Help with Creating and Using Custom Monsters for DnD Game

Hi there, 

I'm doing an adaptation of Keep on the Borderlands  and am having an issue. I wanted to create some custom guard and watch NPCs for the Keep, obvi I need a ton of them. I made the NPCs, created some custom tokens, and used the "guard" monster from the compendium for the stat blocks. 

Well whenever I drag them on to the map, they token shows up as generic. Obvi I can go in and set up each individual token but I would love to have it set up so I can drag and drop them and they are gtg like when I drag, say, and orc from the compendium. 

Is there a way to do this or do I just need to put some music on and do each one...

For a frame of reference, ever character I pull form the my journal does this and I find it quite strange because I'm dragging the token for let's say, Juan the Cleric, and it just comes in as an empty token. I feel like I'm doing something wrong.

Any help is appreciated!!

You need to set the default token for the character.

To do this:

• create the token and drag to the map.
• set the token up how you desire. 
• open the associated character sheet, go to the bio/info tab. and click Edit button (top right corner)
• bottom left corner, click the 'use selected token' button

That should allow you to drag a character sheet from the journal tab to the map, drop it, and the token that is set as the default will be placed.

'Thanks Ken! Ya I have the token set, and when I drag and drop it, it drops the token but its not connected to the NPC or character sheet. not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Most likely you haven't done all the steps in the correct order to have the token set as default after all the settings are correct.

https://wiki.roll20.net/Linking_Tokens_to_Journals

So its possible that if its not done in the "correct order" that may be the issue? Like if I assigned to token before setting character stats or something it could cause the token to not connect to the NPC?

When you set the "default" token, that is exactly what it means.  The default is a snapshot of the token, and uses the settings exactly as they are when the default is set.  Anything changed after that is not the "default" unless you edit the sheet, remove the old default, and set a new token as default.

Think of setting the default token as saving a file. Once you save a word processing file, that's what you will get when you open it again. If you make changes to the open document, but don't save, you will just get document in its last saved state if you make a copy.

Thanks Team. This all makes sense to me, and what is fustrating is that I think I am doing what you are both stating. i have the tokens assigned, saving them, and they are connected on the character sheet. I'm putting the screenshots below hopefully this is helpful.

1. Keep Guard Stats Sheet

2. My desired Tokens Settings.

3. Confirmation Token (and image) are set in Generic NPC Sheet

4.  Confirmation that when I drag a new GNPC on to the board, that information does not appeared to be saved. (neither connecting to NPC or Token settings such us hp bar).

So what am I missing or did not do? Again is it about an order or something? Because I feel like I did the steps correctly.

I will also confirm that none of the NPCS that I have made...GNPC and NPCS made using the Charactermancer...are connecting with the tokens that are assigned to them. So any character I have made and I am dragging on the map is simply a token, even though I am pulling them from my journal where they are assigned to a character. BUT characters that I have do not assigned tokens seem to pull on to the map fine. It seems like the issue is somehow connected to how I did/did not assign tokens to the characters.

So what step did I miss and can I correct it without having to start over? I followed the directions in the linked above exactly.

UPDATE: So I think I have if figured out and I am able to follow the instructions to get it to work. I'm not exactly sure WHY and there are still a few bugs in the process (ex: why the nameplate doesnt show up unless i link/unlink/relink the token??) but at least I am able to populate the keep now with NPCs!

For anyone stumbling across this thread I followed these instructions TO THE LETTER!

https://help.roll20.net/hc/en-us/articles/360039715593-Linking-Tokens-to-Journals

Also for anyone that finds this. If you find you made a mistake, I was able to just unlinke the token, reset anything I wanted and then relink the token.

AND for some reason, assigning character portraits before setting up tokens seemed to be an issue so so I set up the token, then went in and added my portrait. Bizarre but true.

Thanks all for help!

Sorry, that's probably due to an assumption of information. When we were saying "save the default token", that means "delete the old default token and select the new one as the default." For anyone following this thread, here is more info, plus a video:

Here is the wiki article on Linking Tokens to Journals.

Here is a video which demos the procedure