D&D General Miniatures shouldn't be edition-dependent (a Fire Giant size rant)

[MGibster]

. . .and I'm also wondering, does WotC just arbitrarily change the size of creatures to encourage players to buy new minis to accommodate? That's what it feels like. How many other creatures went from large to huge, or vice versa, or maybe from medium to large?

I don't think they manufacture their own miniatures so I doubt that's the reason. I'm one of those people who prefers their giants to be giant. A large ogre is perfectly acceptable but a giant should be huge. Go big or go home, giants! I've used miniatures religiously for D&D ever since 3rd edition and I've never overly much worried about the size of bases and what not. But if I was worried, I'd just cut out some cardboard bases and tape my existing miniatures onto it. It's an inexpensive and easy way to make sure you can use your miniatures and make sure they scale properly. Well, at least the base scales properly.

 

[loverdrive]

. . .and I'm also wondering, does WotC just arbitrarily change the size of creatures to encourage players to buy new minis to accommodate? That's what it feels like. How many other creatures went from large to huge, or vice versa, or maybe from medium to large?

I seriously doubt that selling miniatures is even a remotely major income source for WotC.

So I guess the (just like me) thought that giants should be, well, giant. Towering behemoths, not just slightly larger than normal humans.

 

[ccs]

It's not that they're too small, it's that they're too large.

The problem is that a miniature I bought, that was made for a huge-sized base because WotC made Fire Giants huge in 5e, doesn't work in 3.x because in that edition, Giants are size large.

The difference in large and huge sizes has substantial implications for reach and attacks of opportunity, not to mention how many foes can surround them at one time, and how much physical space they take on the battlefield.

If I was going to run a game without miniatures, I wouldn't have invested hundreds in minis over the years. I know full-well that you can play D&D without them, I ran and played lots of 2e games without minis, but 3.x really works better with minis because of the tactical elements.

1st, it's not unusable in your game. You're just being inflexible. Other than base size, do you like the mini?
If so use the mini as is and use the 3x rules for the giant as is. I mean, you're the DM. DM > rules. You can say that this thing on a huge base follows the rules for only a large base if you want.

Or you could simply up-size Fire giants.

Or you could remove the giant from the offending base, buy a pack of large bases from Reaper, and attach the new base to the mini via a support rod in the middle.
Just ignore that the giants feet will be sticking off into other squares.

If you're re-buying Fire Giants
There's these guys: Fire Giant - Legendary Adventures #28 Pathfinder Battles D&D Miniature | eBay
They're (I think) the most recent PF Fire Giants. They're made by WK, on large bases. Personally I think they look like crap.... But if base size is the most important factor to you?

You could also hunt down a couple of Fire Giant pieces from THIS: Amazon.com: Dungeons & Dragons: Assault of the Giants Board Game Premium Edition: Toys & Games
That's some of your official 5e sculpts shrunk down to large size bases for purposes of this particular board game.
If you look about you can find both factory painted & unpainted versions.
Here's what the sculpt they used looks like: D&D Miniatures Assault of the Giants DUKE ZALTO HUGE Fire Giant Champion | eBay
WARNING: This game only comes with one of each sculpt. (because that's all that's needed for its intended use), so it'd be way cheaper to snag a few singles. Oh, and his sword will snap off at the hilt.

 

[ccs]

I was going to comment on this myself. Some of those minis from 40 years ago and more are smaller than modern minis. Maybe as much as 25% smaller? And this isn't even all WotC's fault either, go blame Games Workshop for making their minis so damn big. Sizes for giants aren't at all consistent across editions either, 2e pumped up their sizes too compared to 1e and D&D.

Tell me about it. I've got this pretty cool Fire Giant (from Ral Partha?) who's bent over forward/advancing with a flail. Pretty nice looking mini even today. But he looks like the child of a modern ogre size wise.
Maybe some day, if I ever get to be a player again, I'll use him as a Goliath PC.

On the flip side I've also got metal giants from Grenadier who're larger than a current huge 5e Giant model....
They've been used in 1e, 2e, 3x/PF, & now 5e.

 

[wingsandsword]

1st, it's not unusable in your game. You're just being inflexible. Other than base size, do you like the mini?
If so use the mini as is and use the 3x rules for the giant as is. I mean, you're the DM. DM > rules. You can say that this thing on a huge base follows the rules for only a large base if you want.

Or you could simply up-size Fire giants.

Increasing the size of a fire giant from large to huge would have numerous impacts on the game, it's not a harmless change

It would change the space it takes on the battlefield. (you can't just say "it follows the rules for only a large base" when it's 3 by 3 instead of 2 by 2)
It would change the reach and attacks-of-opportunity of the creature.
It would change its armor class
It would change its modifiers for grappling
It would mean that a dungeon drawn to be in-scale for size large creatures should be re-drawn with bigger hallways and rooms (I take dungeon ecologies seriously).

