Pathfinder Pawns and other minis and tokens for 5E

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

What minis and tokens have people used for their 5E games so far? Has anyone used the Pathfinder Pawns, and how have you found them? Do they match the 5E monsters reasonably well? Is the quality fairly reasonable for the price?

[Gryndle]

Our group hasn't used the PF Pawns. Mostly we use minis that I buy/paint/collect from Reaper or Darksword. Our group pitched in an we got a ton from the last Reaper Bones Kickstarter, and I will be painting for the rest of the year to get them done.

BUT before I amassed my collection, we used all sorts of improvised stuff, or made things ourselves. For example I just made a set piece that can stand in for a planar portal or magic mirror from the lens of a broken binoculars and some discarded hardware for its frame/stand. The last time we had a ship based adventure I made the floor plan of the ship out of card board.

I've spent quite a bit of money, time and effort on our gaming props, but you don't really have to. I've played in games where we've used glass beads, coins, and dice as minis and even DM'd a game where I used candy as minis. Just be creative.

[Demonslayer666]

I use the Pathfinder Pawns and I really like them. It's easy to tell the monsters from the players because we use minis for the PCs. Yes, they are pretty similar, and I haven't had trouble fining an appropriate one for a 5th edition monster. The only problem is repeat numbers. I grab out 5 orcs, and three will have the same number on them. I would have liked more stands as well.

[Theodoxus]

I used Pawns for a long time. I have a player now with an extensive mini collection, so have gone over to using his minis. I agree with Demonslayer though - if use minis and Pawns together to differentiate, it's pretty clear. I still use Pawns on occasion for NPCs, so it's far more obvious where non-coms are - especially in towns... throwing fireballs into crowded civilians doesn't happen anymore - and having townspeople helps with verisimilitude.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I've gone over to Iheartprintandplay for my PCs. Cheap, fully customizable, durable.

Just not miniatures.

My foes are from a 4e collection of tiny thru large size.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I own a lot of pawns, but I tend to use glass gems for most of my minions. PCs get full minis, and large creatures either get minis, empty bases, or I'll pull out pawns as need. It's mainly about being lazy--it's easier to grab a handful of gems in assorted colors and use those than to dig through the pawn collection and find the right figure and base, especially when I need a dozen goblins.

[Imbalance]

One PC is Reaper Bones, another came from Guildball, one I believe is old metal with some professional flair, one is newer metal from Ironwind iirc (with automotive grade finish), and mine is a modded Mage Knight. NPCs are almost exclusively theater of the mind. You wouldnt believe the range of boats - Lego, Playskool, cardboard, Imaginex, Transformers, you name it. Encounters are largely culled from HeroClix due to there being literally thousands on hand, but there are plenty of D&D licensed pieces from a variety of sources and a fair handful of other generic tropes from numerous manufacturers, somehow all in a tolerably compatible scale. Purists would hate it.

[Spectrulus]

There are lots of groovy websites that offer printable pawns too. I personally make my own, but I would recommend https://printableheroes.tumblr.com/
The stuff is cool, free, and updates often.

I also use glass pieces, my wife was awesome enough to bring out her nail polish, and draw 1-50 on the undersides, then surround the numerals with 5 different colours. Makes mooks/lieutenants/NPCs easier.

[Laserlight]

Whatever the players want as their token--their portrait, symbol, or name--I print, cut out with a 1" circular punch, and stick on 1" felt furniture feet. Monsters get numbered tokens with a symbol for their function. 10-19 are red sword and shield, 20-29 are green bows, 30-39 are yellow wands, etc, and the same token might be a hobgoblin this week, town guard next week, an npc knight the next.

[some guy]

I used pathfinder pawns in the past. One major point why I don't use them anymore is that a lot of the pawns are too dark in colour, which causes them too have a low contrast. Others are too detailed or haven't a clear silhouette. All these things cause them too be difficult to differentiate from a distance.
A few boxes just don't have enough of certain monster types to use them. I need more than 3 orcs and 3 goblins. The monster codex box solves this problem, but has a lot of dark colours. You still need a lot of sets for a good selection of mini's.

Nowadays I use the Giant's 'A Monster for Every Season'. You need a printer and it's a bit more work to print, cut and maybe laminate the mini's. But it's a lot cheaper. The five sets have a great selection of monsters, pc's, npc's. Most humanoid monster types have a lot of unique depictions. It has a good male/female ratio of npc variation. They also have great contrast and are incredibly easy to customize. If you don't want cartoony paper mini's (I also like Trash Mob Mini's, but those sets are smaller and more expensive), there are more realistic paper mini's out there on the internet. But I really recommend taking a look at Rich Burlew's sets.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I drew a bunch of stick figures (similar to Rich Burlew style), cut them out and folded them.

[AdAstra]

I've thought about using scrabble tiles as a cheap-as-dirt (like 3 bucks for a generic set on amazon) solution that allows you to individually identify each combatant (doubt most combats have more than 26 creatures). You could even use the letters with 4 or more duplicates to represent larger critters (just place them at the corners of the monster's space). Has anyone else used or seen this method before? How well did it work?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. For the last eight years or so I've been using the cardboard tokens that came with the 3E Starter Set; I don't have access to those anymore, unfortunately. In the past, I've used LEGO stuff, a player's spare Warhammer minis, board game tokens, Monopoly pieces and whatever happened to be available at the time. Even played on a dry erase board and just drawn everything out. One of my players for the upcoming session is very into painting minis, so I figured I'd see if I could upgrade my side of things.

[Theodoxus]

I will say, playing with minis is great - very tactile and pleasant looking.

However, for ease of use/play, I've never found anything better than simple dice. Everyone has them, you can use "naughty" dice, that you've 'jailed', or ugly dice, or strange sized dice...

[Yakmala]

I recently picked up a bunch of condition tokens at a convention from a company called Dapper Devil. They've really added to my games. It's really nice having markers for things like stunned, hidden, bloodied, etc. And the Bless tokens have helped players remember to add their D4.

https://dapperdevil.com/category/game-tokens

[Ventruenox]

For games that I run, I've been using a mixture of minis from MageKnight, DreamBlade, HeroClix, and Heroscape. Heroscape tiles make for a great modular battlefield, and HeroClix maps for when I want squares instead of hexes.

When I'm a player, my DM uses Pathfinder tokens and modular terrain that he crafted himself. I consider myself fortunate that our entire table provides great buy-in, no matter the visual aids.