Cleanthes's page

I've been playing the introductory 2nd edition adventure with my kids, and some of the scenarios give you as a reward the opportunity to "get" a boon from the box. I haven't found anything in the rules about what "getting" entails. In particular, can you just go through the available cards and pick the one you want? Or do you have to take one at random? ("Yay, a basic mace....2")

It feels like so much more of a reward if you can pick the one you want. So I guess what I'm really asking here is, does "get" mean "receive" (a la "you take what you get and you don't get upset"_, or does "get" mean "fetch the specific thing" (a la "go get it, girl!")?

I eat stuff like this up. All of these are minis with tremendous utility, and the first three in particular are long overdue. Well done!

There's always huge demand on the market for thugs, so I'm thrilled whenever a new one releases, and this one looks great. The Emperor is fun and interesting too. The ogrekin looks cool, but of the 3, it's the one I'm least excited about. Good release, though!

I can't believe those are all uncommons. That's amazing! And the Leukodaemon has to be one of the creepiest minis anyone has ever done in prepaints. Very excited about this reveal!

All 3 are nice minis! I think all of them will be popular (though I see what Cat is saying about the hat.)

Thrilled to finally have a Small spider! And spiders of any size are ALWAYS in high demand, so as a reseller, I couldn't be happier to have 2 new ones. The scorpion will do well too, I'm confident.

Kalindlara wrote:

We're still extremely deficient in non-Core races (and even some of the Core races need a boost). Of the 14 PFS-legal races, many still have minimal or zero representation. And then there's all the others, from catfolk to samsaran.

Couldn't agree more. I've been dying for a figure for my male Catfolk Arcane Trickster but even including the original D&D sets there is a total of three out there and they're all female. Just please get the legs right and have them bent backwards. :)

There are a few other decent options: The Archfiends Catfolk is actually male, I think, but there's also the Quaggoth Barbarian who works perfectly well as a catfolk, and the triaxian minis from Reign of Winter work well as catfolk too. There's also an old Dreamblade mini called Bast's Handmaid who would make an awesome catfolk cleric, and I think there might be some other decent catfolk stuff in the Dreamblade line if I thought about it.

Cat-thulhu expressed my thoughts already pretty much completely. I love the renders for the guardian and rakshasa, and just hope to high heaven that the actual minis look that good. Kind of hard to believe they will, though.

FWIW, Wizkids has a replacement program for broken minis. It's not exactly easy to use (probably by design), but if you can summon the endurance, they actually do replace broken ones. It's all on the Wizkids website.

If you're running Curse of the Crimson Throne or, for that matter, Serpent's Skull, they show up a lot. Since I'm running both, I'm thrilled :-) But I could understand why someone not using those sorts of adventures would feel differently.

And I hope you're right, Cat-thulhu, and that this "giant" spider is actually Small or Tiny sized. I have all the Medium and Large I need, but finding something to use for little ones has been a problem.

Don't forget about Laori, for whom we finally have new art. ^_^

I counted Laori among the Zon-Kuthon worshippers :-) Along with her, I imagine it's possible we could get a chain devil, which would be great, especially if it's female!

Personally, I'd be quite content if these are the only Maidens and Mantises we see. (That sounds like a fun RPG spin-off, actually: Maidens and Mantises!) Keeping in mind that we only get so many minis per set, and how many great monsters and NPCs show up in this AP, I'd rather get another of those than another Maiden or Mantis.

Ones I'm especially hoping for/counting on:

Anyway, there's so much other great stuff to look forward to, I don't want to get greedy for just more of those 2 types.

The details on the minis ! A lot of nice work there guys.

But if I recall correctly Cinnabar was supposed to be attractive (sucker for red head villains), her face here seems a little off.

I'm with Mine all mine. To me her expression says, "I find you vaguely amusing, but you're still going to die painfully." I like that in a woman.

