Characters miniatures

[Sindal]

Hi all

So heroforged added coloured models not long ago and I've happily been making a few of my own but it made me curious.

Q: How many of you have miniatures irl? How long? Are they expensive? Do you paint them yourself? Do you feel it really enhances your tsbletop gamin? Tell me about your minis.

Bonus Q: Share some images if you can! Even if it's a hero forge screeny.

Me:
I don't have any. But I would like to own one. Hence my interest.

And here's a mini I made in heroforged, my tabaxi Sindal
https://ibb.co/dtC36cF

Excited to hear everyone's things :)

[Forechosen]

I'm a semi professional miniature painter, well, I'm an amateur that does pretty well paid commission work - so my opinion is most definitely biased... but that being said!

My playgroup absolutely loves playing with miniatures - in fact, designing (on heroforge) or browsing the internet trying to find the perfect mini for your character is half the fun!

They're always on the tabletop, although to be fair, we only really use them in combat, or to show marching order. But it definitely enhances the game. To me, at least (and I THINK I speak for my playgroup too) - it's just one extra layer of 'connection' to your character. You have a story, perhaps a picture, and now a miniature too. Any scenery we have really livens up the game too - it's certainly not needed, but if you can physically see your party standing at the gates of a large castle, after defeating the evil baddy, it's a great feeling.

I'd say minis for D&D aren't expensive, as you only need one for your character. Everything else is just an added bonus. Over the last couple of years I've bought some zombies, wolves, things like that. But they're hardly expensive. It does help that I have a 3D printer - honestly that thing is a godsend when it comes to D&D. You can just print out anything on the fly if you happen to need it.

As I said above, I paint semi-professionaly, so I do paint all the minis myself, including my group's miniatures (although if they wanted to paint them, of course that would be fine!) - it takes me about an 1-2 hours to paint a normal sized miniature, at a 'normal' quality. Longer if I'm doing something special - and generally shorter if the miniature is 3D printed, because the layer lines, and the fact my 3d printer isn't great - make it incredibly hard to do a really decent paint job.

Honestly I'm such a mini enthusiast, I could direct you to a hundred different companies/games/kickstarters etc - just shout if you have any questions!

Here's my newly made (couple of weeks ago) mini-painting instagram, with a few pictures on! Every single 3D printed thing (The Tortle/party (all heroforge!), the Church and the Faerie Dragon) has been for D&D :)

https://www.instagram.com/forechosen.miniatures/

[arcane_asp]

I use miniatures of all types - in my DM "go bag" I've got a box of assorted miniatures from fantasy & scifi, enough to approximate most encounters. There's maybe 50/60 regular 28mm scale figures packed, with a few larger beasts as well (dragons, larger orcs, horses, etc.)

I've probably spent around £100 on everything over the years, but you can get bargains on ebay and amazon. Even toys and action figures of the right scale can do the job if you can find the right ones. I paint them myself - I can do the basics in terms of painting but I'm still trying to improve my patience enough to become a better painter of mini's/

For D&D it does really help bring things to life - Roll20 is better for maps but having the mini's arrayed on a tabletop does provide a great focus for a session. I used to do some wargaming stuff (mainly Games Workshop's Necromunda & 40k).

There are so many sources of mini's, HeroForge notwithstanding, that I've got a huge variety. Some of my favourites are an oversize orc brute with twin clubs, some kind of Bishop with full regalia and hat, and most recently some Frost Giants (these are larger size gladiator action figures with a respray and some pale blue highlights - they are perfect 'giants' compared to the smaller 28mm scale miniatures!)

[Bunny Commando]

Hi all

So heroforged added coloured models not long ago and I've happily been making a few of my own but it made me curious.

Q: How many of you have miniatures irl? How long? Are they expensive? Do you paint them yourself? Do you feel it really enhances your tsbletop gamin? Tell me about your minis.

Bonus Q: Share some images if you can! Even if it's a hero forge screeny.

Me:
I don't have any. But I would like to own one. Hence my interest.

And here's a mini I made in heroforged, my tabaxi Sindal
https://ibb.co/dtC36cF

Excited to hear everyone's things :)

I own hundreds of miniatures that I regularly use for my games of Dark Heresy (mostly from GW Specialist Games, a dozen from other companies that do GW-like stuff); one time I bought and painted a Tech-Priest miniature and gifted it to one of my players - he was quite happy.
Minatures could certainly enhance your gaming and they're not that expensive if you're interested in having one just for your character. It could start being expensive (and time consuming) if you buy miniatures for enemies, NPCs, characters, paints, brushes and so on.

If you wish to own one, go on. If you also wish to paint it and it's your first time as a painter: wait a bit. Buy some really cheap miniatures, grab a basic colour set, watch some tutorials on Youtube and practice on them.

[EggKookoo]

We use minis. My players designed their PCs on HeroForge (back a while ago) and I printed them out for them to paint. I'm using an FDM printer and when I first set it up I had trouble getting real fine detail out of it, so I ended up printing the minis at 150%. I guess roughly 40mm scale? I've since figured out how to get some decent detail with the right filament and I can make some acceptable 28mm minis, but we've gone with the bigger size since day 1.

My brother got a resin printer and can easily do nice 28mm figures, but he makes his own still at the larger size to fit with the table. I printed out a lot of NPCs as well, but that gets expensive and painting them is time consuming, so I usually go with cheap figures like this on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0746TKNSL/ref=emc_b_5_i) for my reusable monsters. They're conveniently at about that same larger scale.

We do use the minis for combat but only kind of loosely -- general positioning and such. I don't tend to use grid maps, but I do have a couple of pieces of twine scaled to 30 and 60 feet, with knots at the 5' intervals. Works great for distances. For the most part, the players like seeing the visual representation of their PC on the table.