In D&D 4e, combatants acquire and shed conditions (dazed, stunned, immobilized, slowed, and more) with considerable rapidity. The quick turnover of conditions adds excitement and richness to combat encounters, but also increases bookkeeping overhead. In a few other blog posts, I’ve mentioned my use of various plastic tokens manufactured by Litko Aerosystems, but I’ve never devoted a full blog post just to these wonderful products. It’s high time I did so.

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I got interested in Litko Aerosystems products in a roundabout fashion. An editorial on the official Dungeons & Dragons site mentioned the color-coded magnetic bases offered by Alea Tools, and that got me interested in the whole concept of using tokens underneath miniatures on the battlemat for tracking conditions and such. Though curious, I remained a bit skeptical, chiefly because of the potential for magnetic repulsion and other such phenomena. Playing in the dungeon delve events at Origins 2008 fully convinced me of the utility of such tokens, when one of the DMs used red poker chips to mark bloodied creatures. I probably would have purchased Alea Tools right there at the show, had any vendor offered them for sale—but there were none to be had.

For a while, I cast about looking for 1″ diameter poker chips in various colors, but had a hard time finding a range that satisfied me. One day (I don’t remember which day, sorry) I noticed a listing for Litko Aerosystems’ 4e Condition Tokens at FRP Games. You can buy a Player’s Set that includes eleven 1″ square plastic/acrylic tokens tracking sixteen different conditions (five of the tokens are opaque and double-sided)—blinded, deafened, slowed, marked, petrified, prone, stunned/surprised, dazed/dominated, weakened/dying, and helpless/unconscious—or a Game Master’s Set that includes three copies of each token. Litko sells these directly for $7.99 per player’s set or $19.99 per GM’s set, but FRP Games cuts several dollars off those prices.

Since that initial set of tokens, Litko has released other sets finely tuned for 4e gameplay. Sadly, I can no longer seem to find the Damage Token set in Litko’s own catalog, though FRP Games apparently still has some in stock. This wonderful set offered tokens to represent ten different types of ongoing damage—a yellow sun for radiant damage, a black skull for necrotic damage, a snowflake for frost damage, and so on. I’m very glad to have multiple sets in my token arsenal. I’m not so excited by Litko’s 4e Effects set, however. These very attractive tokens don’t seem to me as useful as those in other sets.

I haven’t purchased any of Litko’s transparent red, inscribed Bloodied Tokens, but only because I bought a couple of sets of their opaque blood splatter tokens (same shape, but opaque and without an inscription). If you don’t have any tokens to represent the bloodied state, though, I highly recommend the new, inscribed version.

Litko offers many other token products that a D&D DM would undoubtedly find very useful. I use their yellow Alert! Tokens to mark difficult terrain that is created dynamically during an encounter; I use their Large Compass: Blue to indicate directions on the battlemat; I use their Obviously Dead Tokens to track failed death saves.

Recently, I’ve taken advantage of one of Litko’s coolest services: customized tokens. Please note that if you want to do this yourself, you’ll need to contact Litko’s customer service folks (they are absolutely wonderful and responsive) and arrange to purchase 1″/25mm tokens. The “standard” package of customized tokens are a bit smaller, 19mm in diameter. Expect to pay a bit of a premium for the larger-sized tokens as well. Still, if you find them useful, they pay you back by reducing your bookkeeping overhead during a game session. As far as I know, nobody but me has a set like this right now:

Over the last year, I’ve built up quite a little collection of Litko Aerosystems tokens, and I am very glad to have done so. These tokens make my DMing life so much easier! Should you decide to give some a try, please be sure to tell your vendor (whether Litko itself or FPR Games) that you heard about these products on the Icosahedrophilia blog.