AT LAST!!!! I've been asking for RMAs forever, so it's delightful to finally see some. And like Lorian, I'm particularly pleased to get both genders (and especially to know that one of them is really Shivane = icing!)
I suppose it's too much to hope that the facial detail on Cinnabar will look as good on the actual minis as it does on the digital version, but it would be great if they could successfully preserve the character in her expression.

Is it my imagination or does Zarmangarof bear more than a passing resemblance to the incentive piece from heroes and monsters?

Good catch, Cat-thulhu, I think you're right. Which to my mind, makes it even better; if the rider gets off the dragon, you could put down the riderless mini.

The two Maidens look like awesome minis, and I'm thrilled to see one is a common! I say again, I hope the rich reds come through well. How do the people who worry about such things feel about the way the armor boobs are rendered here? (I almost said "handled", and thought better of it ;-)

I'm confident Erik is a big part of it. It's wonderful knowing that the line is in the hands of someone at least as obsessive about minis as I am. Whoever is approving the recent D&D minis must be blind.

Another thing about quality too: If you look back at a lot of the old Wizards minis, even where the paint jobs weren't great, there was often a lot of potential there in the sculpt itself. The standard paint job on the pre-paints often didn't even come close to catching the potential of the sculpt underneath, and on occasion I've repainted them myself to do something with that. (This is true of their Dreamblade line too; there were some *amazing* sculpts in that line that got painted totally monochrome in a way that ignored a wealth of wonderful detail.)

By contrast, Wizkids' Pathfinder minis tend to pretty much use the detail that's there, and Wizkids' D&D minis by and large simply lack the details in the first place. Their ordinary sculpts are just very basic. Their adventurers, for instance, tend not to have lots of gear or sculptural flourishes in their outfits. It's all just very cut-and-paste and uninspired. (The unsculpted faces that you mention, Cat-thulu, are a great example of this.) With the old line, you might feel justified in repainting a poorly painted pre-paint. But with these new ones, there's just not enough potential there to justify the bother.

I agree 100%. Almost every medium has a very sloppy paint job and every PC type mini I pulled had NO FACE to speak of, a blood with a tampo for a face! That said in hand I was very happy with both sphinxes, the black pudding and the beholder - which I did not need at all since I have about 30 from all the releases over the years. Pathfinder battles in leagues ahead in terms of quality. I can only assume it's a QC thing?

I can't help thinking that Wizards is taking advantage of the big influx of new players to 5th Ed. who don't know any better and will buy anything "official". I'm finding there are a lot of minis buyers who want the "official" mini and are reluctant to believe me when I tell them that there are better (and sometimes cheaper!) minis available if they're willing to look at Pathfinder and other lines.

I haven't gotten any of the new MM2 minis in hand yet, but I have to say that the pictures I've seen make the paint jobs looks pretty awful. It's also obvious (to me, anyway) that they're using the same basic sculpts over and over with very few changes made between minis, and I don't just mean the ones where it's just a weapon changed. I think they're using the same basic body for lots of different monsters. The difference in quality between Paizo and WotC minis just seems to me to widen with each set. It's hard for me to believe the same company is producing both lines, the results are so different.

I love all of these! But especially the new Ileosa. She looks marvelous. I hope the final paint job does justice to the deep reds on the digital model!

New dressing idea that just occurred to me: How about a pile of corpses that would fit in the back of the cart from Rusty Dragon Inn? It could just be a pile of corpses on the ground, or else with the cart you can practically hear Eric Idle calling, "Bring out your dead!"

Great news across the board! I love the new giant, who has loads of dark personality, and as someone who's been asking for spell effect minis, the rope trick is perfect. I'm also getting ready to (hopefully) start a CotCT campaign soon, so more minis for that campaign will be most welcome! Huzzah!

Of course the halo is removable. Just cast summon exacto knife!

Serpent's Skull part 1 has vegepygmies too.

