How Close do your Minis Need to Match?

[Altamont Ravenard]

Well, I have all the minis, so I try to make good use of them.

When I'm not the DM, I bring the minis anyway, and I get irritated when the DM just gives me a general idea of what to bring, and when a situation calls for a specific mini that I have in my collection but didn't bring. "You should have told me that we were going to face a white dragon! I have one! Now we're stuck using a horse!"

As a player, I'll often start by choosing a mini, and then making a character to match that mini. Furthermore, I'll try to mod/repaint minis so that they match more closely the players' characters.

As a DM (although I haven't DM'ed in a little bit), I'll also start with the minis when designing an encounter. What's on the table is what you see, although what you see might not necessarily match with what's written underneath the mini's base.

Oh well

AR

 

[Fede]

We draw combat maps on a grid with dry-erase markers, so each character is rapresented with a letter (usually the first letter of his name). So, to answer your question... "not at all"

 

[Pbartender]

The closer the mini looks, the better, but it's not really that important. Less so for monsters than PC's.

This. If I've got a mini that vaguely resembles the monster, that's good. If not, I get as close as I can, which sometimes means using chess pieces or buttons as counters.

 

[Obryn]

If I have something close, I try to use it.

If not, I have cutout cardboard discs and plenty of close-enough minis.

Something that's just a bit off can cause confusion, though... I had a fight with a Large Green Dragon in my game, but only had a Large White Dragon mini. I went ahead and used it, explaining it was actually a Green dragon, but my players decided to protect themselves from Cold damage anyway...

-O

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Not totally related to the OP question...

...something we use all the time are the empty clear plastic dice cubes. Take off the base and place a mini on top and you have a great levitating/flying/climbing/off the ground display with room below for another mini.

DS

 

[mattdm]

When you are gaming and have to represent something on the table, assuming you use some representation at all and don't just do it all in your head, how close do your minis need to match what it is that you are representing?

I've started to find it much easier to represent all of the differing non-minion combatants with very different minis. This makes it way easier for everyone, and is more important to us than "realism". (And actually, I think too much representationalism is bad for minis — it makes it too easy to focus on the board-as-the-real-game rather than a representation of the in-our-minds game.)

 

[VictorC]

It's nice, but definitely not necessary. I probably wouldn't even use minis if not for the fact that I like painting them.

One time, however, I found a mini that I really liked. I made a character based on it, that would have been the closest I've been.

 

[scourger]

For the foes, I like what I see to be what I get; both as a player and as a DM. It really hurts my game if the opponent is other than as depicted when I am a player. I would rather have a coin or a die than an inaccurate mini.

For the PCs, a rough approximation is okay. This goes for me as a player and as a DM.

 

[Neil Bishop]

I sometimes design encounters around specific minis I have and want to use but otherwise I don't mind using other minis.

However, one or two of my players are a bit, um, dumb (like another poster above... see this white dragon mini, it is really a red dragon... so the player prepares to cast fire spells to no effect) so sometimes it is better to use paper counters or counters I make from pictures I have downloaded from various websites.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The closer the better, but matching isn't required.

OTOH, when I pick up a nice mini, I often design a PC to go with it, effectively giving me a 100% match.