How much does a miniature weigh?

[JMAP94]

Does anyone know how much a typical D&D miniature weighs? I can't find the answer online, but I figure that someone who owns them may have the info on a box of minis they bought or in an instruction booklet or something.

I know this is a strange question, but I have my reasons that I can't detail here because my players may read this.

[Lord Torath]

Plastic or Pewter?
If Pewter, metal or plastic base?
Roughly Human-sized?
25mm scale or Heroic 28mm scale or 56 mm scale?

How close do you need to get? Is +/- 1/2 ounce close enough? Nearest gram?

[Knaight]

No. However, I do know that the miniature standard is generally 28mm - 32mm high, and that there's a tendency for them to generally fit human shapes. So, approximation time:
Height: 30mm
Mass of 25 BMI 30mm tall human: 23 g. (Rounded up to account for how they generally have stuff).
Density of pewter: 7.28 g/mL.
Density of humans: 1 g/mL (rough approximation using water density).
Estimated mass: 167 g + mass of base. There's no way we have 3 sig figs here, so call it 175 for a nice round number. 200 g including the base sounds reasonable.

[JMAP94]

Plastic or Pewter?
If Pewter, metal or plastic base?
Roughly Human-sized?
25mm scale or Heroic 28mm scale or 56 mm scale?

How close do you need to get? Is +/- 1/2 ounce close enough? Nearest gram?

It would be human sized with a plastic base and frame. Probably to the nearest gram for weight.

[Knaight]

It would be human sized with a plastic base and frame. Probably to the nearest gram for weight.

Nearest gram isn't happening here, complements of how human mass varies by a lot more than a gram, and how plastic densities vary by more than a gram. Actually finding hard numbers for human mass distribution is surprisingly difficult online, but I was able to find a couple of growth charts that go up to age 20 (where people typically finish growing - it wasn't global data, but it makes the point well enough. On the low end (3rd percentile girls) the results found were at 45 kg. On the high end (97th percentile boys), there was 101 kg. Obviously there are people well outside this range, but these are still within relatively common mass ranges.

Now lets talk plastic density. I'll be using a slightly better 0.985 g/mL for humans here, with plastics having a wide range but usually falling somewhere between 0.5 and 4.0 g/mL. That gives us a low end of 22.843 kg (to the nearest gram) and a high end of 410.152 kg (to the nearest gram). Then we add the base, which also has room to vary heavily.

With that said, there are some more reasonable approximations if you want just one number. The average human is about 65 kg. Some quick googling indicates that modern miniatures are usually made out of polyethylene, polystyrene and/or resin. "Resin" is a bit of a catch all, so lets go with the other two. Polyethylene varies from about 0.91-0.96 g/mL, polystyrene 0.96-1.04. I'll take the average of the whole range, 0.975 as the density value, while also noting that average human density is well within the plastics range. We're now down from 65 kg to 64.43 kg. As for the base, RPG miniatures are often intended to fit a 5'x5' square, complements of D&D standards. That means the base is a cylinder with a radius of 2.5', working out to 1.824 square meters times the height, or something more like a rectangular prism, which works out to 2.323 square meters times height. Then we get into height. Again, I'm not finding good data here, but based on pictures the base height usually seems like about 1/8 the mini height. I'm going to approximate this at 0.21 meters, thus getting volumes of 0.383 and 0.488 cubic meters. This adds an extra 373.425 kg (to the nearest gram) or 475.800 kg (to the nearest gram). Yet again, nearest gram is a terrible metric here, given that I can get a 20 kg discrepancy with a tiny height change of the base, and given that there's not that many significant figures on any of the starting data here.

Switching to increments of 10kg, we have the 440kg round based mini and the 540 kg square based mini.

[ImNotTrevor]

They definitely weigh less than a pound.
Like, 99% certain.

[Mutazoia]

The Ral Partha site (http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/shop/products_all.html) lists their mini's weights (for humanoid figures) around the 20-30 gram range.

[JMAP94]

Thanks for everyone's help. I really hope my players like what I'm working on.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I am massively curious. I hope you come back and tell us what this was about when it's safe!