Meet the PC: Jon Bridle, Human Fighter

One of my favorite parts about tabletop roleplaying is finding, modeling, and painting the perfect miniatures for our party PCs. I've been doing this for years now, and thought I'd share some of these characters with you.

Yorrik's character in the aforementioned post-cataclysm game was Jon Bridle, the public face of our motley crew of PCs, and the bastard son of a horse-baron. He set out to make a name for himself by forming the "Everyman Adventuring Company." Ironically named due to the fact he was the only human in the whole party (don't forget, in the world setting demi-humans were lower class citizens).

This mini is the Pathfinder Valeros, Iconic Male Human Fighter modified & painted by Yorrik (the original mini has two weapons). It's a good sword & board human adventurer & fit well with the rugged character concept. Plus the armor looks good as leather instead of the bronze on the original character.

~Muninn

Meet the PC: Zarina Ambrose, Genasi Artificer

One of my favorite parts about tabletop roleplaying is finding, modeling, and painting the perfect miniatures for our party PCs. I've been doing this for years now, and thought I'd share some of these characters with you.

Back in 2010, following Yorrik's comprehensive Castlevania game, the rest of us were taking turns GMing our own games. I did an ill-fated Dark Sun game and Robotlich did his tongue-in-cheek game, but first, fellow player Chris led us on a campaign of his own devising.

Probably one of the most frustrating game's I've participated in, and I've played Iron Man D&D.

The setting itself was a feudal fantasy world set a almost a millennium following a earth-shaping cataclysm. Some races survived while others did not (halflings, gnomes, & dwarves didn't make it iirc). At the time of the game, humanity was the ruling, jingoistic class, while all others were of lower caste.  Since the world was still slowly recovering from it's near-end there was a push to rediscover much of the lost knowledge, tools, and arcana of the previous age. This is where our adventuring party came in.

For my part in the game, I played a wizarding academy dropout-turned-archeologist named Zarina Ambrose. She would go out in the wilds looking to unearth old treasures and return it to the arcane university for a retainer (she'd of course keep the best finds for herself). To represent the fact she had some magical affinity, but no real talent she relied almost entirely on magical equipment she found & modified: Hence the Artificer class from the Eberron source book.

Overall I'd give the Artificer class a C-. It's unwieldy, not very intuitive, and begging for extra rules support that it never really got while I was playing. I liked the character though.

The mini itself is Kyla, Bounty Hunter from Reaper, and fit exactly with what I wanted. To me it has a kind of Tomb Raider quality. Someone who's spent a lot of time away from civilization & has had to piece her armor back together. The fact I was playing a Genasi didn't matter, since it was a simple palette swap to give her blue skin with a few white lines painted onto her face. Normally Water Genasi are bald, but they've been known to have hair, so I went with it.

~Muninn

Meet the PC: Paladin of Ilmater

One of my favorite parts about tabletop roleplaying is finding, modeling, and painting the perfect miniatures for our party PCs. I've been doing this for years now, and thought I'd share some of these characters with you.

Back around 2005 a buddy of mine invited me to sit in on his regular weekly D&D session at a local game store, GMed by the store owner.  They were running a Forgotten Realms campaign, so I took that as an opportunity to roll a character idea I'd been brewing for a long time, a Paladin of Ilmater. (his name was lost in the Warp a long time ago). He was a child slave turned holy knight, so he believed it was wrong to deny any creatures their ways of life (unless they attempted to deny the rights of others).

Ilmater's whole thing is healing and protection at the cost of self, so my character was more of a pacifist than most others. I think my fellow players were kinda grumpy when I refused to fight in a few encounters (The giant eagle was just hunting for food, who was I to deny its right to live?). The game only lasted a few more sessions, so I only actually used the mini for it once.

 The mini is Tariq, Nefsokar Sergeant from Reaper's Warlord line. I think it makes him look sufficiently exotic without overdoing it. I painted this up ever so long ago, so looking at it now I think about how the gold might offset the whole "suffer on behalf of others" motif. I'd probably give him a few washes to make him look a bit more worn & dingy.

~Muninn

Meet the PC: Paelias, Eladrin Thief

One of my favorite parts about tabletop roleplaying is finding, modeling, and painting the perfect miniatures for our party PCs. I've been doing this for years now, and thought I'd share some of these characters with you.

So here is my own PC: Paelias, the Eladrin Rogue. 4th edition tried some neat things with the generic D&D setting, and one of the changes I rather liked was splitting High Elves and Wood Elves into somewhat more distinct (and differently named) cousin races: Eladrin (the alien, civilized, and fae-like race) and the Elves (the nomadic, arboreal, more down to earth of the two). Elves retained their skill with bows and their light-footedness, while Eladrin were given an affinity for the more romantic and civilized longsword, as well as a wonderful ability to teleport around the map by briefly stepping between our world and their native dimension, the Feywild. Paelias here was a political exile from his home, a gorgeous but unchanging ivory city where the Duke of Pearls held sway. Finding the chaos of the mortal world to be much preferable to the predictable stasis of his home, Paelias had grand adventures with his companions - his favorite of which were those that involved wine, women, and song.

I started with Reaper's Shad, Mercenaries Rogue as a base for my conversion. The site identities him as human, but I thought he would make a fine example of the slender and impressive Eladrin race. The sword that comes with the mini was rather thick, and not at all the quick, lightweight blade that Paelias would prefer, so I swapped it with a much thinner, pointier plastic bit I had acquired from a box of Warhammer State Troops. Purple is obviously Paelias' color, so I started by painting his leather armor with a straight-forward lift from dark to light. I mixed that same dark purple into every other color that I used on the mini, which is why there is a ghastly tone to his skin and a purplish tone to his hair. The brown leather did not benefit from the process very much, and if I were to do this mini again I would definitely try something different - possibly a more contrasting color. The sword was simply painted using metallic paints, then coated with a purple wash. he base was drybrushed various layers of grey and bone, then washed with the same color as the sword. Overall I am quite pleased with Paelias, though he is not my favorite mini out of the set.

Meet the PC: Olivia, Human Wizard

One of my favorite parts about tabletop roleplaying is finding, modeling, and painting the perfect miniatures for our party PCs. I've been doing this for years now, and thought I'd share some of these characters with you.

Olivia

This is my favorite mini from the set. I feel like everything came together for this mini to produce exactly what I had in mind. I started with Elise Anya, Vampire Hunter, a great mini that I have bought and converted a few times now. I like the coyness in the mini, and the fact that she is not overtly sexualized. The miniature holds a short sword behind her back, but in keeping with Olivia's arcane nature I swapped it out for a scroll (complete with runes in blue ink). The blues work together very well in this mini, and the skin ended up with a pale, greenish tone that I feel adds to the theme. The hair has a certain blueberry-like quality, whcih I also like. Her stalwart companion was a bit acquired from... somewhere. I remember having to kludge the feet from plastic card. The first iteration of the book stand's feet resulted in a very topsy-turvy looking fellow, and I liked it so much that I kept it. The brass metals took to the blue wash much better than the silver did - and you can see that I didn't even wash the silver metals on this mini. The sidekick, the paintjob, and conversion, everything came together on this mini, and even though I think the Fighter came out a little better, this is definitely my favorite form the set.