D&D 5E Models

[ltmedic]

Hey everyone!

First off i would like to say that i'm not trying to sell anything or advertise anything as i don't have anything And sorry if this is in the wrong forum category.

Anyway, i was wondering what people do and use when playing D&D in person and not online. More specifically models,characters and scenery?
I don't know about anyone else but when playing D&D especially battles, just drawing the bounds on a mat doesn't quite make it as enjoyable as having actual terrain like what Warhammer 40k has!

Is there anything that puts people off models?
The one thing that gets me is when combat happens in buildings or caves, that there are models that you can get that are specific to the campaign but that's it and not flexible and a fairly one use, repetitive model having to plan around the model if making your own encounter/campaign.
Also some of the models are crazy expensive like £15 for 4 characters! But that's just me as i don't have much money to spend on models.

 

[alienux]

Personally, I prefer TotM over using miniatures. I generally draw maps on either grid paper or on a large notepad when I DM. Having said that, I do however enjoy collecting the miniatures, so I've got a pretty good sized collection. I do occasionally use them when positioning in combat may be a little more critical than normal. When I do use minis, they're the WotC and WizKid minis that have been released over the last 5 to 10 years. We have a local comic and game shop that has a lot to choose from, and they sell them individually, so it's pretty easy to get exactly what you want.

 

[ccs]

If you want minis for various PCs/monsters/NPCs there's no end of stuff available....

Start by looking at stuff by Reaper. They make a huge range of stuff in both metal & softer white plastic (their "Bones" range). The Bones line is less expensive than the metal.

Next up look at the unpainted stuff made by Wizkids. They have a range for D&D and a range for Pathfinder, I just forget the exact names. Looks good, fairly cheap, comes already primed a light grey.

Then there's the pre-painted minis that come in blind booster packs for D&D and Pathfinder. Made by Wizkids. Every few months another set is released. By now there's quite the assortment. Most are pretty decent looking. They follow the Common/Uncommon/Rare packing scheme.
Personally I buy minis from these sets as singles, same way I'd shop for individual Magic cards. So through Troll & Toad/Miniature Market/Ebay/etc

For many years WoTC themselves also produced pre-painted plastic minis in the blind booster format. Quality was less than the current WK stuff, but overall not too bad. Same C/U/R packing scheme. They made a lot of sets.
I buy (bought) singles in the same fashion I'd buy single Magic cards.

After that? There's so many other companies that've made fantasy figures over the past 40 years.....
Games Workshop, Marauder, Mantic, Wyrd, Privateer Press, Ral-Partha, Rafm, Grenadier, Cool Mini or Not, - those are just a few companies I know are represented in my own collection. Plus I don't know how many others have come & gone that I don't know about. (I've got stuff I have NO idea who made it anymore - stuff bought at shows from small vendors, cool stuff I came across, etc)

There's also plenty of options out there for cardboard pawns. Paizo makes a great selection for Pathfinder. Some generic sets and others that are specific to their various APs. But Paizo is far from the only pawn source.

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Terrain:
In addition to RPGs I'm also a minis wargamer. I LOVE 3d terrain. But it does take up space (and $ might be a concern for some)..... So you have to be selective in what you model 3d & what you just draw on the battlemat.
For instance, I'm not about to invest the build time/$/storage space to build every cave system & series of 10' wide dungeon corridors/x' by x' rooms so common in this game. That's what the grid map & wet-erase marker is for.
But for D&D I will build specific things that:
A: Will be used frequently enough - Ex; I built an inn/tavern that gets used in many of my games
B: Will look cool - I'm currently building Babba Yaggas dancing hut based on the pictures in the PF "Reign of Winter" AP
C: Are really important to the story - In my current campaign there's a series of 7 Stonehenge like areas that are really important. So I built one of them (they're all fairly similar).
D: Are practicalto build. Ex; I'd LOVE to have a 3d model of Castle Ravenloft scaled to the figures. But that's just not going to happen. Yes, I can build it. But I can't store it & I can't transport it..... So. I can build/transport/store Strahds individual crypt though.

 

[thalmin]

I grew into using minis and grid/terrain. When having difficulty understanding the encounter room layout, the DM grabbed a nearby chessboard (for the grid 10ft/square) and Twizzlers for the walls, then the chess pieces for monsters (black) and characters (white knight for paladin, bishop for cleric, queen for magic user, rook for fighter). The next week I brought a set of generic monsters and characters. Soon, every player had a character figure that more closely represented our own characters. The chess board got replaced with a Berkley Battlemat. The chess pieces slowly got replaced with either common monsters (skeletons, goblins, orcs) or the special big bad if we were going to encounter him multiple times before the end battle.
Special terrain came later with poster-size maps of reusable terrain, flip-mats, whatever.