Re: Mounts, I've been running a Kingmaker campaign where more often than not the party is out in the open and their mounts are either in use or tied up by their camp. And again, more often than not monsters (often of animal intelligence) have gone after the horses. Protecting the horses has at times been a big deal, and it's become a running joke that one of the characters seems to lose about a horse a week. For us, poker chips would be unsatisfying. But I think it's great that your group found an easy solution like that that works for you!

Yeah, I've got at least one of every mini going all the way back to Harbinger, so when I'm thinking about what minis I would and wouldn't like to see, I often have to remind myself that most people buying minis don't even know the earlier sets exist, let alone have many minis from them.
Honestly, I still prefer the plastic and manufacture of those earlier sets, too; those little suckers are durable, and very few of them had breakage issues. Can't say that about most minis Wizkids makes....

And of course we could always find lots of uses for ponies since friendship is, after all, magic.

Do people want more horses?

A fully-laden pack animal would be useful, whether horse, donkey, or whatever. A pony could be useful too. But there are appropriately sized kids' plastic horses out there for straight-up horses.

+1 for the Reaper metal minis as plastic versions!

The "Technic League Captain" in Deadly Foes seems to be an exact adaptation.

Lol, I totally forgot that that minis was in this set!

All three seem like great picks, though as someone who has the old otyughs, I'm most excited about the Protean. I've wanted one ever since it showed up in one of the Legacy of Fire adventures!

Another thing that occurred to me to ask for isn't exactly another mini, but: in one of their recent Heroclix sets, Wizkids has made some minis with a ring of transparent plastic around the base to create energy fields, a ring of water, and stuff like that. Why not make a few different ones like that that a Medium-sized mini could sit inside of, so that it could become a fire shield spell or something like that? They could be really useful as cool status markers too. And I really do think it would be great to have various transparent minis for spell effects: hand spells, wall spells, sphere spells, a floating disc, a spectral hand, black tentacles, and spiritual weapons (there are already good ones for an axe and hammer in the Heroclix War of Light series, and a spiritual sword would make my cleric PC's happy, as well as being usable for a Mordenkainen's -- sorry, mage's -- sword). This could be a cool use of dressing pieces.

Other stuff I'd still love:
-- Others have asked for daemons, and I agree, but the piscodaemon is probably highest on my list, closely followed by the ceustodaemon.
-- It would be great to have a female elf druid mini. In my experience, that's one of the most commonly chosen PC archetypes, and I don't think one has been done as a prepaint since the Warden of the Wood way back in WotC's War of the Dragon Queen set. [Edit: they also did one in their Player Handbook Heroes series a bit more recently, but that one's very expensive.] You've got nice art for one, too, the one with the plant companion that I think you did for Reaper already. Can you just do that one in plastic?
-- A couple rank-and-file archers w/ longbows would be helpful. It's getting surprisingly hard to find cheap archers in prepaints. Some of the old standbys, like the old WotC Free League Rangers, Sharn Redcloaks, Elf Warriors, and a couple of different Elf Archers have become relatively scarce and more expensive. If done right, they can be useful as PC's, bandits, soldiers, guards, etc., and are a fantasy staple that deserves to be better represented.
-- There are some other minis you've had Reaper make in metal that would be great as prepaints. Lady Moray (from Kingmaker) would make a big splash as a prepaint, and would be very popular as a PC. Brother of the Seal would add a monk mini. Kulgara, the half-orc w/ the chainsaw, is too cool for words. The Vampire Hunter is just a great sculpt. The Nidalese Rogue would be a popular PC mini, as would the Arcanamirum Wizard. Kassata Lewyn is a great sculpt. Your Herald of Razmir is practically a necessity, with a promo repaint in a different robe and mask. Other probable hits: Technic League Captain, Jigeke the Exile, Ecchardian Drovenge (could use more tieflings in general), Plague Doctor (maybe a no-brainer with CotCT getting a re-release?), Blackjack (again for CotCT), and Dorella Kreeg (finally a female ogre!) So many great minis you already have sculpts for!

