Where can I get free D&D monster tokens?

MakeMythic gives away 20 bordered monster tokens free on Patreon, with colour versions for the screen, white versions for printing, and unbordered portraits. Several open libraries also host free tokens, and the free token maker on this site turns any art you already own into a VTT-ready token in about a minute.

What size should a monster token be for Roll20 and Foundry?

Around 300 to 400 pixels square is the working baseline. Foundry treats 400px as standard and Roll20 downscales cleanly to its 280px grid. Higher-resolution tokens (600px) are useful when you want to add your own border ring, because you are cropping into a larger source.

Do I need different tokens for online play and printing?

You need different files, not different art. A screen token wants a transparent background and a coloured border; a printed token wants a white or low-ink background so it does not drain a cartridge. The best packs ship both variants of the same creature under the same filename.

Why do my tokens have white square corners on the map?

The file was saved as a JPG, or as a PNG with the background flattened. Circular tokens need genuine transparency in the corners. Re-export as PNG with the alpha channel preserved and the corners will show the map underneath instead of a white box.

How many monster tokens do I actually need?

For a typical campaign, a few hundred covers most encounters, but the pain point is coverage of the low CR fodder you use constantly rather than the dragons you use once. A library of 1,000 or more creatures means you stop substituting a wolf token for a jackal every third session.

Can I use the same token in Roll20, Foundry and Owlbear Rodeo?

Yes. All three accept standard transparent PNGs, so one file works everywhere. Only the import workflow differs: Roll20 uploads to your library, Foundry drops into an actor's prototype token, and Owlbear Rodeo takes a straight drag and drop onto the scene.

Where to get D&D monster tokens for Roll20 and Foundry

TL;DR: Good monster tokens are transparent PNGs around 300-400px, in a consistent frame, with enough creature coverage that you never substitute. Try 20 free monster tokens before buying anything, make your own from art you own with the free token maker, and if you run both online and in person, get a library that ships screen and print variants of the same creature.

Every DM hits the same wall about six sessions in. The party fights something you did not plan for, you search your token folder, and there is no giant frog. You drop a generic red circle labelled “frog” on the map, and the encounter loses a little of its edge. Do that often enough and your virtual tabletop starts to feel like a spreadsheet with pictures.

This is a coverage problem, not an art problem. The fix is a token library deep enough that the answer is nearly always yes. Here is what to look for, what to try free first, and how to stop maintaining two separate libraries if you run games both online and at a physical table.

Start free, before you buy anything

There is no reason to pay for tokens until you know what you actually need. Three free routes are worth exhausting first.

Free packs. MakeMythic gives away 20 bordered monster tokens on Patreon — colour-background versions for the screen, white-background versions for printing, and unbordered portraits for handouts and NPC panels. They pair with the free monster card set, so the same creature can be a token online and a card at the table. It is a genuinely useful sample rather than three watermarked images.

Make your own. The free token maker on this site crops art to a square, masks it into a circle, adds a border and exports a transparent PNG, all in the browser with no signup. If you have commissioned character art or a portrait you already own, this is a minute’s work. Our guide on how to make D&D tokens walks through the sizes and export settings.

Free libraries. Open collections exist and are worth bookmarking, though quality and licensing vary and coverage of the mid-CR bestiary tends to be patchy. They are best for filling specific gaps rather than as your main library.

Work through those, and you will discover the real constraint quickly: it is not that free tokens look bad, it is that assembling 1,000 of them one at a time is a hobby in itself.

What separates a usable library from a folder of images

Once you are looking at paid packs, four things matter far more than the art style.

Transparency, everywhere. Every token should have a genuinely transparent background. A token on a white square looks broken the moment it sits on a dungeon floor, and no amount of good illustration fixes it. This is the single most common failure in cheap packs.

Predictable filenames. If the goblin is goblin.png in one folder and Goblin_Token_v2_FINAL.png in another, bulk import breaks and search stops working. One consistent name per creature across the whole library is worth more than a hundred extra tokens.

Variants of the same creature. A bordered colour version for the screen. A white or ink-saver version for printing. Ideally an unbordered version at higher resolution so you can apply your own ring or your VTT’s dynamic border without fighting one that is already baked in.

An index you can read. A library of several thousand files is unusable without a manifest. A simple CSV listing every creature and which variants exist turns “does this pack have a wight?” from a folder crawl into a column check.

One library for both tables

Most groups now run hybrid — a Foundry game on Thursdays, an in-person session once a month. That is where token libraries usually fall apart, because the big packs are PNG dumps built for a VTT and useless on cardstock, while the printable ones are pre-laid-out on sheets and useless in Roll20. Run both and you maintain two libraries with different names for the same monster.

The fix is a single library shipped in multiple variants under one naming scheme, so you prep the encounter once and decide the format later. That is exactly how the MakeMythic token pack is built: 1,405 creatures and NPCs — 949 monsters, 456 NPCs — as 3,938 token images across bordered colour, bordered white for ink-saving prints, and borderless at 600 x 600 for your own frames, with an index CSV recording which variants each figure has.

4000+ D&D VTT tokens for Roll20 and Foundry, transparent PNG and printable

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Getting them onto the map

The import step differs slightly per platform, and getting it right once saves you repeating it every session.

Roll20. Upload to your art library, then assign the token to a character sheet with “Use Selected Token” so it becomes that creature’s default. Set the token’s grid footprint after placing it: Medium fills one square, Large two by two, Huge three by three.

Foundry VTT. Set the image on the actor’s Prototype Token tab rather than on individual placed tokens. Do it once and every future drag onto a scene uses the right art at the right size. Our Foundry import guide covers the same principle for maps.

Owlbear Rodeo. Straight drag and drop onto the scene, then scale to the grid. The lightest of the three, and the reason a plain transparent PNG remains the most portable format.

The full walkthrough for custom tokens covers the fiddly parts of both Roll20 and Foundry in more detail.

Printing tokens instead of buying minis

Tokens are not only for screens. Printed onto 160-250gsm cardstock and dropped into a plastic base, a paper token is a perfectly good miniature that costs pennies and never gets lost in a dice bag. If you would rather stand your monsters up, paper miniatures fold from the same idea, and the printable miniatures tool lays them out for you.

This is where the ink-saver variant earns its place. Printing a dozen bordered colour tokens for one encounter is expensive; printing the same creatures on white is not, and at table distance nobody notices.

A sensible order of operations

Grab the free token pack and run a session with it.
Use the token maker for player characters and any named NPC you have art for.
Note which creatures you had to substitute for over a month. That list tells you how much coverage you actually need.
Buy a library only when substitution is happening weekly, and buy one that covers both your screen and your printer.

Coverage is the thing worth paying for. Art style is a preference; having the right monster on the map when the fight starts is the difference between a scene that lands and one that gets explained.