cthulhudarren's page

Yeah, and you don't want to use any water on a bones base coat. It'll cause beading. Maybe flow improver if you need to thin it out?

But for metal minis thinning with water never hurts.

This is getting really hard to resist. MUST. MAKE. WILL. SAVE. My wife will kill me.

If Paizo would blog stuff like this it would help push it out to more folks!

I gotta admit I'm a bit disappointed. I wanted to practice painting in the meantime until the bones shipment comes in March.

But my heart will go on.

Vampire level plus lots of options. Tough choices and sacrifices had to be made. Did not get most of the dragons, forces of nature, spider demon, frost wyrm, clockwork dragon, for example.

@CthuluDarren:

From Julie Guthrie:
"We made the swords out of sheet aluminum specifically for the miniature, so they are not commercially avaiable. Maybe down the road Reaper will include them in a weapons pack. "

Thanks Bryan.

I need to find modding parts! THe snakeman green mold, where did the sculptor get those swords?

Since you are getting the mini for free with vampire level, you could add your own leg armor pieces with "green stuff" or other modelling materials, it probably wouldn't be too hard.

Some people are too Baal-danged sensitive.

These don't look bad at all. I don't really need the pirate themed stuff though. I much more like the existing sets they already have, the vines and tentacles type stuff.

I use ink for dipping when I don't use the Mniwax. I see them as performing slightly different functions. The Minwax I think provides some smoothing of edges of my paint jobs where the ink was seems to highlight the edges of the paint.

I did an ink wash dip last night for a bunch of Hirst block terrain. The ink wash is really good with plasters because it soaks in better, which tends to reduce the problem of chipping showing bright white spots.

I use both.

Can you explain this? Do you create a diluted wash with paint and water and then use the dip method? Does this result in a matte finish, or would it with a matte paint?

cthulhudarren wrote:

I personally would like to not have to matte coat after using brushed on "dipping", which results in a shiny mini. Does this mean Future plus some reaper paint mixed it is the better choice?

Future plus paint mixed in is definitely less shiny than PolyShades or other polyurethane. That said, you're still using as your base material something that is designed to be shiny!

PolyShades dips end up with a 'High Gloss' effect. Future is somewhere between 'Gloss' and 'Satin'. If you are looking for Flat/Matte, you're going to need to hit it with some type of matte sealant, be it Testors, Krylon, Vallejo, or other solution.

Well crap. We need a one step matte finish dip method!

I personally would like to not have to matte coat after using brushed on "dipping", which results in a shiny mini. Does this mean Future plus some reaper paint mixed it is the better choice?

Caineach wrote:

DeathQuaker wrote:

Marc Radle wrote:

I've been reading up on various message boards but I have a few questions. I'll post each one separately so things can stay on topic. Please remember that I am ONLY interested in how these questions, answers and advice applies to the plastic Bones minis. I'm not interested in painting metal minis.

For the record, Marc, pretty much any advice offered for painting metal minis applies to painting plastics as well, and vice versa.

The only thing that makes Bones different from either metal minis or traditional plastics or resin is that they do not need to be primed.

And stripping. Do not try to strip plastic minis the same way. Many of the solvents will disolve plastic.

In the case of any miniature, metal or plastic, I always use Simple Green household cleaner. It does not hurt plastic and effectively removes paint from any miniature surface, and it is environmentally safe to dispose of straight down the sink (although don't stand right over it and breathe in a big lungful of the concentrate, or you'll be coughing for a good minute).

I know for metal minis people talk about crazy stuff like brake fluid and industrial strength oven cleaner, stuff that is toxic as hell and no one ever disposes of properly. I'd never go near it.

Simple Green does everything--I think it might take longer but I'm okay with that. I also use a brass brush to remove any stubborn bits if necessary.

Also, it's a great all purpose household cleaner. :)

And it's a desert topping!

Yep,
So I'm in for Vampire level, and will be adding the giants. I want to do a "Against The Giants" campaign arc, like the old modules. I'm sad there weren't any Hill Giants in the Reaper set. :(

Do those deep-dwellers look enough like Kopru to anybody?

Even after contributing at Vampire level there is so many more addons to pick, I didn't even include my namesake "mythos monster".

Gotta love the green chick. Dug them since Star Trek the original series.

Do you folks agree that you would probably need paint sets 1,2,and 3 to paint all the Vampire level mini's? For a painting n00b?

Another thing... what will y'all do to get these figures onto more grid-friendly bases? I mean this more for the minis that are larger than medium sized. It looks like a bunch of these, like giants and dragons, don't have a base at all. It is really helpful to have these on bases so you can know what "squares" the monster is in. What do y'all suggest?

You paint the eyes before the face (now I have Billy Idol going through my mind, LOL). You then paint the face around the eyes, so you don't have to be as precise when you do it in that order.

