Simple NPCs, char sheet or just token?

What's the best way to handle a half-dozen guards, wolves, or angry children? Do you put their stats into a character sheet and assign tokens? Or just drag them on as tokens? When I make a token for a character sheet NPC or PC, I assign wounds to bar 1, fatigue to bar 2 (Savage Worlds rules). But for NPC minions, this seems like a lot. I'm tempted to assign these stats to the bars: (3 bars + 3 bar max, total of 6 bars) * name of melee attack "slashes", "bites", or "bites" * to hit roll "d8", "d6", or "d4" * attack damage "d6+d6", "d6+d4", or "d4" * parry value * armor or toughness value To a large degree, this is all I need for a few disposable guards/wolves/children. How do you  handle these cases?

In areas where I think a fight might break out, I have three possible sheets: Commoner, Guard, and Veteran. I'll assign one of those three sheets to any given token, depending on how much of a threat level they might pose. Admittedly, I do make heavy use of the API script Token Mod to do the heavy lifting: assigning the sheet, changing the token image, etc.

I'm not familiar with Savage Worlds but with most d20 systems (I know SW is not) just inputting the HP and AC into the token is enough. With Savage Worlds you will have to decide what is going to be used or needed. If you can do it mostly "theater of the mind" style then I wouldn't worry to much and just use some scrap paper and improv it.

keithcurtis said: In areas where I think a fight might break out, I have three possible sheets: Commoner, Guard, and Veteran. I'll assign one of those three sheets to any given token, depending on how much of a threat level they might pose. Admittedly, I do make heavy use of the API script Token Mod to do the heavy lifting: assigning the sheet, changing the token image, etc. Is there a way to have more than one sheet in a game? I couldn't find it. Streamlined sheets would be perfect for this.

One sheet type per game.

Pat S. said: I'm not familiar with Savage Worlds but with most d20 systems (I know SW is not) just inputting the HP and AC into the token is enough. With Savage Worlds you will have to decide what is going to be used or needed. If you can do it mostly "theater of the mind" style then I wouldn't worry to much and just use some scrap paper and improv it. To also store info about their attack and defense, I'd like to hold about 5 values total. Do most GMs do that in the bars, full character sheets, or just store a couple values and keep the rest on paper?

Mike deBoston said: keithcurtis said: In areas where I think a fight might break out, I have three possible sheets: Commoner, Guard, and Veteran. I'll assign one of those three sheets to any given token, depending on how much of a threat level they might pose. Admittedly, I do make heavy use of the API script Token Mod to do the heavy lifting: assigning the sheet, changing the token image, etc. Is there a way to have more than one sheet in a game? I couldn't find it. Streamlined sheets would be perfect for this. Poor terminology on my part. One character sheet in the game, but I have a Commoner Character, a Guard Character and a Veteran Character. Any number of tokens may be assigned to any of these sheets.

Thanks for the replies on this. Here's what it looks like if I assign the name and 5 stats to a token. Read the bar (max) vertically, a throw is d10 to-hit, d6+4 damage. And bar 1 shows 5 for parry (similar to AC) and 5 for toughness (something like HP). And this shows the output of the t5stats macro and the t5attack macro. This is pretty good, but there's no memory of this after I take tokens off the map. The next time I use guards I have to set them up again. Am I going down the wrong path with this? Should I stick with full-character sheets (and create a bestiary) or nothing? Or create a page and store pre-configured tokens there? I'm new to Roll20 and don't have a handle on the best balance between gaming and configuring.

With what you are indicating, a partially filled sheet is the method you are seeking and combined with the linking tokens to journals  (mook style) you will have what you want or close to it.

