Miniatures have always been an integral part of gaming no matter what roleplaying game system you use. As a GM, people seem to expect you to have a mini to represent every monster or NPC in the dungeon. I personally don’t like this, and financially can’t keep pace with such expectations. My solution is that the players at my table have to have their own mini representing their PC and any animal or cohort they have. I do have a few minis I use for combat, but these rarely end up representing the true opponent to the party, instead it is a place holder, and I ask the players to “imagine” the bald monk mini to actually be a horned devil. Pathfinder, 3.5e and 4e games all have complicated tactics for battle, and sometimes there are tons of monsters that need to be placed. When I run such encounters, I tend to break everything down to the basics and use glass beads, plastic magnets, cut pieces of paper and candy to represent the monster combatants.
The coolest thing about plastic magnets is that you can write numbers on them and track the bad guys during combat by number; I use wet erase markers for this. The glass beads work great for minions and groups of easy targets. The glass beads I like are from Chessex, and come in packs of 25, so when you have a group of 15 kobolds attacking the party from the left and a group of 12 orcs coming from the right you can set up purple glass beads for kobolds and green for orcs, while the Horned devil (bald monk) commands the red wizard (red magnet) orange priest (orange magnet) grey thief (grey magnet) and the white witch (white magnet) to attack the party without prejudice. Such a battle can be easily set up in minutes without having to search for the right mini for this beast and that.
Using very basic figures help to keep the action going during the game. They reduce setup time and are easy to track. I have even used rocks from my driveway. The players don’t mind, they just need to know where the enemy is so they can attack them. As a bonus, I find generic markers like these end up being very easy to pack for travel to conventions.
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About shent_lodge
That’s a great idea – I have a /ton/ of those. I’ve been using bottlecaps lately, which work great. The only problem is when you have a Large or larger creature. I’ve thought of making cardboard squares of the appropriate size to put the markers on.
I’ll use poker chips for large monsters. I have been known to use colored paper cut at 3 square by 3 square, for huge beasts, or use one of my son’s toys or even my cell phone.
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Yeah. My groups have been as likely to use improvised “minis” as real minis. Maybe more likely. I currently am trying out some generic “pawns”. I grabbed every color of two different styles, which gives me something like 20 unique pawns. That should be enough for most situations.
I also like Sparks and Cardboard Heroes. You can make your own from any artwork you can find online or scan. I picked up the tip of using small binder clips with the handles removed as bases
All that said, I have to say that minis haven’t always been an integral part of my gaming. I nigh never used minis (improvised or otherwise) from my start c. 1981 until I played GURPS c. 1991. Even since then, my groups have only used them sometimes.
@Robert What a great idea with the binder clips.