Pathfinder Battles Preview: Ice, Ice Baby!

Adding my opinion to a few recent comments:

I would love to see a continued support of huge and gargantuan dragons, especially the metallics and Asian (Tian) dragons. The more unusual dragons are also cool, especially if the sculpts are good. I liked the drakes in Wrath.

My favorites are still Golarion-specific monsters, especially the weird stuff. I also love the Mythos-inspired creatures.

As for the iconics, while I seldom find a character willing to take on a pregen, they make excellent PC figures if you can shake the idea that they are unique characters. Thus, I'd be very happy to have gender-swapped and enlarged versions of them for PCs, as well as alternate sculpts of the existing iconics.

I understand that is a lot of figures taking up slots for new models. Maybe a non-randomized gender-swapped and enlarged set for the hard-core collectors would fit the bill. Or maybe that'd just cost too darned much.

Anyway, apart from occasional wish-list items, the AP approach with occasional non-random sets is working out very well for my minis wants and needs.

Don't forget, there was also a Huge Copper in the last DDM set.

I sell a lot of minis on Ebay, and I can definitely report that, while dragons are always extremely popular and it's hard to keep them in stock, the same cannot be said about elementals. I've always been surprised and somewhat disappointed that they don't move better than they do, given how commonly they show up in adventures and how they can be used for player summons. But, there it is. (Although the larger ones do better than the smaller ones, so I assume Huge ones would probably do pretty well.)

Thanks for sharing. I've purchased minis off ebay, so perhaps I've bought some from you in the past.

I think there are likely many contributing factors that explain the apparent lack of interest in elementals. For starters, as you said they appear everywhere (throughout Pathfinder, D&D and plenty of other games). Because of this I'm guessing there are plenty of Elementals from different companies; I know DDM has plenty of small, medium and large ones.

Another possibility is, as you pointed out, the larger the elementals are, the more popular they tend to be. I know in my campaigns, that is how things work out, too. Those who can call upon elementals usually tend to do so more and more as they grow in power. While they aren't terrible at lower levels, often times there are better choices. As for the elementals my players battle against, I tend to slot elementals as add-ons to more powerful enemies earlier in the campaign. It isn't until later where the powerful ones usually come to face the party head on, apart from other creatures.

For me personally, I'm more interested in Huge Elementals than perhaps any other type of Huge creatures. Part of it is, like I mentioned, the bigger the Elementals the more they see use in my campaigns. Another reason I would love to see them, and perhaps the most important reason, is the Huge size elementals actually represent three different age/size categories of the creature: Huge, Greater and Elder. The small, medium and large size elementals match up at one-for-one as far as size-type their miniature represents. But with the huge size miniature capable of representing three different levels of the same creature, I just see the utility being much greater. And finally, I love the artwork of the elementals in the Pathfinder Bestiaries, with the ones in the second book being my favorite. Eh…we can always hope!

Adding my opinion to a few recent comments:

I would love to see a continued support of huge and gargantuan dragons, especially the metallics and Asian (Tian) dragons. The more unusual dragons are also cool, especially if the sculpts are good. I liked the drakes in Wrath.

My favorites are still Golarion-specific monsters, especially the weird stuff. I also love the Mythos-inspired creatures.

As for the iconics, while I seldom find a character willing to take on a pregen, they make excellent PC figures if you can shake the idea that they are unique characters. Thus, I'd be very happy to have gender-swapped and enlarged versions of them for PCs, as well as alternate sculpts of the existing iconics.

I understand that is a lot of figures taking up slots for new models. Maybe a non-randomized gender-swapped and enlarged set for the hard-core collectors would fit the bill. Or maybe that'd just cost too darned much.

Anyway, apart from occasional wish-list items, the AP approach with occasional non-random sets is working out very well for my minis wants and needs.

This is why I love discussion, because so many others have wonderful ideas and I love hearing the opinions of everyone involved. For example, I never thought about gender-swapped Iconics, but I do like the idea. I wonder if others would like it, too? I like the art of the Iconics, and it's easy for me to think of them as PC's, rather than the characters they actually are. My in-home campaigns are made up of a pretty diverse set of people, with the gender ration typically around two females for every three males. Thus the idea of gender-swapped Iconics actually makes plenty of sense to me.

Another group of people I'd love to see represented with perhaps a bit more frequency is minorities, with emphasis on African-Americans and Asians. I teach Middle School English and Social Studies, and many of my students are minorities. I've been granted permission to run an after school RPG program. I run several different campaigns, mostly Pathfinder and/or D&D. While turnout has been good, many of the students have expressed a desire for more PC miniatures that, umm, represent them.

