Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

5th Edition D&D DMG, page 85. Enjoy!

--B.

World really needs more tabaxi. Cheers!

@ Red Harvest: It's good to have access to veterans of the game who know a lot more about it than I do, thanks.

@Monkeytroll: Thanks! I'm glad you like it.

@Briancj: Thanks for doing some research for me. Unfortunately, I don't have the Dungeon Master's Guide yet. I have the Player's Handbook, and Monster Manual so far, along with the starter set. I just couldn't bring myself to drop $150 all at once when I was buying the other two, and had figured I needed that the least. I'll be sure to check that page out when I get the DMG tho.

Wirecat
World really needs more tabaxi. Cheers!

I agree I'm happy to tell you that I started on a second Tabaxi mini this weekend.

I devoted a lot of Sunday to modeling, and although my back hurts it was quite enjoyable.


A bit more progress on the Tabaxi rogue that I'm making for one of my players. Still a long way to go.


I started on a second Tabaxi. I'm not crazy about how either Tabaxi's feet turned out, but I think this one is a bit better. This Tabaxi will be a random encounter NPC who is a wandering trader. He is based off of a Kajeet chacrater I made in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.


These will be three wild boars, which are also a part of the extra random encounter table I made. (for extra info see my conversation with Red Harvest on page 6 of this blog). I was bothered that the beginning of this adventure takes place on and around a road called "Triboar trail", yet there are no wild boar anywhere in the adventure. So I decided that they will be a new random encounter, and that they always travel in groups of three in this area, hence the trail name. It's funny how quickly I am abandoning only getting/working on the minis I need for the adventure, and trying to play the starter set as close to intended as possible. If anyone is curious those are potion bottles for heads on the boar, the ones I used for my Hero Quest alchemy table. I wanted something to build the heads on top of, and they were the right size.

Speaking of not being very good about only working on what I need for the current adventure, I was really inspired by a recent "Black Magic Craft" video on youtube about building an earth elemental/rock golem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1AKrIN1U3Q

I wanted to see if I could make it using mostly really cheap expanded polystyrene (mostly since I'm low on the good stuff), and used my hot wire cutter for every cut on the white foam.

Very beginning


Here is when I finished the white expanded polystyrene part. I made the eyes and mouth by shoving the hot tip of the glue gun into the head.


This is how it looked when I stopped for the night. With Legolas in there for scale. I used the better gray extruded polystyrene for the accent rocks at the joints, and also glued actual little pebbles from my pebble bin. Like the guy from black magic craft, I also wanted to add weight to keep this guy standing. I hollowed out a section of the foot that's flat on the ground and filled it with pebbles and hot glue. I also carved some "toes" from the grey foam for more stability.

Nice start on the golem. encrusting actual rocks, gravel actually, might make for a neat effect. It would certainly increase its weight. If a few fall off, so what. Battle damage, call it. I've done it before with terrain pieces, encrusting rocks into such foam.

If you want to read more about random encounters, advice for DMs, etc, here is a nice resource of free pdf rulesets based in part on older versions of D&D. http://www.tenkarstavern.com/p/f.html Some of them are worth a read for ideas, inspiration what have you. One thing to always remember is that random encounters are not always creatures who attack immediately.

I can attest to the wandering monster gambit that Red Harvest mentioned. Back in the late 70's when we were figuring out how to play and what everything was all about (in the school library resources room during Library Sciences class, of all things- how cool is that?) we would take too long trying to decide what to do and our DM would just make something up on the spot (we didn't have a monster manual yet, or any plotline beyond 'go in dungeon (ie: a maze) and kill everything that pops out and goes 'boo'!). Next thing you know you're up to your azz in stegasuaruses.

Unless the exploring party are all practitioners of American Sign Language (we tried this dodge), in which case the DM sicced a bunch of psychic brainsuckers on us, claiming they were attracted by all the thinking going on.

Keep on keepin' on, man!