What is this.. sorcery!

So here's a timetable for the new painters! :)

Practice, practice, practice:

TODAY: Go to Walmart and get a cheap kid's acrylic paint set and a set of detailed brushes. You may luck out and find a set of "miniatures" brushes. You're buying this to build up your skill and experiment. You will find out what you *can* do and can't do with the cheaper stuff.

TODAY: Find something small practice on. Mini's, game pieces, a USB stick, whatever. Search for and read internet beginner's painters tips. You don't have anything to ruin, so don't worry about it. You can always repaint that USB stick, right? Learn up to basecoating and washing.

SUNDAY: Get the Michael's or craft store coupon and buy brush soap and a detailed Sable brush. You actually want to keep the Sable brush in good condition. Everything else is disposable.

SEPTEMBER: The Reaper paints will arrive! By now, you will have read how much you'll be mixing paints (eg. lighter shades for highlights) and what you can and can't do with craft paints.

SEPTEMBER: Get some miniatures to paint. Touch up the prepaints, buy some miniatures that are easy to paint (eg. rats, undead, furniture), whatever.

MARCH: The Bones arrive! Start on the largest figures without clothing. Yes, it's ironic that the Clockwork dragon may be the easiest to paint. Base coat in metal, wash with another color.

Have fun!

Thanks for this. Do they really make paint brushes that are small enough to paint the tiniest details, like eyes? They have to be like only a few hairs thick.

I'm dreading the waiting until March of next year! I would have loved to at least get a few of the mini's to practice painting on. Am I alone?

My apologies, I misread it, it would just be Sophie and the paints shipping in September. Zombie is the Forum badge, Ghast is the Dungeon Horde, Wraith is Sophie (as is Ghost, for a 3$ upgrade) and Mummy is the 30 new bones. Everything else ships at the same time in March or so.

It'll be a long wait! I was hoping you were right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLzrWFJTLvg

A new update video.

Sounds like you can swap the sophie out for 25 bucks in addons. Which is a fantastic deal, turns your 100 dollar pledge into 125 if you aren't into motorcycle riding succubi.

That means for 100 bucks you can get all of the bones minis and get a huge dracolich. Or a case. Or two other dragons. Or four giants and some other figs. Etc..

This is awesome news! I did not want Sophie.

And as for September shipping it's Sophie and the Dungeon attack (the 36 already available bones - Non-Golarion Goblins, Kobolds, and Giant Rats), at least according to the Kickstarter pagge.

Really, I read on the kickstarter main page that it was just Sophie and the paints? Where did you see that information? (and thanks)

From the website:

When will stuff ship:
Sophie and Paints will ship next month [September 2012].

Everything else will ship approximately March of next year, 2013.

You can request that everything ships in March of next year when you respond to your backer survey.

Whoa, so I if you buy into this, you just get paints and the sophie next month and have to wait until March of next year for all the rest of the minis?

I keep seeing reaper says "you requested these" when they show the next stretch goal, but where are these requests coming from? Is there some other link to voting or something for the next releases?

We always need more animals... And the vermin mini's were nice but I could use some beetles.

The Frost and Fire giants look so good it's hard to say no... I still say we suffer from a general lack of vermin! We got some rats, giant bugs would be nice too. And we need more animals...

These look great! But I have no idea how to paint mini's. How does it differ from metal to plastic?

I really enjoyed the story too. Your pulp influences might be showing a bit much, but I prefer this type of adventure tale to "save the world" stories.

I hope you write the novel of Nex!

Is this campaign taking a long break?

cthulhudarren wrote:

Still awesome as always, Moonbeam!

Thank you very much :)

As far as the dungeon magazines are concerned, there's quite a ways to go in the campaign. I guess your DM isn't gonna have you go through all that.

Still awesome as always, Moonbeam!

effective immediately.

Thanks a lot.

Yeah, I knew that's what you were hoping for, but this is what I had on hand. Maybe next time we run a kingdom turn (which might be tomorrow night) I'll keep track of the math. Honestly, though, a lot of the bonuses are precalculated by spreadsheet so I'd have to disentangle the spreadsheet to lay out all of the bonuses... I mean, if you want to see ALL the math.

The plain and simple is that I am plain and simple; I honestly need my hand held for the first time, step by step. I can understand the basic BP cost of each thing, but all the check DCs with all the modifiers, the steps in order, and things like size capacity of each hex are unknown... how many city blocks (the smallest unit of building measurement, correct?) fit into a hex?

Thanks,

This doesn't necessarily break everything down by phase, but it does give a capsule of each month. This covers the first 13 months of the kingdom's existence and might give a useful overview.