When the program first kicked off, I bought a handful of unpainted miniatures that could be used as PC miniatures. I decided this was the best way for every student to personalize his or her miniature. Naturally, most kids chose to paint their miniature with a color representing their actual skin color. But as the program becomes more popular, it has become increasingly harder to afford these unpainted miniatures. I'd love a few more options of pre-painted African-American and Asian characters to help balance things out. I realize that this might be as niche a request as any that have been made, but I do feel it is an important one.

Fantasy gaming is top-notch when it comes to developing communication skills. I love watching kids working things out in a campaign, be it mental puzzles, campaign direction or even any arguments that spring up between them out of game. Regardless of affiliation outside of school grounds, there is an understanding that what happens around the Table must always be handled with words. I've never had a problem; in fact the challenge it provides some individuals actually seems to ignite an inner desire to excel. When I can, I'll give them credit and sort of relate how a disagreement in-game was handled to that of a situation out of game. Mostly, though, I just let the game unfold as it is meant to, as the lessons they are learning don't really need to be driven home.

Anyways, I'd be interested in hearing what other people think about adding a few more minority-based PC-type miniatures? What do you guys see as the pros and cons of this? Would it bother you if there was a black miniature Wizard where there might normally be a white one?

I wonder if a company like Reaper might be willing to spot you a bunch of cheap Bones as a promotion and act of good will to support our teachers and someone who's bringing in the next generation of gamers? Might be worth approaching them, anyway.

And good on you for what you're doing! I play with young kids (my own and their friends) as well, and I agree that it challenges them in all sorts of great ways.

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else thinks that's a good idea. I have rather a lot of Large monsters I'd prefer to do sooner, personally.

while you are at it: we need them one size category smaller too for reduce Person. ;-)

Took me almost a week to notice that the Ice Elemental is SMALL. This reminded me that we don't have small versions of the 4 classic elementals in Pathfinder Battles either, only medium and large. That definintely is something that needs to be fixed. Maybe another "workhorse" set like Heroes and Monsters is needed (only at the present 55 piece standard), nothing Golarion-specific, just a good solid range of commonly encountered beasties, townsfolk, mercenaries, and such. It could even be split say 60/40 between Asian and "Western" pieces, with #55 being a Gargantuan Imperial Dragon (Any would work, but my pref. would be for Forest).

Opinions?

Sounds to me like it could be a good idea to have a new sub-line of the miniatures. It would be like the 'Encounters' line, but each package would contain variations on one specific Iconic. Once the Iconics have been gone through, it could cover generic PC types. Each package would contain figures for that Iconic with the following variations:

Primary Melee Weapon (or spell-casting)
Primary Ranged Weapon (or spell-casting)
Invisible (clear plastic, 'stealth' pose optional)
Enlarged
Reduced
Mounted
Sleeping / Dead
Reversed Gender

Doing this could, but would not have to, entirely remove the Iconics from the normal miniatures line, thus leaving space for other figures. Doing this would also not eat up a slot in a normal set for one of these niche figures. Admittedly, any such thing as this would probably be expensive (say, 40 to 50 dollars US per package), and would be a fairly niche product, but they would sell. I'd buy them anyway.

It could also be a good idea to have an entire package focused on the same Iconic, but as a different ethnicity. It would give people more choices.

Bumping the townsfolk, npc, animal idea + backfill of small elementals, that sort of thing.

Would also love to see more variety of character types with diff weapon selections that didn't require key npc models having to be devoted to players to properly represent their character on the table.

We now have a small number of orcs and bugbears, but there's no love for gnolls, hobgoblins, etc... yet.

I for one would NOT want to lose out on other minis for enlarged Iconics.

@Erik I was wondering why mammy graul didn't get a mini, now I know. Anyway I would be one that would buy the large iconics. I see use of enlarge person quite a bit lately, though my players are using a psionic version and coming out huge. I have 2 players making use of the power. Theyve been using d&d's eldritch giant and storm giant when they size up. My players don't always use an iconic either, but I agree it would be nice to have more to pick from when they do need to use a larger mini. The idea of the base that holds a smaller base is a good one too. I personally would buy both if both were available. One thing I would like to see that I don't think has been mentioned yet though is suped up iconics. When I get to lvl 12 or so I'd like to swap out my mini for a more epic looking version

Magnus had a good idea with the iconic boxes. Add epic versions to that list though

Also, please more townsfolk

Also, please more townsfolk

More townsfolk figures are on the way. Not necessarily in this set, but the one after this one has a couple.

"This set" is in reference to the upcoming Reign of Winter.

jimibones83 wrote:

Also, please more townsfolk

Erik Mona wrote:

More townsfolk figures are on the way. Not necessarily in this set, but the one after this one has a couple.

"This set" is in reference to the upcoming Reign of Winter.

thank you sir, although I saw it on the original thread as it was a response to me saying it there too lol