I can think of two ways - first, the more involved Using a Character Sheet If there are npc types you re-use, with hps, etc., you need to make a character for them. Set them up with values once, and save the token for them, then whenever you drag the character to the map it will have its values and rolls available. You dont need to use the full character sheet. Each character has three tabs: Bio, Character Sheet, Attributes & Abilities: You can set up the Character Sheet tab, but for temporary characters you can just as easily use the Attributes & Abilities tab: just enter any rolls needed as Abilities.  Use Macros Another approach is to do what you're doing, but set up a bunch of common macros that will work for any character. For instance you might have a simple Skill Roll Macro, that looks like /roll 1d20+?{Skill|0} Whenever you call this, it will ask you for the bonus and roll for it. You could set up a bunch of those for the common rolls, add buttons to your macro bar for them, and then you only need to set up the HP on each token as you need them.

If you want to continue as you are doing (NPCs stored only in the token bar values), then yes, your best bet is to create a token library page. there's actually a lot to be said for this, since you are removing a lot of campaign overhead, not maintaining character sheets. Then again, it might be more fine control that you need. Players don't see stat blocks. You could probably get away with a small handful of generic NPC sheets, and assign tokens to them as needed. The players will never see that the 1d6 used by the sheet is a sword for a guard, but a mace for the brigand.

GiGs said: You can set up the Character Sheet tab, but for temporary characters you can just as easily use the Attributes & Abilities tab: just enter any rolls needed as Abilities. It took a while for me to really understand what you were saying here, but now that I understand it, it's a really nice option. Just to restate it as I understand it, in case I've got it wrong: Create a Character in the Journal, but ignore the dozens of fields in the Character Sheet tab. Leave Strength at 4 and no weapon, for example. In the ability tab, just create an ability like "attack" with something like "/emas @{character_name} attacks with sword [[d6]]". Assign a token to the NPC. When I drag the token onto the map, also open the Character page and the Ability tab, click there to activate abilities. This has the advantage of giving me a place to store as much or little detail as I'd like; I could have a few different attacks, portrait art, a text description, or none of that. The disadvantage is that I have to open the sheet to click on that ability... but probably with a little more study I could write some universal "activate ability1" and "activate ability2" macros. Is this a pretty common solution? Thanks for the insight so far.

Pat S. said: With what you are indicating, a partially filled sheet is the method you are seeking and combined with the linking tokens to journals  (mook style) you will have what you want or close to it. Ah! I wasn't linking tokens quite right. This helps a lot, thanks!

When you write your ability macros, you can check the "Show as Token Action" box.  Then your macro will be available whenever one of the tokens associated with the sheet is selected.

Mike deBoston said: GiGs said: You can set up the Character Sheet tab, but for temporary characters you can just as easily use the Attributes & Abilities tab: just enter any rolls needed as Abilities. It took a while for me to really understand what you were saying here, but now that I understand it, it's a really nice option. Just to restate it as I understand it, in case I've got it wrong: Create a Character in the Journal, but ignore the dozens of fields in the Character Sheet tab. Leave Strength at 4 and no weapon, for example. In the ability tab, just create an ability like "attack" with something like "/emas @{character_name} attacks with sword [[d6]]". Assign a token to the NPC. When I drag the token onto the map, also open the Character page and the Ability tab, click there to activate abilities. This has the advantage of giving me a place to store as much or little detail as I'd like; I could have a few different attacks, portrait art, a text description, or none of that. The disadvantage is that I have to open the sheet to click on that ability... but probably with a little more study I could write some universal "activate ability1" and "activate ability2" macros. Is this a pretty common solution? Thanks for the insight so far. You've got it! You also don't need to have the character sheet open to run the Abilities: When creating an Ability, there's a checkbox to set it as a Token Action. When you click on a token attached to that character, you'll get a floating bar at the top left of your screen showing all the token actions on that character. You just click them to launch them.  Edit: just noticed Kraynic also mentioned this :) I should finish reading the read before replying! If you are using this approach it's a good idea to set up a couple of template tokens: like one for generic fighters, one for magic users, etc. Or maybe just one for all. Create this character, add all the abilities you might want on any character of that type. Then when you want to create a new character, say a Goblin warrior, just copy the warrior template and edit its abilities, and delete unneeded ones if you feel like it. That's a lot quicker than creating new characters from scratch and adding new abilities from scratch