For anyone who's interested in Stonehaven's tengu, kitsune, or grippli minis, or indeed any of their minis, they just announced a 20% coupon for their website while running their new Kickstarter which just went live (centering on minis for giants). The coupon to use at checkout is "GIANTKICK".

Actually, a rakshasa with a different sort of animal theme than tiger would be great. I'd favor a crocodile-rakshasa, like the one in the 3rd installment of Serpent's Skull.

Erik Mona wrote:

Cat-thulhu wrote:

I intentionally didn't list red mantis because we are going to get them in this set! Right Erik? please say yes, please...

No Red Mantis in Deadly Foes.

Worst thing I've read all day. Please bust them out soon, both sexes and a rare of Chivane.

And a Grippli, I can't even find a Grippli in metal.

Take a look at this page for a Grippli Archer in metal, and that same company, Stonehaven Miniatures, has at least half a dozen other grippli minis on their site.

I love all those minis, especially Jilia, whom I agree would make an awesome PC!

Wishlist for groups:
-- Urdefhan
-- I forget their name, but there's a human/scorpion cross that features a lot in Mummy's Mask, and they're totally unrepresented in plastic.
-- I could get on board w/ drow, particularly if there's a drider, since PF driders look different than the old D&D ones did.
-- Red Mantises would be very welcome, and I like the Bloatmage idea too.
-- Kitsune, tengu, ratfolk, and grippli. I can tell you that as a seller on the secondary market there's a big demand for these.
-- Bandits/thugs. Very basic and generic, w/ relatively common dress and simple weaponry like clubs, spears, and swords. Ideally a female human among them. This is a staple that is less well represented in prepaints than you'd think. Maybe the Stag Lord (from Kingmaker) as a rare leader?
-- Vegepygmies. I don't understand why no one's ever done these in prepaints. They show up in adventures all the time.
-- A set of elemental-themed humanoids: sylph, oread, undine, ifrit. You've got art in the Advanced Race Guide.
-- Some more townsfolk, especially a kid, a wounded veteran, an obese commoner, and an elderly person. A half-orc bruiser who could be a street tough or bodyguard would be cool too.
-- Razmiran cultists with different color masks and robes. You have a whole adventure that uses little else, and you even have a sculpt already available with Reaper.
-- Shoanti, especially a good shaman. Garundi tribesmen would be welcome too.
-- A few Qadiran/Osirian characters.
-- Spell effects: a giant translucent hand, a wall or two of various types (maybe an opportunity for a promo version?), maybe a spiritual weapon, a flaming sphere, etc. Actually, a 2' diameter transparent hemisphere might be useful in all sorts of ways.

Some other singles I'd like to see:
-- A mini of Tup the Terrible as soon as humanly possible. W/ puppets. (I suppose Banjo is too much to ask for.)
-- Shocker lizard!!! (Like a decade and a half that companies have been making prepaints, and still no shocker lizard! Inconceivable!)
-- Black pudding. Would have to be the easiest paint job on a common ever.
-- Second the plants. Plants get no love in prepaints.
-- For dressing, a guillotine. You know you want to!

I'm sure I'll come up with other wishes, but these would all make me ever so happy (until the next time you ask :-)

That's what I thought. Thanks!

I think I know the answer to this, but my son's been playing Tup (with terrific glee and regular recitations of his song, I should add), and we will have no peace under my roof until this is resolved. So:
When Tup banishes a spell and then uses his power to draw a spell, does the spell get picked randomly from the spell deck, or can the player choose the spell he draws?

I play an archaeologist catfolk with lots of archery feats, and she's quite effective. She's not as powerful as a straight up optimized ranged build, but her skills, trapfinding, and spells compensate in other ways. She out-rogues a rogue in a lot of ways.

I suppose we'll find out from Erik eventually!

For an even bigger spoiler (the images), you can go here:

http://www.pathfinderminis.com/gallery0.htm

The quality of the images aren't really that great, so I don't think I'm ruining Erik's fun for when he posts them :)

Yep, them's the ones I bought.

