I like wizards to be like rocket scientist, you can live your live never meeting one but at the same time there are places with hundreds of them in a building. I usually like to use magic in subtle ways like Gandalf. Fireball is still fun though. Thank you for the video Jim.
I don't prefer low magic setting because I find magic daunting, I prefer them because when magic is ubiquitous, it becomes mundane and boring. I want magic to be unusual and terrifying. Also, when magic is too common, it would have a whole bunch of implications on the world building that you have to take into account if you want the verisimilitude to survive. Usually, the resulting world is not that interesting to me.
Ordered the goblin village, zombies, and the mimic after watching your goblin village review video. The minis were printed with a resin printer and the huts were printed with an FDM printer, all good quality. To anyone considering placing an order, my order arrived in just a few days and the minis were well packaged for shipping. Thanks for the tip Jim.
If you have access to a 3d printer, there's a guy on shapeways called mz4250 who made minis for the entire 5e monster manual and more in 3d, and then released all of it for free! He's a freakin river to his people.
Hello, Jim! I've been using tokens (art from various monster manuals glued on washers) to build my army and it's a decent enough substitute for minis. I agree that minis are better than a coin or a die. However, if you're like me and live in an Eastern European town where tabletop gaming is almost non-existent, I strongly recommend making your own token. It's just not feasible to get even the cheapest minis when the transport itself is around 25$ (not including tax).
If you can get your hands on some 1-inch glass cabochons, they really up the quality of your tokens. They're usually pretty cheap. Obviously you want to test your adhesive before doing the whole batch, to make sure it dries clear, but sandwich the art between the washer and the cabochon, and you have a token that looks very professional.
"Even a badly painted miniature is usually better than nothing." I had to pause the video to say how true this is, I'm very new painter, so even my best is not very impressive, but I had some small dragon minis that I 3d printed, and started on painting one of them, just a very quick initial coat, to block out the colors, no shading, no highlighting, a few sloppy mistakes, not even full coverage in some parts. This was literally just testing out the color scheme, and if I liked it I would go back and clean it up later.I put that one down next to one of the unpainted ones to let it dry, and then went to clean up. When I came back, saw them side by side, a very rough job by a very new painter right next to gray resin from table top distance away, I could tell instantly which one I would be more excited to play with. And it is the 'badly' painted one.I keep those minis as they are together to this day in my room, just to remind me of what the difference even the worst paint job I've ever done makes compared to gray unpainted stuff.
I do like that bulky/thicker look on the minis too, it also sorta forces them to be... not splayed out in some model pose doing a specific action all the time, there's a lot more neutral "standing there" or "shield and weapon readied" poses going on.
RE: Scaling Up Zombies - The 5e DMG has a table for different common races and their racial stats, specifically built for plugging them into the NPC stat blocks in the back of the Monster Manual (the ones for things like cultists, knights, bandits, etc). And that table includes ones for Skeletons and Zombies. By default they lose points in Charisma and Intelligence, but also gain points (like in Con, for zombies) and various undead-related traits (resistances and the Undead Fortitude features, for example). So it's actually quite easy to "upgrade" basic undead for higher levels, just by saying they're undead versions of these various archetypes. Like a Zombie Knight or a Skeleton Assassin. If you want a Lich-esque character, but don't want to break out the "Lich" stat block, you could use a zombie or skeleton Mage (CR 6), Archmage (CR 12), Cult Fanatic (CR 2), Priest (CR 2), or even Druid (CR 2). You might want to ignore any stat reductions that make them incapable of using magic, and bumping their Int in general to make them a thinking, talking villain wouldn't go amiss either.
I think you should discuss Low Magic and Low Fantasy more. I think there is a lot of different and varying definitions of what these are. I personally like Sword and Sorcery style games (and thus avoid 5e--though I will play it).
Hi Jim! Love the videos, keep up the great work! Sorry to keep harping on this, but Matt often mentions how he really enjoys your approach to roleplaying elves, specifically how you really ramp up the "otherworldly-ness" of them, so they actually come off as alien creatures, akin to the "greys" often seen in popular fiction. Can you elaborate on that? What exactly do you do to make them come off as alien?
Capta1nChaos it’s hard to put into words. Think if you created great advancements for the world and then almost everyone you helped turned against you to steal what you have. Think sadness, disappointment and hate all rolled together.
High magic games are great, just limit the spells the players have access to. My games cap at 6th lvl . I found this is were most players want to stop and re-roll. We start at 0 lvl and spells are limited to 3rd level spells. Casters learn the entire level of spells ( 6 per spell level ) but have to roll caster level+ability mod vs a 20. They can cast any spell of known level as often as they want.
Go to Zilla Games and grab the free SRD for Arcanum 30th Anniversary. Inside you will find the spells for Mysticism and Low Magic. Then take S&W White box and dump the MU & Cleric Spells. Replace with the Spells taken from Arcanum. Have fun.