It probably should change the CR of the creature.

I'm the DM, but the game has rules, and creatures are balanced a specific way, for a specific CR, for a reason. I'm not about to go re-writing creature stats and trying to "eyeball" a CR change just because a miniature doesn't fit the game.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

With 5e, WotC has de-emphasised the use of miniatures. In fact, they don't even make the minis themselves anymore. They've licenced miniature production out to WizKids, who have ironically been somewhat inconsistent with the 5e mini sizes as well.

I know this is technically correct, but I find it a bit funny in light of the fact that there's seemingly always new unpainted WizKids miniatures at my FLGS every week. I've been able to get minis for races like tortles, firbolgs, and tabaxi (which all appear to be more popular than the poor githyanki and githzerai, which have been hanging form the racks for a long time now), and recently they've even started selling multiclass figures, such as Fighter/Wizard minis. Looking at the monsters, I'm seeing figures for nalfeshnee, giant snakes, the venom and rot trolls from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, etc. Then you have to take into account both the minis WizKids makes for Pathfinder and Reaper's own product line. One guy I've played with has even set himself up with a little side business where people will give him minis they've purchased for him to paint (I've got at least two dozen painted by him, though most I've painted myself).

Between WizKids, Reaper, and various designers making sculpts for 3D printing (if you don't have a 3D printer, check Etsy; I just purchased a new mini for a gloom golem, a monster that was only featured in 3E and never had an official mini), there's never been as many options for D&D miniatures.

 

[Tyler Pickering]

I'm not a 5e player but didn't they pretty much do away with gridded combat and such RAW ?

 

[wingsandsword]

I know this is technically correct, but I find it a bit funny in light of the fact that there's seemingly always new unpainted WizKids miniatures at my FLGS every week. I've been able to get minis for races like tortles, firbolgs, and tabaxi (which all appear to be more popular than the poor githyanki and githzerai, which have been hanging form the racks for a long time now), and recently they've even started selling multiclass figures, such as Fighter/Wizard minis. Looking at the monsters, I'm seeing figures for nalfeshnee, giant snakes, the venom and rot trolls from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, etc. Then you have to take into account both the minis WizKids makes for Pathfinder and Reaper's own product line. One guy I've played with has even set himself up with a little side business where people will give him minis they've purchased for him to paint (I've got at least two dozen painted by him, though most I've painted myself).

Between WizKids, Reaper, and various designers making sculpts for 3D printing (if you don't have a 3D printer, check Etsy; I just purchased a new mini for a gloom golem, a monster that was only featured in 3E and never had an official mini), there's never been as many options for D&D miniatures.

Exactly.

In many ways, it's a golden age of D&D minis like never before. Before 2003, there was just pewter metal minis. . .expensive enough that the groups I knew didn't even bother with minis. In 2003, thanks to the success of Mage Knight, WotC launched their collectable minis game, which made D&D minis cheap enough for groups to use, but the "collectable" format meant that if a group wanted this or that mini it would mean finding someone dealing on the secondary market, or getting lucky, or buying so many boxes of minis that they'd end up with a lot of stuff they didn't want.

Now, as you said, between the Nolzur's miniatures line (the best thing about the 5e era, IMO, I just now know I need to check the size on minis for some creatures), 3D printing, custom options on Etsy, and the Reaper Bones line of affordable plastic minis, it's easier than ever before to buy minis and get what you want and need.

Heck, for Christmas, a gift I gave several of my closest friends was custom 3D printed minis from Hero Forge for their most famous characters.
Being able to design a mini that looks exactly like your character, instead of just finding a sculpt that is "close enough" and trying to repaint or customize them, have them 3D printed in full color and mailed to you would be like science fiction if you told me about it when I started playing D&D back in the 90's.

 

[wingsandsword]

I'm not a 5e player but didn't they pretty much do away with gridded combat and such RAW ?

Well, I'm not a 5e player, and the point of my original post is about buying minis for a 3.5 game, which does use a combat grid and RAW rather extensively.

 

[MarkB]

Increasing the size of a fire giant from large to huge would have numerous impacts on the game, it's not a harmless change

It would change the space it takes on the battlefield. (you can't just say "it follows the rules for only a large base" when it's 3 by 3 instead of 2 by 2)
It would change the reach and attacks-of-opportunity of the creature.
It would change its armor class
It would change its modifiers for grappling
It would mean that a dungeon drawn to be in-scale for size large creatures should be re-drawn with bigger hallways and rooms (I take dungeon ecologies seriously).

It probably should change the CR of the creature.

I'm the DM, but the game has rules, and creatures are balanced a specific way, for a specific CR, for a reason. I'm not about to go re-writing creature stats and trying to "eyeball" a CR change just because a miniature doesn't fit the game.

The only thing it has to do is change the physical space it takes up on your table. Every single one of those other things you've listed, you can choose to leave exactly as they are for the Large creature.