 

[Tormyr]

I like the work of DM Scotty, although his videos are a tad corny at times.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF-i5kmuwyV6N3xi5z1TElg

 

[aco175]

We use the old maps and tiles from Wizards. I think most came from 3e and 4e, but I have seem some of the boxes at B&Nobles. I don't know how many times the PCs have been ambushed traveling on the King's Road. You would think they would learn

 

[MNblockhead]

I do both theater of the mind as well as elaborate set ups.

I second the recommendation for DM Scotty, but I find I just don't have much time to craft. I made some cavern pieces using is 2.5 D system so I can throw together a cavern craw on the fly. I also made a bunch of his measuring sticks for gridless play. They are helpful even when playing with grids.

Dwarven forge is too much of an investment for me.

For minis, I'll buy prepainted from sellers on e-bay so that I get what I want. I hate the buying blind approach. It may keep the cost down for mini, but a cheap unwanted mini is not a value to me.

My issue is when I want to have a horde of monsters. I looked into 3D printers, but the time they take to make pieces that I still have to paint turned me off. They were not THAT cheap, you still have to paint them, you have to wait a long time to have a lot of pieces, and you need space with sufficient ventilation to avoid making you sick with the fumes of running a 3D printer for days at a time.

My solution was to buy a Silhouette paper butter (Cricket is another popular brand). Then I bought a bung of One Monk paper miniature templates (in DriveThruRPG) that come with cut files. I can now make a small army of kobolds, lizard folk, goblins, etc. in a couple hours.

For terrain, I like Fat Drag Games's paper terrain. The forums have links to cut files for most of their products.

Paper terrain and minis look much better than you might think. Unless you are a talents painter, crafter, or have lots of money, it is hard to get great looking terrain sets in 3D. Also, 3D can be hard to actually play on. Also, because of the cost, you end up using them over and over and over again.

For mats, I prefer the felt maps with patterns on them. Tere are a number of companies. I use Ceri Designs, usually from Kickstarter when they offer good deals. But you can buy from their web page. The plain "grass" one is the most used. I also have one for sand, dungeon floor, and village/town streets. I also bought some felt terrain pieces which I use along with some old D&D and pathfinder carboard dungeon tile style terrain pieces for when I don't have time for a more 3-D setup.

You can get coupons for various craft stores like Michael's, Hobby Lobby, etc. and get lots of stuff that can be re-purposed as terrain (rocks, fake bushes and trees, ...)

And, of course, I still have my trusty Chessex Battlemap and dry erase markers.

 

[MNblockhead]

Oh one other idea, get a bunch of 1" wood blank rounds from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Woodpeckers-...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CYF3FG9GE9VBPBTQDP7Z

You can get 100 for 10-15 USD.

Then get a 1" paper punch. E.g.: https://www.amazon.com/EK-tools-Cir...qid=1495059237&sr=1-2&keywords=1"+paper+punch

Buy some printer-friendly card-stock paper. You can easily find or make 1" circle markers. Someone on a reddit board made all the images in the Monster Manual into circles like this. Then you just put as manny as you can fit on a page using MS Publisher, GIMP, maybe in MS Word, and print then punch them out.

Then you just use a glue stick and glue them to the wood blanks, maybe numbering them.

Some folks get really fancy, but having glass tops and such, but you can make a couple hundred "pogs" for your monsters and NPCs for under $30. Less if you do away with the wood blanks and just use the cardstock, but the wood blanks are easier to move around.


Also for paper minis, I forgot to give a shout out to Printable Heroes — you can support him on Patreon but he gives a lot of work away for free if you are tight on cash.

 

[Oofta]

I like painting minis, so I've given ReaperMini a lot of money over the years. I do prefer plastic minis for large creatures though.

I use a standard laminated flip maps, I think from paizo (I bought them at my game store).

For terrain, I do something a little different. I got some air-dry clay (standard kids modeling clay) and formed shapes into 1-inch squares, some longer lengths (multiple squares connected together) and some 2X2 and 4X4 blocks (1 block thick). It was a little tricky to get the first piece or two right, but with a little practice I have quite a few now.

I use these for various terrain (I made the bigger ones for buildings), columns, rocks, hills whatever I need. I find it easy to just throw out some blocks to get some pretty complex terrain

I've tried other pre-fab sets and I find that they're just too much work to justify the effort. My wife found some furniture set-dressing somebody 3D prints for bar scenes which I also use.

So with some investment of time if you're a little handy and don't mind playing around with clay to find something that works for you, you can just make your own.

 

[pogre]

Not cheap, but I use Dwarven Forge MasterMaze, Hirst Arts, and models from nearly all of the companies mentioned above. Models and terrain are a big part of my campaign. It's not for everyone, but we love it!