@Red Harvest: thanks for the resource, I'll check it out. I'll keep plugging away at the giant golem/elemental as time allows. I definately want to encrust it more, but I'm worried about it getting top heavy again if I do too many real rocks up high, so I'll probably stick to using real rock on the legs, and making foam rocks up high. And thank you, I love the idea about delaying the danger of random encounters, like someone asking for help, and then betraying the party down the line. I'll have to add some of that kind of stuff to my random encounter table.

@Meer_Cat: That's is such a cool way to have gotten your start in D&D! Thanks for the additional support for random encounters. Though if my players were clever enough to have all their characters learn some non-verbal communication and remember to say that they're all communicating that way, I think I'd let them get away with it.

The betrayal trope is over-used. Be careful with it.

There is something called talus that model railroaders use to simulate rocks. You may want to give that a look. It's lightweight.

Thanks for the advice Red Harvest

A little more progress with modeling:


A very tiny bit more progress on the Tabaxi rogue for one of my players. I worked on the torso and shoulders.


I got a lot further on the robed Tabaxi trader.


bulked out the heads on the wild boar. Still a long way to go.

That robe work is top notch bud, excellent work. The other items are really coming on too.

You've been knocking these out since I last checked!!! Agree with Cam, the robed dude is looking great, so much character in him

I meant to comment before, must have gotten distracted. Gricks are looking awesome, and tabaxi are amazingly cool given the simplicity of the build.

@Cam: Thanks Cam! I'm really happy with how the robe came out, I haven't tried anything like that before so I had no idea if it would look like anything.

@boundless: Thanks! Now that I'm playing again, I'm feeling really inspired and have been pushing to get stuff done. I'll often squeeze in half an hour before leaving for work in the morning, and then work more when I get home. I'm glad the robed Tabaxi has a lot of character, I was trying for that.

@Da Boss: Thanks! I am surprised that the Tabaxi are coming out as well as they are, since I'm uses cut offs from another project as the heads, and trying to freehand most everything else. I'm glad you like the gricks too, I really need to get back and finish them.

Speaking of which... I didn't finish them (or even work on them lately)
.
I did get a lot further on the wild boar. I was worried they weren't going to turn out looking like much, but I'm really happy with how they're shaping up with the latest additions to the head area.


Also completely unnecessary for the current campaign, but I wanted my robed Tabaxi to have an overloaded pack horse, so I threw this together. I took the smallest horse from a pack of cheap plastic horses I bought from the dollar store, and glued some castings of backpacks onto a piece of paper. The backpacks are altered ork packs one is from a mek/big mek and the other was the big shoota backpack with the grot sitting inside with the ammo.


These are Red Brand Ruffians for the starter set campaign. A local bandit gang. I actually only need 4, but they're easy to make so when I decided they would also be a new random encounter, I more than double the number that would be available to use. The body and most of the capes come from a mini I am crazy about. The Mirkwood guard Lord of the Rings Heroclix mini. I think it looks really bad ass. I then did a head swap for a 40k Dark Angels hooded head, since all these bandits wear red cloaks.

Tomorrow is our next game of D&D, I'm looking forward to it

Love the overloaded pack horse- very clever and good use of dollar store materials- one of my favorite places to scout for 'treasures'!

Thanks Meer_Cat, it's one of my favorite places to pick up stuff for projects too.

We had our third D&D session of Playing the Starter Set campaign today. We didn't get very far, but they accomplished some cool stuff. Our cleric used Thaumaturgy to bellow into the cave something about how the goblins had displeased his god and would be punished, followed up by causing earth tremors with the same spell. It was such a cool idea I allowed the range to be farther than the 30 feet it's allowed. The goblins reacted by springing one of their "tidal wave" traps, which rumbled down the cave and exploded out the entrance, missing them as they were hiding outside. Even more entertaining, was when they got to the first room. This was a goblin kennel with three chained wolves. They really liked the wolves for whatever reason and went beyond what most players would. With a successful string of animal handling roles, all 5 in a row were rolled higher than 15, they calmed the wolves, encouraged friendliness, released the wolves, coaxed the wolves to follow them out of the cave, and got the wolves to allow themselves to be tied to nearby trees just out of reach of the supply wagon to retrieve at the end of the dungeon. When they finally got far enough in to be seen by a goblin sentry who causes the tidal wave traps, they recognized the rumble of the approaching torrent and booked it to safety easily.

