT: The original version. The "intended" size of the model, considering the length of his weapon taking up squares, etc.
LEFT GIANT: The new improved version. The model is bigger, but it is very obvious that its size is still huge.
Which one do you prefer? I personally like the bigger giant, so how do we do that?
1) Take a look at the Aura setting I have for the bigger giant.
2) I dragged the giant model to be bigger than what D&D considers "huge," but
3) I gave it a negative aura (-5 to be exact), which gives it a shadow that makes it easy to understand its actual size.
4) Make the Aura visible to players.
This doesn't work for all tokens, not even all 3d topdown view tokens, but with larger enemies. It works especially well for models with weapons or long arms that limit the size of their box.
Try it out sometime!
Very nice! and you could put player tokens around the negative aura space and then set the giant to be in front and it should appropriately obscure them. edit: hmm on second thought that might not be desirable as they'd literally be under the giant's token and thus unselectable if the giant was on top (I think?)
My only concern with this is how easy it is to find circular tokens (MM compendium, google etc) vs nice 3d models like that.
