Nobody here talks about the tabletop: miniatures, terrain, etc. Why is that?

[LordCdrMilitant]

I use Legos.

Go on. Bring on the hate.

Also, sometimes board game pieces appropriated from a vast array of board games. Currently I own less of them than I did as a kid, so that's a bummer. But they're handy. Heck, I've even use board game boards for maps. Labyrinth and Tikal are perpetual favorites. You basically get procedurally generating dynamic dungeons from Labyrinth pieces alone.

It's been long enough that I'm somewhat out of practice, so I haven't found the best use for my Legos yet. I mostly use them as a visual indicator of marching order, formation etc.. My paper notes tend to take up too much space to effectively play battles with them.

Legos are great. You can make characters with minifigures, and change weapons basically to your heart's content.

[anthon]

when i was a kid i had some pewter minis and i was painting them with colored ink. I wanted the ink to bake on the surface like a glaze enamel, so i made a flame thrower. My little mini's sword melted and made me very sad. I abandoned minis for the next 25 years.

i then 3D printed a mini for a 3.5e game, but his weapon snapped off at the layer seem and the DM demanded my atheist character pick a god to worship and for me, the player, to give verbal oblations to this god, or I would not be permitted to level up. I again abandoned minis, and that game table.

Years later, I was heckled into buying a mini for my fire mage in 5e. About 2 sessions in the DM decided it would be fun to have the entire group take double disintegrates back to back. 7 player characters died with no chance of recovery.

I think Legos would make good minis.

[Tanarii]

That's some serious Curse of the Mini Buyer right there anthon

[Imbalance]

Oof, that's harsh, Anthon. I would say that, at my table, if you've put significant effort into a personalized mini for your character (not necessarily $$$), it should be worth an extra death save in game.

[EggKookoo]

We use minis in our D&D 5e game. For PCs, we tend to use HeroForge and I print them on my Ender. My brother has a resin printer and printed his guy with that. Since we're all getting older and eyesight gets worse, we decided to print them at 150% scale, which puts a 6' human at somewhere around 42mm height, give or take. Makes painting easier too.

For most NPCs, I bought a few cases of cheap plastic figures (like these). I don't try to paint them, just use them as-is. They're about the right scale and they make good quick bad guys. I have printed some special NPCs, typically recurring characters so it's worth the investment. I also printed up some generic kobold, goblin, and human(ish) figures that I reuse from time to time.

We use these guys almost solely for positioning during combat. It's much easier to just put your guy where he is, and I (as the DM) don't have to continually "repaint" the scene with everyone's position. We don't use a grid, though. I have a length of twine scaled to 30 feet and knotted at 5-foot intervals, and we use that to determine distances (I also have a scaled 60 foot string for extra length if needed). Just a note: If you're going to make a knotted string, do the knots first, then cut it to the final length. Knotting consumes thread and shortened the overall length. Learned that the hard way...

[Imbalance]

Spoiler: Toll Reversal

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