My favorite event in today's game was during the wolf rescue. When the players were desperately trying to figure out how to release the wolves from being chained to a metal spike driven into a stalagmite. Our cleric brought up that he was carrying stone cutting tools. He planned to try to sever the chains, which was then changed to trying to break the stalagemite. I warned how noisy all of this would be, since they had already suffered 1 random encounter from all the shouting and waiting with the thaumaturgy. So the cleric asked the wizard if he had a spell that could cut the chains like a laser. The wizard didn't, but considered using an electric spell on the chains. I pointed out that, with the chains being metal he would electrocute the wolves they were trying to save. They then devised using ray of frost to make everything brittle for when they try to sever it with the stone cutting tools. It was at this point the player who plays a fighter (who had been waiting quietly through all of this) said "Can't we just take off their collars?" I looked over the description of the room, and couldn't find anything saying they were locked to these chains, so I said yes.


Here is how far they have gotten into their first dungeon. Sorry for the sloppiness, one of my players kept bumping the river, and I removed the cave mouth and outside so everyone could see better.


My players also asked me to take a picture recording their three new pet wolves.

Heh. In theory, if they were goblin-owned wolves, they would NOT be locked to the chains, much like we don't lock dogs to their leads.

That's really going above and beyond making a 3d map of that whole cave system - serious kudos to you as a DM! I loved the tidal wave concept in the book. 3 sessions to get just past the entrance of the first dungeon is slow going though - can see that your group likes to explore all possible options

Really love how the boars are shaping up - you be got a real talent for getting the shape of animals down. Sounds silly, but little things like the curve on a leg or arch on a neck can really make or break whether you accept an animal as realistic or not. Keep up be great work!

@Briancj: That's a good point Brian. I enjoy that you can follow stuff to their logical conclusion more in D&D than in many games. I should feel more comfortable to just rolling with stuff in this campaign, rather than constantly checking if I'm following exactly the way it was written.

@Scarper: Thanks! I've talked to my group about theater of the mind, and paper maps and such. But for as long as I have the time and energy, we'd all like to try to stick with minis and nice looking real terrain, etc. I also liked the tidal wave, it's a much more original and interesting trap than you often come across. Our D&D sessions only last 2 hours, so it is a little hard to accomplish too much, but still you're right about my group being slow and exploring all possible options I'm also very flattered by your kind words about the boars. I was trying to get the shapes and proportions correct by examining a toy pig model, I'm glad it's paying off. I'm also having trouble deciding now if I want to continue making them into boars, or to make them domestic pigs.
It sounds like you have either played or run the Starter Set campaign, Scarper? I'm hoping these updates are especially fun for you, if you have.

First up, I have finished painting the Red Brand Ruffians

In this first pic, I'm already noticing so many needed touch ups, and this is before I added the wash to the faces.


After the wash on the faces and hands


Paint's still a bit wet, and that white spot is a glob of PVA glue to fill in a hole in the casting. But, painting is almost done on the overloaded pack horse. (Even though it isn't actually in the campaign.


In the Red Brand hideout there is a crypt with 3 tombs, each sarcophagi depicts a different person. These will be them. Still very WIP and oh boy am I getting a lot of use out of mold I made of the HeroQuest sarcophagus top. I may need to make some undead heavy quest sometime to use all this stuff again. I head swapped the one sarcophagus with the same hooded Dark Angel head that I used for the Red Brand Ruffians. The used one of the cool oversized ladies from the Mythic Heroes bucket that I got off of Amazon a while back. I clipped off her staff, then cut both her arms around the elbow to reposition them into the "resting pose" that she's in now. I finally poked and dabbed some very hot glue into the basic outline of her body in some very soft and light expanded polystyrene. The indentation sunk down way too far. I'm now filling it in all the huge gaps with PVA glue and sand.

