Cost.
Seriously, the set-up cost for plastic prepainted minis is huge. WotC was only able to do it because
a) they had a large batch of ready made sculpts (I think they got them from a mini's company that bwent belly up. I don't have a source for that)
b) they have a much larger market to sell to.
c) Randomized packs. It basically means consumers will but more in order to 'complete the set'
Paizo would have to grow by a (couple of) magnitude(s) before they can contemplate a line of pre-painted mini's.
In the mean time, check out these unpainted mini's
Or these cardstock mini's ready made for the Legacy of Fire AP
Yep. Moneys.
I, for one, would prefer they avoid having little kids in Thailand paint miniatures for me.
If you search around, you'll find a thread where the possibility of plastic Pathfinder minis in general was discussed.
What I've read there and at the Reaper Mini boards is that, in a nutshell, both Paizo and Reaper like the idea of plastic minis for the Pathfinder line, but as Chef's Slaad so aptly pointed out, it's very costly, and neither believe it would be a cost effective move right now.
Regarding packaging them with APs seems like a cool idea, but I note that Paizo's "Compleat Adventures" didn't seem to do well (correct me if I am wrong!). These were just modules--but it seemed like a great idea, a module with NPC minis included. Mind they were with metal minis, not plastic ones, but even so--seemed like a win situation. If the smaller, cheaper version of this did not sell well, it's hard to imagine how well it would do for a more expensive to produce version for a longer adventure line.
If what you want is painted minis--usually there's someone in a local gaming community who enjoys the miniature hobby. See if you can find that someone through your local FLGS and see if you can get them to paint up your minis for a reasonable price--or for free, if one of your players.
I for one would rather see plastic minis from Paizo with some or the more iconic Pathfinder creatures - starting with goblins.
How about outsourcing the production of a pathfinder mini line to WoTC (or some other company already producing plastic minis)?
Unless the business relations between your two companies is very bad, I'm pretty sure it could be a profitable deal for both parties. They already have the equipment and experience in the indsutry, a market niche that targets minis, plus they'd regain a part of the market they lost with 4e, at least for minis. You'd throw a bone to your loyal and ever-growing customer base.
You'd make a profit at least from selling or leasing part of the intellectual property regarding the name and appearance of the minis, limited to the production and sale of said minis (aka not including printed or electronic products), and maybe on a part of the sales depending on the deal.
The line could be a special "Pathfinder" line, or I guess maybe they could add a PF mini or two in each set of their standard product line.
Of course, there'd be the part about the stats card to work out, but I'm sure you'd quickly find a suitable agreement.
Seems pretty win-win to me.
Only possible obstacle I see is you probably already have such an arrangement with Reaper, which prevents you from outsourcing further mini lines based on the same characters to other companies, which is not limited to metal minis...
CEO
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I've said this a couple of times, but it bears repeating. I would really really love to do prepainted plastic miniatures, but we would need to find a way to make it economically feasible. From the research I've done on this, I can't imagine that it would ever be feasible to do in a non-randomized way. Not only are prepacked sets more expensive to produce, but they have the added problem of not being picked up by retailers since there are too many SKUs to keep track of and restock. Retailers love the booster pack, because it easier to keep in stock AND the price point can be kept down. So IF I ever figure out how to do prepainted plastic miniatures, it will almost assuredly be in a randomized pack format, which I know some folks hate, but I just can't see the economics of non-randomized packs ever working out, so I would rather have random packs than nothing at all.
-Lisa
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Creative Director
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Outsourcing production of the minis would be the ONLY way we'd be able to do this, and I'm still pretty sure that they wouldn't be able to keep up with 2 Adventure Paths a year.
Our setup with Reaper, which basically just has them making the Pathfinder minis they want to make, is MUCH more manageable and sane.
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I've built up a generous portion D&D pre-painted plastic minis in the last year or three. And I've also picked up some of the Reaper Legendary Encounter minis. Between that, and the stuff my fellow gaming group has, I've got most everything I need.
Edit: Although I once swore that I'd never get into painted minis, I may make an exception for some of those rare things I don't have (like a neogi or something not often used).
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Our setup with Reaper, which basically just has them making the Pathfinder minis they want to make, is MUCH more manageable and sane.