<snip>

Kuthona 4709

Summary: In celebration of their defeat of the Stag Lord, the PCs proclaimed their new domain and established their first city on the site of Oleg's Trading Post, dubbing it the city of Northgate. Irina was crowned as ruler and immediately starts ordering everyone around!
Claimed: B6
Buildings Constructed: Caster's Tower, House, free Stable
Major Events: None

<snip>

Thanks a bunch Jason. I would, however, love to see "the maths" included for a more all inclusive example.

Maybe I'm just a big dummy, but what I'd REALLY like to see is a detailed example of this whole building process. Let's say, three complete turns with all the phases.

As written I can't follow the entire process from beginning to end.

Help me Paizo!

My PCs were newly 13th level vs the big T, but for that fight there were only three of them (!) - the best 3, mind you.

And yeah, for swallow, if a swallowed PC can inflict say 40 hp of damage by themselves in one round, they should get spewed out - I forgot to include that bit, because over time the 4e swallow rules have been changed quite a bit. If you include that bit too, it should be fair but still fun (when I ran it, I used the original rules which only allowed basic attacks, with the only way to get out being killing the monster, and that wasn't much fun!)

Where can I find the updated swallow rules? I have MM2 and didn't see anything there.

So I've been running this in 4e for about 3 sessions now. All I can say is, combats take long... I even bumped monsters down in HP by 25% and damage up by 1/2 per level.

For instance, last Sat night I ran the encounter where the PCs first get to Farshore and fight off the attack.

4 PCs at 9th level and 1 low level companion character.

I basically had

1) 1 short skill challenge to rescue person from burning building
2) heal check for bleeding man
3) combat with 1 level 4 artillery pirate
4) church rescue 4 level 4 artillery pirates and 1 level 9 soldier pirate 1st mate
5) 6 level 4 artillery pirates and one level 10 solider leader captain.

It ended up being an appropriate challenge, no PCs dropped, 3 were bloodied multiple times...

Including redoing maps and looking up rules, this took us from 8PM to 1AM. I can't believe it's taking us this long. I'm only averaging 1 combat a night. The only things we could do faster are experience (all of us are new to 4E) and some folks weren't rolling dice fast enough. For example, some players with powers doing multiple weapon damage are rolling them one at a time instead of all at once.

Even so I'm going to be forced to level up the characters much faster than XP would indicate. Still, no complaints. but I'd love some more stat'ed up things, like the infamous 11, or Korpu (I'm switching the main baddies to Fomorians/Cyclopses), or Phanatons.

stuart haffenden wrote:

Which map should the PC have? Is there one as page 14 without the DM info but with the hexes for the PC to decide which area to explore?

The PCs should start with a completely blank hex map. We give a blank hex map out in the free Kingmaker Player's Guide.

We'll be releasing a poster-sized map of the Stolen Land regions that will have the hexes but no tags, but we're several months away from that product's release still.

If I could nitpick Paizo for one thing, I am repeatedly disappointed in the area maps. Not in the quality as art, but in the sense that it always seems to take me time to figure out how they fit together and how to use them.

Everything else in Pathfinder is effortless, but the maps are constantly something I have to try and figure out. I would like some kind of "using the maps" section with more instruction on how to use all these maps and how they fit together as a whole. In this specific case it's from the issue #31 and the players guide. I had to read all the comments to figure this out. I don't think having the gm/players wait for later issues/products is a good solution either. I'd hate to think of losing out on content, but I also hate not understanding how the maps are supposed to work and be used in the adventure.

I don't think it should be so hard to figure out what in my mind is a very important part of an adventure. I love maps. Please improve this, Paizo!

It's still as awesome as always, Moonbeam! Keep the updates coming. Are you up to date with your posts?

For a t-rex, I used a couple of different approaches...

The first one, when the PC's were new to the Island, was a "young t-rex", where I just took the Fang Titan Drake and took it down to level 14. I then added four terror birds (scytheclaw drakes). The setup was: the t-rex was chasing a bird, with three more waiting to ambush it, but of course the PC's get in the way and look like the easiest meals on offer... That encounter was fine, but not overly tough.

The next one, Temauhti-Tecuani, I made into a solo (level 16).
My PC's chewed him up and spit him out relatively easily, although I did manage to swallow one for a...

Interesting. What level and how many pcs did you have when they fought Temauhti? By my calculations my pcs should be about 11-12th when this battle happens, and I doubt I'll have more than 4 players at the most. I'd think a 16level solo would eat their 7sses.

For the swallow, is it possible for a character that is swallowed to escape in his own? It doesn't sound like it from your description.

Thanks for the idea with the damage dice too!

For Vile Rigidity, I used Sewer Fever (DMG2, pg 206), a level 13 disease, spread with a claw or bite attack.

