Best Practices for attacking (die rolls) with Monsters?

I think I'm missing something - is there a way to assign token actions to an individual token? Or do all token actions show on all tokens? As a more general question, are token actions the best way to handle monster attack rolls or is there another way you like better? Do you make all of your badguys as characters and use ability token macros, or is there an easier way?

You can assign specific token actions to any linked token, by making it an ability, otherwise making a token action is universal.

If you use Abilities (via Characters in the Journal tab of the sidebar) only tokens assigned to that character will have the token action. If you use Macros (via the Settings tab of the sidebar) all tokens will have the token action.

I created myself a dummy character sheet, where I collect all my macros and abilities that I usually need for my monsters. Then I just copy it, fill in the blanks and I'm done. Takes 1-2 minutes per new monster. And then I can use it as often as I want. I know there's a PF character sheet out there with a NPC section, but honestly that's taking it way to far for me, I don't need all that, and it takes me way to long to fill it all out and find stuff I need. Here's what it looks like: It takes me maybe a minute to Copy this template to a new one (Edit/Duplicate), change the name on the new one and then enter the stats. Here's how it looks like for a Cave Scorpion ( <a href="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/" rel="nofollow">http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/</a>... ) I usually don't have to change any of the Abilities on the right side, except for ticking them on and off (like here I turned Atk-1-(wpn-1) off because a scorpion has no weapon and turned the two Natural Attacks on - I honestly wouldn't even need that distinction, but when I made the Template for the first time I had a lot of enemies with weapons and natural attacks, so it seemed logical, and it stayed like that then). The Special Abilities are empty and for custom stuff. In this case I changed the first to "Poison" and it just whispers the poison stats to me, so I got them readily at hand. Could also be used for the spelllist or anything like that. Once I did that, I then create a token of a scorpion, link it to this Character sheet. Now all those nice token actions show up when I click on that scorpion. Then I link .Hitpoints to the first bubble and .AC to the second one. (I like seeing AC on first glance) then I UNLINK them both again. That last part is important otherwise all your scorpions share the same HPs. It's a bit of work to set this NPC Template up for the first time, but once it's there it's really just a matter of filling in like 10 values and you're done with a new monster char sheet.

Thanks Quatar, that's exactly the kind of info I was looking for, and thanks to al e. and Gauss for answering my token action question. Anoter quick question though - how do you grab the Max value in an attribute instead of the current? For example on "Nat Weapon 1". I tried using /roll @{Nat Weapon 1|max} and I get an error.

If you're typing it into the chat window manually you need to use /roll @{selected|Nat Weapon 1|max} or @{Character sheet name|Nat Weapon 1|max} In an Ability what you used works though. Or should at least. Last time I came upon an issue where I had to add the "selected" in front of it too. Not sure why, with other attributes it worked fine without.

Interesting - it gives an error when you test it by rolling the die while the edit window is open, but if you save the ability macro it works fine. Got your other stuff too - thanks for all your help!

Oh, that could have been the problem with mine too then. Yup just tested, that's what happened. Took out the selected, saved, and rolled and it works, while testing it didn't. Not sure I'd have found that problem anytime soon

For some reason when using "|max" the Ability test button only accepts the following format: @{character name|attribute name|max} Ill bring this up with the Devs.

The test button works fine when it's just @{Attribute name}, but as soon it's the |max behind it, it complains that character "Attribute name" can't be found.