Good idea. So here's a

Interestingly, the seller I bought from was domestic, so it only took a few days for the minis to reach me. I'm surprised I got them as cheap as I did, too; they went for $1 each. I was sure some of the other minis addicts around here were going to see them and bid them up!

Update on the promos I think I got: I do in fact now have 2 repaints of existing minis in hand that have not yet been announced, but I think they're misprints: the bases still have the name and set info for the original minis in the Rusty Dragon set. So I suspect these were rejects that somehow got into the hands of an Ebay seller. Anyway, it'll be nice to find out what I should really call them!

I don't want to spoil Master Mona's opportunity to reveal the promos himself, so I'll keep my mouth shut for now. No offense meant to anyone!

Btw, for what it's worth, I think I just got my hands on a couple of new PF Battles promo repaints in advance of official release, though I won't know for sure till they arrive in the mail! It'll be fun to see if I'm right.

For a female goliath/oread, Heroscape's last set had a mini called Eltahale. Sword and shield.

Also, it's another male, but there's a Heroclix mini called Korg that could make a good oread as well. No weapons (i.e., maybe an easy conversion).

I'm sure Eric is aware of which monsters from Bestiry 1 are still missing as minis ;-)

The more versatile monsters of the dungeons mentioned above:
Fungal Crawler
Homonuculus
Iron Cobra
Giant Scorpion
Decapus
Undine
Water Mephit
Quicklng
Morlock
Yellow Musk Creeper & Zombies
Giant Flytrap
Proteans
Gug

Gug is covered, in the Shattered Star set.

By all means, spriggans large and small!
Shocker lizards. I can't believe no one's ever made a shocker lizard. Talk about a great common!
A well-sculpted, well-painted dryad would be great, maybe using the art from the 2nd Kingmaker adventure. The new dryad from WotC is an embarrassment, and the old Black Woods Dryad was not what most people think of when they think "dryad".
Again, by all means, more plants. This is the least well-represented class of creatures in pre-paints.
Urdefhans and morlocks. They're a major feature of Serpent's Skull, and they're totally unrepresented in minis.
The soul eater from Kingmaker 3 could be cool.
Ratfolk and grippli. Kitsune. They'd all be very popular.
How about Blackjack? You already have a sculpt with Reaper, right? Plague doctors? Please, please, pretty please, Red Mantis Assassins? Maybe a summonable giant red praying mantis to go with them? (You could then do a green one as a promo, or vice versa.)
A gypsy with a harrow deck could be cool. Especially if could serve plausibly for a harrower as well.
I'd still like to see a PF male drider as well, since they have a different look than old D&D driders.
And thanks as always for asking what we'd like! :-)

I just wish someone would bust out the spell research rules and come up with a useful "mini levitation" cantrip so we could be shot of these flying pegs for good! The obvious solution :-)

You can include me among the people who are thrilled with both minis! I've been using a repurposed Monsterpocalypse mini for a giant crab for a long time, but this one looks a lot better. And the Flying Ray looks awesome too! A very useful mini. And others have said, I hope it's more Dire Bat than Mothman.

These particular minis look great, though they don't push any particular buttons for me.

I do, however, suddenly find that I really wish we had some minis for Razmiran cultists. If you can do a set with cultists in 3 different robes for acolytes, priests, and heralds, that would be awesome. And given how popular cultists are on the secondary market, I'm sure they would have use for campaign worlds other than Golarion too.

While I'm at it, I've long wished we had a few NPC minis that were old, obese, disabled, etc. Not just hale and hearty people in the prime of life. A couple street urchins would be welcome too!

Yeah, that's a really weird pick for a case incentive. It makes me wonder who's calling the shots over at Wizkids. I would expect both companies to want to make their incentive picks extremely safe choices, and this is the least safe choice I ever remember seeing. Though honestly, I thought the Huges for this set would be safer picks too, since there are so many Huges that haven't been made yet that show up a whole lot more regularly in adventures and have never been made as pre-paints. But Erik has proved to be reliable in the past, and I'm hopeful both the new Huges will do well!

