Pathfinder Monster Cards


Product Discussion

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Monster Cards

It would be really great to have the monster (and NPCs) stats on a regular sized card or larger.

Think about it. You write your adventure and select your monsters for your adventure and pick out your monster cards.

They could be separated by CR.

What do you think?

Liberty's Edge

I think for your low level game it would be great but once you start breaking CR 8-10 you would have a hard time getting all the stuff on the card. Unless you intend to print with such a small font that it takes a microscope to read it all...

Liberty's Edge

OR a 2 part card or even three.

It would take away the work a GM has to do don't you think?

I would favor a bigger than regular card format myself but not too big.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition Subscriber

Some oversized cards, like you often see with Tarot decks, would be great and could get well into the mid-range CRs without problem - you might even be able to back the cards with artwork of the monster, vice a blank or bicycle style backing.

I for one would love a product like this. I already print out most of my monsters on 5x8 index cards, but I sure would love to have a nice set (or 3) of well made cards. They could even sell a new set to go with each AP. This reminds me of back in second ed when the MM was a notebook. I loved that.


Eldrad wrote:
You write your adventure and select your monsters for your adventure and pick out your monster cards.

That's how I've been running games for years. I just print out the monsters I need from the book or SRD, and bring those few sheets of paper to the table.

I also use the monster's 'character sheet' to write treasure on (which I determine when I build the encounter) and to track HP, conditions, initiative, etc. Basically, the monster sheet becomes my scratch pad for the encounter.

If the monsters consist of 6 ogres, I'll just print one sheet and make 6 columns for HP, not 6 sheets. If it's 6 goblins and a goblin hero, I'll just paste those two stat blocks onto one page before I print. I tend to label the columns with letters (A, B, C . . .) rather than numbers so that if the party turns diplomatic I can make up alliterated names (Algon, Branchwort, Cruna . . .) to keep track of the NPCs.

When the encounter is over, unless there's something super-secret about the monster, I just hand the sheet over to the players. They have a written record of various encounters and all their loot, and they can satisfy their curiosity about special abilities or tricks I may have used on them. Also, unlike running straight from a book or published card, it's very easy to customize the monsters before I print them. Also, because every encounter is on a plain white piece of paper, the players never know if they're fighting something from a particular book or something custom.


Back in the 3.5 era, the D&D minis came with cards that had the Mini Skirmish rules stats on one side and the rpg stats on the other. They condensed the information and very rarely used a second card, but those cards went all the way up to top level monsters on cards the size of Magic the Gathering Cards. I wish that the pathfinder minis came with similar stat cards, it would vastly increase the value of those boxes for me.

I used to run adventures with a map, a deck of cards, and my box of minis.


I can copy/paste/print basic monster info if I need it. What I'd really love is a set of cards that tell what information is gained for each monster with various "Knowledge:x" rolls.

(I've seen a similar product for 3.5, but it wasn't very well done)


Eldrad wrote:

Pathfinder Monster Cards

It would be really great to have the monster (and NPCs) stats on a regular sized card or larger.

Think about it. You write your adventure and select your monsters for your adventure and pick out your monster cards.

They could be separated by CR.

What do you think?

I did this for my 3.x, d20 Modern and 4e campaigns, with 4x6 inch cards. What I found?

Only one problem. I ended up with too many cards! (Well, buying those card boxes isn't easy in Canada either.)

Otherwise, just write small or use small print, and use both sides of the cards for complex monsters.

For me, this is handy, as I could mix-and-match sources, and I had to use this sort of thing for templated monsters, etc. I wonder if someone will do something like that for the NPC Codex?

Dark Archive

not really "monster cards" but over on d20pfsrd.com there are the monster and NPC DBs.
There is a field called fulltext,
1)copy and paste this text to a text file, download PF.css file (located on the same page as the DBs) and you get a Pathfidner styled stat block
2) save text file as .hmtl
3) open in browser
4) print!!

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