Also, there is the nefarious undertone of using such evocative description, such amazing characters, and such damned amazing Art, that the Reaper modellers no doubt *fight* over who gets to do what from each product Paizo ship, meaning we will get everything eventually anyway.
Well done James, your cunning plans are getting almost as Complex as Baldric's.
I for one love the current minis and have never seen PPP that meet the quality of the PF minis reaper is putting out right now. Plus if I don't want to paint one I just have someone else (that's more talented)paint it for me.
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I for one love the current minis and have never seen PPP that meet the quality of the PF minis reaper is putting out right now. Plus if I don't want to paint one I just have someone else (that's more talented)paint it for me.
I agree completely. The quality of the sculpts right now is just so much better than anything I've ever seen with pre-painted plastics. Plus, to me, it reflects highly on Pathfinder that it is not associated with such inferior (though admittedly more popular) production values.
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If you're good at 3D modeling and can afford the printer, you can make them yourself.
Sample1
Sample2
Of course, the printers run about $15-$20k. The latest issue of Make magazine has a "how to build a 3D printer in it ... have the issue, but haven't had a chance to read it yet. Not sure how effective it would be in comparison to the commercially available alternatives, but I'm sure it's a good bit cheaper.
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If you're good at 3D modeling and can afford the printer, you can make them yourself.
Sample1
Sample2Of course, the printers run about $15-$20k. The latest issue of Make magazine has a "how to build a 3D printer in it ... have the issue, but haven't had a chance to read it yet. Not sure how effective it would be in comparison to the commercially available alternatives, but I'm sure it's a good bit cheaper.
Just checked out the article in Make magazine. It's not a "how to article" it's an article about a company that sells kits you can build. The max build dimensions for items you can manufacture with it are 10cmx10cmx13cm. The price for the kit? between $750 (basic) and $950 (deluxe). Gotta love that open source solution. ;)
Two big reasons we don't do this.
1) It costs too much.
2) I'm pretty sure it'd be impossible for a pre-painted schedule of minis to keep up with the pace at which we put out adventure paths.
To have it keep up with the adventure paths/keep it as cost effective as possible you're looking at 2 releases per year, 1 per path.
To do this you'd have to release the path's minis with the launch of the first book (allowing for major combat spoilers) or release with the last book (making DMs either wait to run the path or run most of the path miniless), neither of which sound good to me.
If at some point the cost/speed of this production lowers to a monthly capable level, I'm sure Paizo will jump on it like a goblin on a baby.
:)
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I've said this a couple of times, but it bears repeating. I would really really love to do prepainted plastic miniatures, but we would need to find a way to make it economically feasible. From the research I've done on this, I can't imagine that it would ever be feasible to do in a non-randomized way. Not only are prepacked sets more expensive to produce, but they have the added problem of not being picked up by retailers since there are too many SKUs to keep track of and restock. Retailers love the booster pack, because it easier to keep in stock AND the price point can be kept down. So IF I ever figure out how to do prepainted plastic miniatures, it will almost assuredly be in a randomized pack format, which I know some folks hate, but I just can't see the economics of non-randomized packs ever working out, so I would rather have random packs than nothing at all.
-Lisa
I'm curious if you folks up at Paizo might develop a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures Wargame. Even if you didn't, I love the idea of randomized Pre-painted plastic miniatures.
If it has to be randoms, then so be it. If we need certain singles, I'd anticipate that you guys would purchase a number of the booster packs and open them up to sell the singles online.
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Only possible obstacle I see is you probably already have such an arrangement with Reaper, which prevents you from outsourcing further mini lines based on the same characters to other companies, which is not limited to metal minis...
So presumably unless they get a better deal elsewhere, if they were ever to have the resources to do plastic minis, they'd do it with Reaper, since they already work with them (and Reaper is reliable and makes a quality product). And especially since Reaper would already have the molds they used to make the whitemetal minis for the main Pathfinder line.
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CEO
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Only possible obstacle I see is you probably already have such an arrangement with Reaper, which prevents you from outsourcing further mini lines based on the same characters to other companies, which is not limited to metal minis...So presumably unless they get a better deal elsewhere, if they were ever to have the resources to do plastic minis, they'd do it with Reaper, since they already work with them (and Reaper is reliable and makes a quality product). And especially since Reaper would already have the molds they used to make the whitemetal minis for the main Pathfinder line.