----FORMULATING EVIL PLANS----PLEASE STAND BY----

Welcome, nefarious ones! Create your aliases and make a post with them here.

We're still waiting for A 1970 Corvette to finish his character, so we probably won't be starting for a while.

I'm looking for players for an open-ended game where you play as supervillains in a modern setting. We'll be using the Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition system. Don't worry if you're not familiar with it - I'm willing to help.

I'm still somewhat new to GMing, and this is my first time reaching out to play with people I don't already know, so be prepared for a few hiccups.

Expect this game to be a lot more sandbox-y than your standard "stop the bad guys, save the world" story. Being the bad guys yourselves, you will have a lot more agency over the tone of the story and the way events unfold. You will start out as small-time criminals, and gradually build your influence and power. All the while, you will have to fend off increasingly powerful superheroes, eventually gaining the attention of Earth's mightiest defenders.

I have two players already (Sundakan and A 1970 Corvette), and I'm looking for three or four more. Leave a dot if you're interested!

--PLEASE STAND BY--

Howdy! I'm not quite ready to start yet, but this seems like the best time to get the discussion thread going. There are a few things I want to get figured out.

First of all, this will be a bit of an experiment for me. I've run a few Paizo APs in the past, but this will be much more free-form than I'm used to. I'll basically be making the plot from scratch, perhaps drawing "inspiration" from some of plot-point campaigns published by Pinnacle. It mostly depends on the type of Weird West game you guys would like. From what I've seen, Stone and a Hard Place is a true spaghetti western with a few twists, while The Flood is more focused on Chinese culture (including martial arts, of course) and even has some naval elements. I'm open to whatever.

I'm assuming that you guys have read (or at least have access to) the Savage Worlds core rulebook and Deadlands Reloaded. Depending on what PPCs we end up using, I can share those with you. (Don't tell anyone where you got 'em!)

We only have three players at the moment. If that's cool with you guys, I'll try to tune the encounters appropriately. Otherwise, I could try to recruit a fourth here on Paizo.

Finally, here are some houserules that Rynjin and I agreed on:

• For initiative, and any other use of playing cards, I will draw the cards and post the results. I promise not to abuse this power.
• We won't use Fate Chips. Too much of a hassle for PbP. We'll just use regular Bennies.

That about covers everything. Post your aliases here when ready, all that good stuff.

'Ey. Post your aliases here.

The bustling desert city of Wati is near bursting with excitement. Adventurers from every corner of the Inner Sea region have assembled here beneath the hot Osirian sun to explore the tombs of the city's necropolis, waiting only to be assigned their first sites for exploration. Surrounding the participants, the public has gathered to observe the ceremony as well. There is a festival-like quality in the air, and numerous street vendors are hawking goods and refreshments to the participants and spectators alike. Some merchants have even brought what can only be considered adventuring gear to sell as last minute convenience items to explorers, while others advertise that they'll buy recovered treasures and antiquities from those who visit their establishments.

In front of the imposing edifice of the Grand Mausoleum, an immense awning has been erected between decorated pillars in the market to provide shade for the priests of Pharasma overseeing the lottery. Beneath the awning, two urns sit atop a table elevated a few feet above the ground on a wooden stage constructed for the event. The high priestess of the Grand Mausoleum, Sebti the Crocodile, sits behind the table, while two acolytes confer with her at either side.

Numerous adventuring groups, including yours, stand in small clusters near the stage. Most keep to themselves, but some are having quiet conversations with the other groups, passing the time while waiting for the lottery to begin.

Talk amongst yourselves or with nearby adventurers while we wait for everyone to finish making their characters. Remember that you're an established adventuring group, so you all know each other already.

Alright nerds, post your aliases here and we'll do the thing.

--PLEASE STAND BY--