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Lord.Sorasen
2011-01-09, 04:33 AM
Remember how I earlier asked how I could avoid buying miniatures? I gave in.

I just have a question: When the box says it feature's one "huge" character, does it mean 3" by 3"? Or is huge a more subjective thing?

And then, what do you guys do for the rare gargantuan creature, or colossal creature? These seem to be wildly expensive.

Kaww
2011-01-09, 04:41 AM
In my county the miniatures are really expensive, don't know about other countries. We use some miniatures for medium creatures, warhammer miniatures are also used sometimes. We improvise all other creature sizes. It's fun when you get to say: "Ok, so the bottle hit you for 6d6+22 dmg."

molten_dragon
2011-01-09, 05:45 AM
Yes, generally a huge creature will be 3x3.

For my group, usually only PCs get actual minis. Occasionally a major NPC or bad guy will get its own mini if I have one that fits.

Generally though, I have 2 solutions for monsters. For medium and smaller creatures, I've simply stuck plastic numbers from a label-maker to pennies.

For large and larger creatures, I've cut some pieces of soft plastic (it's kind of like plastic cardstock) into 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, and 6x6 squares. That was the cheapest solution I could come up with.

Ignatius
2011-01-09, 06:28 AM
My friend and I decided to go fifty-fifty. He has bought all of the dungeon tiles and I go crazy buying minis when I have the cash. I have a couple of hundred now ranging from one square to 3x3... From halflings to balor's and everything in between.

We did have to establish a new rule though. Anyone that picks up a mini to read the base to find out exactly what they are fighting automatically takes an XP loss!

I find that as the DM, going from the rich role play world to playing with the actual minis of the creatures being fought helps the flow. So from you enter a cave and fight a bottle to you enter a cave and fight a dire bear mauler.

PanNarrans
2011-01-09, 09:33 AM
I convert minis for PCs from Games Workshop models. For enemies and NPCs, I'm a big fan of the Famous Familiars and More Famous Familiars sets from GW - there's a model in there for just about any archetype. For mooks, I've just started using meeples from Carcassone (so cute!), and I use glass beads to mark out the map.

gbprime
2011-01-09, 10:03 AM
One of the advantages of being in a gaming group where everyone is over 40... we've collected a LOT of minis and books over the years thanks to time and salaries.

I do a lot of Warhammer warbands for other gaming as well, so we're usually well stocked on large numbers of opponent rank-and-file troops, be they lizardmen, dwarves, demons, goblins, orcs, undead... the GW plastics are awesome for this.

Tyndmyr
2011-01-09, 10:26 AM
I've used warhammer models to good effect before.

Another fun alternative is lego. I reccomend the castle and pirate sets.

dsmiles
2011-01-09, 01:26 PM
Remember how I earlier asked how I could avoid buying miniatures? I gave in.

I just have a question: When the box says it feature's one "huge" character, does it mean 3" by 3"? Or is huge a more subjective thing?

And then, what do you guys do for the rare gargantuan creature, or colossal creature? These seem to be wildly expensive.

I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE minis!!! I love to buy them, I love to paint them, I love to make displays for them, I love to use them for games (even when the game doesn't need them.

Yeah, if you're buying DnD specific minis, a Huge creature is a 3"x3" base.

As far as gargantuan and colossal creatures, I have some images of those creatures that I can print on cardstock, if need be.

Lord.Sorasen
2011-01-09, 03:45 PM
Yes, generally a huge creature will be 3x3.

For my group, usually only PCs get actual minis. Occasionally a major NPC or bad guy will get its own mini if I have one that fits.

Generally though, I have 2 solutions for monsters. For medium and smaller creatures, I've simply stuck plastic numbers from a label-maker to pennies.

For large and larger creatures, I've cut some pieces of soft plastic (it's kind of like plastic cardstock) into 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, and 6x6 squares. That was the cheapest solution I could come up with.

This is actually similar to what we do. Player characters have miniatures, monsters are scrabble pieces and I use different letters for different monsters.

The huge miniature I need is a player character. A half-Ogre, who just got the expansion power through psychic warrior.

I like the plastic cutouts, I'll probably go with that for gargantuan and colossal. Those seem a bit too expensive for my liking.

Dr.Epic
2011-01-09, 03:52 PM
You could just buy like jelly beans or M&M's and when ever a play kills an NPC they get to eat the candy. And for Large foes, use something like a cookie, and for a Huge, final end boss, a cup cake.

edit: and for a Colossal, ancient, world destroying monster, bring in an entire cake.

tyckspoon
2011-01-09, 04:00 PM
The huge miniature I need is a player character. A half-Ogre, who just got the expansion power through psychic warrior.


In this specific case, use whichever miniature you have for when he's *not* Expanded (since.. well, being Huge all the time eats up PP and is horribly awkward for normal movement and social times) and just put a cutout under him to represent the extra squares he takes up when he does grow.

Lord Loss
2011-01-09, 04:43 PM
I have a small collection of minis, not too little to be using the same minis for everything but enough so that, often enough, I can have the monsters look somewhat like what they're fighting. I reccomend buying some of the D&D 3.5 minis, Unhallowed has lots of nice minis, as does Blood War.

If you're not hellbent on using minis, 4e's DM's kit has some amazing cutouts that come in most sizes and will give you just about all the monsters you need.

bartman
2011-01-09, 09:18 PM
I've used warhammer models to good effect before.

Another fun alternative is lego. I reccomend the castle and pirate sets.

I have a sword/axe fighter for one of current campaigns, i actually went out and bought a small lego castle set just because it had 2 figures, an axe and a sword :smallbiggrin:

Cealocanth
2011-01-09, 11:07 PM
If you don't have a problem for using old minis, freecycle has a lot of people with minis being given away. Kreg's List also has quite a few people selling their old minis. For about 15 bucks I just got around 300 minis of all shapes and sizes and monster types by just purchasing grocery bags (and sometimes garbage bags) of people's old minis. The trick is to not be picky about the exact type of mini you're using, you're PCs shouldn't care if the bandit's ferocious guard dogs are represented by the dire wolves, the hyenas, or the wild dogs.