With the Farshore defense, I played it out in a combo of role-play and "hand waving" (quick DM decisions, based on all the work they did before, and my desire to make it interesting yet ultimately result in the PC's confronting Vanthus), rather than make it a skill challenge, with combats that focused on the PC's where appropriate. Pretty much as written under 3.5, really.

That's great, Hastur! Thanks.

I plan on running each little upgrade to Farshore as both a minor skill challenge and VP per the adventure as written. I'm starting to get the hang of things using the monster builder. Now if they had a similar tool for traps, diseases, etc.

Did anyone else stat up the infamous 11? I was wondering what levels to use to make it both tough yet beatable to the right level party. The Fang Titan Drake is a good model for T-Rex but the level seems too high (16) for adventurers who'd be able 11-12th level.

What level for the aspect of Zotzilaha and from what did you base it?

Right now I'm also planning on houseruling all monsters to have 75% HP and add +1/2 per level damage to their attacks.

I'm also curious about how you worked with Vile Rigidity, and if you used the infamous seven(is that what they're called).

Do any of you folks have more skill challenges worked out? Like for Farshore defenses or saving the town? It's hard to know where to start for those.

The skill challenge for Emraag is excellent, BTW!

cthulhudarren wrote:

Thanks again, man! I have more more questions for you. Since I'm picking up in 4E right in the middle of HtBM, basically right in the middle of the underground passage/complex, what do you think I should do as magic items that the characters possess right from the conversion?

Personally I would just let them convert over appropriately levelled characters with magic items of their choice as they would have via a character of that level and call it good... Your drastically changing the system so just handwaive anything mechanical that has came before and just go for the spirit of the matter.

I can't help you on the rest,,,

Knowing my players, they'd all pick the most broken, cheesiest items. I have to lean on the errata I suppose.

The key is to have a vague plan on what you want to acheive, then focus only on the current adventure as far as converting it goes. You'll learn what works and what doesn't as you go anong, so long-term planning of details is likely a bad idea. Good luck, and let me know if I can help with any more detail.

Thanks again, man! I have more more questions for you. Since I'm picking up in 4E right in the middle of HtBM, basically right in the middle of the underground passage/complex, what do you think I should do as magic items that the characters possess right from the conversion?

I think I'm going to have the spell plague happen right now, right in the middle of the dungeon, perhaps even connected to the AP. The PCs would be level 9. First battle will be against the pc Cleric's two undead minions (an Oni mage and one of the mummys from HtBM), they will become free and attack the party as ~9th level encounter. I may invent some kind of ritual scroll that will let the PC create ONE undead zombie brute of his level-3 or something, but I don't want more than that to deal with.

I'm also having trouble thinking of ways to convert traps/puzzles. I had stolen something from someone on here where the door in the complex would only open if you cast a spell of a different school on each statue, but I can't figure out how to convert it.

Hey, I've got all the outlines that Stewart and others posted. These are good working outlines.

How are you creating/stat'ing out NPCs, such as Lavinia and Urol?

Replacing Kopru's with Fomorians/cyclopses seems like a good idea. There is only one mini for fomorians though, from Giants of Legend? They're not too cheap. Any other good mini's for those? What would be good for the behemoths?

Also, more guidance for all the skill challenges would be great. DMmaple the one you wrote for Emraag is great. How'd you come up with it?

What is the general rule for creating these encounters, as far as what level monsters are good for party level X? I'm having trouble finding the guidelines in the 4E DMG.

Thanks,

Hi all,
I see that several of you have converted at least part of this AP to 4E. Due to the fact that I lost half my players due to the complexity of 3.5, I now want to see if I can pick this campaign up, turning it to 4E. This would lure those players back. I can have some sort of spell-plague happen and such, but I'm pretty new at 4E, though I have a bunch of the books (core, PHB2).

DMmaple had plotted out some of the adventures, which is a good guideline. Is that as detailed as anyone got? Anyone plotted out HTbM, and Tides of Dread?

My PCs were in the middle of HTbM, and would probably be skipping the Olangru and the temple until after they reach Farshore. They already did up to and including the gargoyles. I think it'd be a relief to make the pc's redo as 4E characters, as they were a bit overpowered to my taste.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,

cthulhudarren wrote:

My only gripe is that the P lodge grounds map is missing all the "T"s.

Originally, the map of the grounds had like 2 dozen "T"s scattered all over the place, but for various reasons we decided not to handle it that way. Feel free to place the traps wherever you want... but I suspect a better solution would be to have the PCs stumble across one or two or three and by that point dealing with the traps will either get too frustrating or too easy.

I can understand that. I just wish they would have stated these guidelines in the adventure. I didn't know how many or few was designed for the challenge.

My only gripe is that the P lodge grounds map is missing all the "T"s.