That's some solid progress, Syro! You are really setting the mark with this robed tabaxi! Considering I am about to get into loose clothing myself, that is quite high example for my inspiration. And what a cute little piglets You've made - wonderful! The only thing for a grumpy wirecat to grump about is the REALLY overladen pack horse. I mean, really, who uses such a noble and true-bred riding horse for a beast of burden. Adventurers, my tail... Meh! :^)

Thanks so much Wirecat. I'm constantly marveling at your beautiful scuplts, so it means a lot that you like how mine are looking. And no worries about the pack horse, I specifically made the horse to feel a little wrong when you look at it, like it is being treated wrong through being worked and used wrong. I should do a size comparison picture also, it's much smaller than my other horse models.

That is freaking hilarious- "can't we just take their collars off?" And so true- we get blinded by our preconceptions and oftentimes make the problem harder than it really is. A story I hear from the early days of the space race was about the US (and proud American am I, so no holds barred) invested a tidy sum inventing a pen with a pressurized ink cell that could write in zero gravity. The Soviets used pencils.

Terrific game you've got going and thanks for the reports- it's like D&D on the radio! (Pipe down kids- I got the game on!)

Thanks Meer_Cat, I'm glad you're enjoyng hearing about the game I always got a chuckle out of that story about over complicating things with a million dollar pen rather than using pencil. At the same time, I was relieved to hear a more recent clarification that the graphite dust from using pencils was floating everywhere in zero G and damaging electronics (probably wasn't great for the astronauts lungs either. We'll loose a funny story, but I hope the clarification is true.

I promised some size comparison shots of my poor over-loaded pack horse, and I'll share my other progress as well.


My pack horse is the exact same model as the little red horse on the right. I hope everyone can see the size differences clearly in the angle of the pic. These are all dollar store horses, so they're mostly pretty bad, but I hope i can find good use for them. I'm not sure what to do with the three huge ones in the back, maybe they should be draft horses. I was annoyed how useless the two horse on the bottom left who are scratching at themselves were until I came up with a great idea for them. (some of you may have already noticed them in use.


The campaign starts with the heroes finding two dead horses lying in the road, I think they work very well for that.


Here's one more size comparison with the zebras that I'm planning to repaint as donkeys. The smuggie one is from a dolalr store pack of animals, the rest are from the Battat Terra Wild animals tube on Amazon. I got the idea to repaint zebra from "Miniature Mashup" on Youtube, if my memory serves.


He's a little to epic for how I'm using him, but this Thranduil LoTR Heroclix mini will be serving and Sildar Halwinter in the Starter Campaign.


I'm converting one of my many Thorin Oakenshield minis from LoTR Heroclix, into the evil mage "Glass Staff" I like getting to alter and add onto thus mini, rather than just using it as is. I cut all the sword and scabbards or the piece. Two swords and an empty scabbard in total.I replaced his sword arm with an arm holding a staff. I also cut his other arm in two places. He was originally using his hand as a visor over his eyes as he looked into the distance. I've tried to make it look like he's ready to fire a spell out of his hand.


After being broken off the big bulky Heroclix bases, the PCs had very small bases to stand on. They were finally starting to have a little trouble balancing on terrain, but mostly I was just bothered that they had such different bases from the rest of the models. I made some mostly hollow bases, and with a little clipping, was able to press them into the middle with hot glue. They needed quite a bit of cleaning up.


Once they are painted black, I think the custom bases look pretty good.

Believe it or not, the larger horses are just right for war horses. Also, Clydesdales.

That's good to hear, thanks Brian. I typically don't see many horses (none of them war horses), and when I do, it's usually with kids, so I was having a mental block of how big they should look.

I've made some black bears from small bears in the Battat Terra Wild animals tube. They're too small to be any other type of bear anyone in a fantasy setting would encounter, and they're not actually in the game, but I wanted them for random encounters.


I've begun working on the nothic, a weird cyclopean mind reading abberation. I made the head from a skeleton's head, and carved out everything above the nose to fit the giant eye. The eye itself is a small plastic sphere, they're from some kind of art thing where you have a bunch of colored plastic spheres that you can get to stick together into a pattern or picture if you cook them lightly or something. I cut off and am altering the arms and legs of a scythe witch from the Sedition wars board game.