Trust me, if the singles model was working really well for Reaper, we would be seeing six or so new prepainted plastic minis every month. Instead, there is about one release a year, so I can guarantee that the price of doing this as singles isn't working that well for Reaper either. :)
Also, the molds for the metal miniatures are totally different than the ones they use for plastic, so there is no benefit gained there.
-Lisa
Trust me, if the singles model was working really well for Reaper, we would be seeing six or so new prepainted plastic minis every month. Instead, there is about one release a year, so I can guarantee that the price of doing this as singles isn't working that well for Reaper either. :)
I wasn't pushing for singles. Just noting to the other poster that they make plastics since he didn't think they did. It seems like if Reaper was willing to make random packs for you, it may as well be them.
Also, the molds for the metal miniatures are totally different than the ones they use for plastic, so there is no benefit gained there.
ACK. Yes, you're right, of course not the same molds. I meant the same sculpts (which they use to make the molds). Most Legendary Encounters were DHL or Warlords sculpts first. Then, presumably, they use the sculpt to make a new plastic mold.
So FOR EXAMPLE, they already have a Seoni sculpt, so they could then use that to make a plastic Seoni mold. Rather than, say, have whole other brand new company have to make a brand new Seoni sculpt and then make the mold out of that.
In the ideal alternate universe where you have the resources to put out plastic minis to begin with.
(Also: I'm honestly in iLaifire's camp: I freakin' hate plastic minis for my personal use. If you ever made them, random or singles, I'd never buy them. But people seem to like them, and I like to tout Reaper's stuff, and I would be sad if Paizo chose a different company to do their minis)
You can try N'wah's paper minis for now, those require a bit of assembling but are quite cheap and real neat.
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CEO
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(Also: I'm honestly in iLaifire's camp: I freakin' hate plastic minis for my personal use. If you ever made them, random or singles, I'd never buy them. But people seem to like them, and I like to tout Reaper's stuff, and I would be sad if Paizo chose a different company to do their minis)
If we ever did prepainted plastic miniatures, it would probably be something we did ourselves internally. However, if we did have a partner, I would go with Reaper because they are good people. Of course, somebody could come out of the blue and present me with a plan to make prepainted plastic miniatures that just blows me away, so I guess I shouldn't make grand sweeping statements like this. :)
-Lisa
*Wishes upon a star*
so I would rather have random packs than nothing at all. -Lisa
If this ever happens like described, please do a much better job of random than WoTC does. And get rid of common, uncommon and rare. Say, just make a set of 40, make an equal number of each one, and then put them in randomly. Hopefully so there isn't a dupe in 1 pack.
If this ever happens like described, please do a much better job of random than WoTC does. And get rid of common, uncommon and rare. Say, just make a set of 40, make an equal number of each one, and then put them in randomly. Hopefully so there isn't a dupe in 1 pack.
The rarity value with WotC is geared towards paint steps. Commons getting 1-3 Uncommons getting 3-5 and rares getting 5-8
The cost to produce goes up quite a bit between each paint step count. That was how, previously, WotC was able to keep prices where they were. (No clue how they're doing it now, stopped paying attention once they killed the game).
For Paizo to have no variety in rarity means one of two things
All paint steps would be equal to keep costs similar; meaning we would have to pay more for the extra paint steps on "junk" mobs; goblins, kobolds, and other things you need several of. Or we would get the BBEG (one at a time encounters/special figures/etc) at a less then desired quality.
Or they keep a varied paint step system - with that they'll have to keep the higher prices to compensate for the cost to produce as many High quality figs as Low and Med quality.
I'm not a huge fan of humanoid minis. Their face sculpts always look like apes. Monster minis are cool though.
DEATH TO PLASTIC ! METAL RULES !!!!
Two reasons why plastic minis aren't that bad:
1) Plastic is usually way lighter than metal. Carrying a large tub of minis around is much easier when they're plastic.2) I pile all my minis haphazardly on top of each other in a large storage tub, where they have a tendency to get damaged from the weight and stress. The plastic minis are more flexible, so they'll bend and warp a bit. But the metal minis are less flexible, so they'll snap and break. I'd much prefer to have a fighter with a bent sword than a fighter with a broken sword.
