It's moments like these that test out your resources: You, the DM, have situated your players on board an abandoned ship that is about to be boarded by 20 kuo-toans and throw them overboard to the giant shark that they believe to be an avatar of their deity. You have a giant grid map of a ship's main decks and each of your players use highly detailed and well-painted minis during every single battle -- they even use them to detail who is first in line for the bathroom. Unfortunately, there are not many kuo-toan miniatures on the market right now and any that you can find are not close enough to the amount that you need...and it gets pretty expensive to pay $50 for miniatures that will be killed by your party...unless you don't plan on having the PCs live through this moment...

"Counters" have become a cheaper method of presenting monsters, short-lived NPCs, or in some cases, full-blown player characters. A flat drawing printed out on a cardboard or plastic surface, they are matched to the Face statistics found through the d20 system (leaving a standard Medium-sized character on a 1" square). Dragon Scale Counters are a blessing for any DM in a pinch -- all counters can be ordered individually and pre-separated.

The example given above happened to myself -- allow the shock to work its way through your body -- and I solved it by ordering 20 kuo-toans on the Dragon Scale website (www.dragonscalecounters.com). I was even able to choose between two types of kuo-toans -- those with javelins and those with pincer staves. They came by regular mail and took a week to arrive in Canada from the U.S. Each counter is a separate piece without any ridges along the edges. They are all printed on a washable, plastic surface so that they can be numbered or even crossed out with an "X" after they have been killed. Without the standard shipping costs (at your choice of options), I only paid $5.00 for 20 counters.