A Nothic looks like this in the Monster Manual:
https://goo.gl/images/ESyc5g

One of those bears would also be good for a druid in 'bear form'.

That's a really good point! Thanks Brian! I can't believe I forgot about my favorite ability of my one my favorite classes

Wow you're really making great progress. I love how much mileage you're getting out of all the different mini sources you are using. Thorin Glass-staff looks pretty neat, I would not have expected that to work out.

On your game report, my players always want to recruit everyone they can as well. It's a bit of an issue!

 Syro_ wrote:

@Scarper: Thanks! I've talked to my group about theater of the mind, and paper maps and such. But for as long as I have the time and energy, we'd all like to try to stick with minis and nice looking real terrain, etc. I also liked the tidal wave, it's a much more original and interesting trap than you often come across. Our D&D sessions only last 2 hours, so it is a little hard to accomplish too much, but still you're right about my group being slow and exploring all possible options I'm also very flattered by your kind words about the boars. I was trying to get the shapes and proportions correct by examining a toy pig model, I'm glad it's paying off. I'm also having trouble deciding now if I want to continue making them into boars, or to make them domestic pigs.
It sounds like you have either played or run the Starter Set campaign, Scarper? I'm hoping these updates are especially fun for you, if you have.

Nothing wrong with some visual aids - I'm sure your players really appreciate it! There's something to be said for a good map or layout - it's all very well describing a room in an interesting, exciting way, but dimensions are important too when it comes to movement and combat. There's only so many ways you can describe exactly how many feet apart the three brigands are, and how far off that rocky outcrop is, without sounding a little tedious!
I've not actually played the campaign, but I've read it through - one of my friends bought me the starter set to try and encourage me to get into D&D, and credit to the bastard, it worked. I've stolen a bunch of ideas from the first few dungeons - they're well made, with some interesting traps, layouts and characters. I hope you're enjoying it!

Nothic is taking shape really well - can really picture how it's going to turn out! The giant eye is always a creepy look... I'm impressed with your dedication to this - what if they get through the whole basement and miss the perception check to even encounter the thing? I'd be heartbroken if I'd made and painted a model for it.
You didn't back the Sedition Wars Kickstarter, did you? Taught me a lesson or two that did...

@Scarper: I've always felt that way too about the benefit of a grid and visual aids. I prefer more tactical combat, I absolutely love another roleplaying group I'm a part of, and the GM is amazing, the best I've ever played with. The one thing that bothers me a little bit, is not fully knowing where everyone is in relation to each other and the distance to enemies, like you said.

I am enjoying the starter campaign, and each session we get more in the groove and understand what we're doing more. Each session has been more fun than the last as well. What may be my players absolute favorite part from last session after taming the wolves is when the last goblin in the group they were fighting failed its hide roll. So after I found that every hero rolled higher than the goblins stealth roll, I explained that as it ran and hid behind a tree its butt was obviously sticking out, and as they looked closer they could see the goblin giggling to itself thinking it had tricked them. The goblin then got shot in the butt by some magic missiles from the wizard.

Thanks, I'm glad you like the nothic. I hope I'm able to bring all the separate pieces together in a good looking way. That will be heart breaking if the Nothic hides the whole game and I never use it, but part of the mind set of making all this was, as a starter campaign it's likely it will be used several times, so maybe next time. I've been making the maximum number of anything they can meet including from the random encounter tables, so there's plenty them may never see unfortunately. And I'm sorry, it sounds like Sedition Wars didn't treat you right. I picked it up off Ebay for cheap some time after the Kickstarter was over. I've never even tried the game, just wanted the minis.

@Da Boss: Sorry for missing your comment. And thanks, I've been pushing myself hard to get a lot ready for our game sessions. I always enjoying finding new ways to use buts that I mold. I never would have expected Thorin Oakenshield as dwarf swordsman king to be a good wizard either. I had several other minis picked out, but as I read the description again saying he is short with a black beard, I started to wonder. I'm glad you like how it's turning out, I am too (plus surprised that it looks good).

That's funny about your PCs recruiting everything they can, I'm glad my group isn't the only one.