So plastic ain't all that bad.
Bah! I carry my PPMs in recycled ice cream bucket containers that have handles. Convenient for me. Blasphemous to others, I'm sure.
Point is, you don't just dump them in a giant box all together. You put them away so that they don't get damaged.YOU DON'T DUMP MINIS INTO A BOX AND GO! THEY MAKE SPECIAL FOAM CONTAINERS WHERE YOU PUT EACH INDIVIDUAL MINI SO THAT THEY DON'T BREAK OR CHIP THE PAINT!Realxe dude! Switch to decaf. I put mine in either a fishing tackle box, or some nice little plastic cases. No foam containers in sight.
Dude, I am a great lover of the miniature hobby and feel your pain, but different people have different gaming needs, wants, and interests. It's one thing to express your preferences and provide the reasons for them, another to go CAPSLOCK on someone with simply different priorities than yourself.
Some people use plastic chits and LEGOs for minis, let alone rubbery plastic minis that you can pack up and go and not have to spend a lot of money for a special container to transport them. It's what they need for what they do, that is all.
And I have to say, because I'm into the miniature hobby, I know how time--and money--consuming it is to assemble and paint and store minis. Some people do not have that time nor that money, let alone interest. That is all. Please, live and let live.
YOU DON'T DUMP MINIS INTO A BOX AND GO! THEY MAKE SPECIAL FOAM CONTAINERS WHERE YOU PUT EACH INDIVIDUAL MINI SO THAT THEY DON'T BREAK OR CHIP THE PAINT!
I understand where you're coming from, but those containers can be expensive and they take up too much space. With cheap minis, it's not a big deal if they break or if the paint chips.
My eyes! My eyes!
Lots of valid stuff
If they came somewhere in that 3-5 steps would be an acceptable middle ground for me. Even for mobs. There've been too many times I'm short the mob type I want or use. If I need a goblin, orc, hobgoblin, elf, dwarf or random human mobs. I'm set.
But that C/U/R set up that WoTC has going has produced some sets with more 'rares' than 'commons'. Or too close to call on that mark. Wasn't good for 1) completists and 2) those of use trying to get specifics.
I'd pay more for a consistent quality of sculpt and pre-paint where I had an equal chance to get a desirable mini or a mob mini.
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Metal minis are great for those that can paint and have the time to do so. I am a lousy painter and I have spent hours and hours trying to get enough minis painted to play the game and often had to use unpainted ones.
I love my prepainted minis and I want more. I would love this line if it every came about and I would buy them all (and fill in my collection on ebay or from Paizo if I was missing something or wanted more of them). I think a whole group of Paizo goblins would be great. Since Rise of the Runelords my goblins are unsatisfying (as well as my Ogres, Lamias, Rune Giants, Rakshasa, Reef Claws, Ghouls, Ghasts, need I continue...
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Usually I just end up putting the unpainted metal mini out there. I'm in grad school now, and while I love painting, I just don't have the time for it anymore. Speaking of which, I have to get back to a project!
I also often just put a die out there and show the picture. this works well for lots of little goblins or black dice for shadows.
If it was between a crappy painted plastic mini and a die, I'll take the mini.
I prefer metal, but for the basic monsters or generic npcs, plastic is fine.
I understand the cost-issue, and I like that there are PF figures at all. They are really good quality.
Also, I thought the new lead minis were being put out because they show the details better than the pewter ones. I know that pewter bends like crazy. If I don't leave the minis all on a shelf (everyone games at my place), then all the little swords and staffs get bent.
I hate the gluing, though. half the time the hands just fall off anyways. Tried a whole bunch of different types of glue, and apoxy doesn't come in tiny, precise tubes.
Just for the record, if Paizo does end up doing radomized plastic minis, I'd probably be all in. I'd love to have a chance at some monsters that are native to Pathfinder than I'm never going to get a perfect version of from getting WOTC's minis.
We still use metal minis that we painted over 20+ years ago. For mosters we primarily uses little plastic poker chips numbered by stickers.
Would love some pre-painted goodies.
File me under the "no more time to paint" category.