Jokemeister

Sorry but this is a skip for me as well. I'm actually trying to tone down the amount of effort I put into painting my minis so that I can get through my mountain of minis more quickly. At the moment, I have boxes and boxes worth of minis that I need to paint so that they can look good on the tabletop and I need to get through some of them first before I start trying out fancy new techniques again. Maybe by Summer, I'll be bored of tabletop and pick out a mini to paint to a higher standard but till then...

I'm all natural, baby!

I don't think I have a style as yet. I'm still trying to find the right balance between quality and time that will get me results that I am comfortable with but that don't take up a millions hours. In terms of colour choice, I tend to paint based on either the colours in the official art or based on a paintjob that someone else did. I guess that makes my style "plagiarist"?

Big fat no in my case.

Quite by coincidence, I went to a restaurant that I'd never been to before over the weekend. It was a restaurant specializing in Shanghai cuisine which was always packed with people and long queues. We had a bit of spare time over the weekend so decided to actually use it to queue up for a table. We ended up waiting for around an hour before we got a table. Worth the wait though. The food was really good. We didn't order anything we hadn't eaten before though so I think that still counts as a failed challenge? Ah well...

Nope and nope. Also, I didn't actually know what Lent is until I googled it. Not anymore. I made pancakes for my roommate and her girlfriend. And while I offered beads they declined. Wait a minute... your wife lives in another city and you have a female roommate and her girlfriend in your current residence... and you actually expect us to call you the Haminister of TRUTH?!?!? Nope. Don't think so, buddy! And yet... It is... Life is very very strange. Wait! Hold up! That can't be a recent picture unless ... OMG! You're no longer a hologram?!?!?!

Yes - these are my favourite threads on the Reaper forums and I always love coming here (although I don't get to come as often as I would like these days). @TGP - many thanks for hosting this month. You did a great job!

PCs have the option to gather information about their foes as well. They can talk to people in the area, do research about what they've heard of, and there is likely to be someone in the group that they can ask, especially if they do the research first. (Which is to say that I largely agree.) Agree. My point is that they're not going to know that unless they do that additional research in the area where those monsters are common. The fighter isn't going to magically know it just because he is a professional soldier. Not sure I agree with the bolded part. Games like D&D are built around the concept of the party. It wouldn't surprise me to see a PC build, designed to support the party, end up not being great in solo combat and losing that one on one fight.

You'll never know!

In a world where every military is similarly equipped and populated by basically identical people, yes, you can ask a soldier "what weapons do the Russians use?" and they could tell you "They're most likely using some variant of the AK, an RPG variant that's likely the RPG-7D, and a PKP. They're comparable in performance to our own M4, M3 MAAWS, and M240B." But because loadouts are variable between missions, they probably won't know exactly what the enemy is actually equipped with in every situation. So they couldn't tell you that they've got 3 soldiers with underslung grenade launchers on their AKs over there, and that other group over there has a designated marksman in a building with a Dragunov. They won't know more than the gist of things until they actually make contact or do more extensive recon. Just like a party of adventurers will know that if they're facing hobgoblins they're probably highly disciplined fighters, that use a mix of melee and ranged tactics, aren't likely to retreat, and will probably have at least one spellcaster in their camp. But they won't know what that spellcaster's spell list is, they won't know what level those hobgoblins are, and they probably won't know that the hobgoblin warlord is an Eldritch Knight wearing a ring of protection and a cloak of resistance. If they have witnesses from previous skirmishes they may learn that the warlord is able to strike with the power of lightning and that the caster threw a fireball from the wall, but they won't learn that the caster can fly unless he uses fly in their presence. Then you get into how a lot of enemies are actually more along the lines of "armies" in the vein of the Viet Cong or the Mujaheddin. They're equipped with whatever they can get their hands on, or how you've got all sorts of magical and fantastical beasts that aren't supposed to be exactly common. Yeah - but lots of bad guys have significant characteristics cannot be changed. Red Dragons are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold and it's hard to change that. You need magic weapons to fight a ghost. Devils generally have a fixed spell list. However, as written in the game a fighter knows NONE of this because they cannot pass the knowledge checks. (Also, soldiers will typically know a lot about expected loadouts because they've seen the ToE - if you know you're coming up against the 82nd Airborne, you've got a good idea of what they can do. In WW2, you knew if that a large scale soviet maneuver would be supported by 88mm ZiS-3 fire even if they hadn't fired yet because it was absolutely inevitable). Actual vancian casters are mutable, but most monsters in the monster manual are not flexible casters but have proscribed spell lists: Monsters (A) Aboleth Aboleth Mage <-- Only actual full caster Achaierai Allip AngelAngel, Astral Deva Angel, Planetar <-- is a full caster, but ALSO has a fixed spell list which is knowable. Angel, Solar <-- is a full caster, but ALSO has a fixed spell list which is knowable. Animated Object Ankheg Aranea ArchonLantern Archon Hound ArchonHound Archon Hero Trumpet Archon Arrowhawk Assassin Vine Athach Avoral Azer A fighter should plausibly know what these guys all do, but is going to know none of it because they cannot pass the knowledge check. Why would the fighter plausibly know what these guys all do? You're using real world soldiers to compare but the comparison falls down once you start looking at why real world soldiers have the info they have. One thing that isn't widely acknowledged is that the armed forces are extremely good at knowledge management (no surprise when you consider that, for them, knowledge management is literally a matter of life or death). They have intelligence sources who are out gathering info and collating that into useful intel. They pioneered the use of AARs to capture info around what they can and should be doing better. That info is available to commanders who can access a lot of info just by searching their systems and who can then use that info to prepare their troops prior to an engagement (worth mentioning that even highly trained soldiers in real life don't have all that info memorized and rely on their KM systems to bring up the info when preparing for a mission). Similarly, although specific weapon loadouts may or may not be known, the person wielding the weapon is still a human being with all the "abilities" that you can expect a human being to have. Contrast that to a high fantasy world like D&D where they don't have access to KM systems and probably don't have any of those KM processes beyond just talking to each other. A trained soldier in a city/village (or wherever they are from) doesn't have a database to pull up info from. All he has is the occasional travelling bard (or maybe a traveling mercenary) to tell him about fantastical creatures they might have encountered. And at that point, the trained soldier not only has to remember that info but then consider whether the source of that info was exaggerating (and we all know soldiers never exaggerate about their accomplishments when discussing it over an ale right?). Just take a look at the monster manual and consider how many monsters there are - is the fighter really supposed to have personally either come across every monster himself or have met someone who has come across that monster? Even if he did, is he really expected to remember ALL of that info? Even the best DMs in the world can't remember all that info! Granted you could get around this by coming up with an in-game "Volo's guide to the Realms!". Wow - that just brought up so many fond memories of Baldur's Gate - but even Volo's guide that tended to focus on creatures you were likely to encounter in the area and wasn't an exhaustive list of every creature in the area.

I have to be honest and admit that I've never fully understood the point of a national <thing> day. If you like <thing>, couldn't you enjoy that <thing> whenever you like? And if you don't like <thing>, is having a national <thing> day going to change your mind about <thing>? What exactly is the national <thing> day supposed to achieve?

Nice wording! Like others, I don't have any minis that I hate. However, if you are talking about least favourite... Hmm, I guess that would be the werewolf from Castle Ravenloft. I was still a complete painting noob at the time and I did a pretty bad job with drybrushing (in my defence, my first attempt at drybrushing).

I don't really have a favourite mini so in that sense, I'm glad that other people answered this question the same way. Otherwise, I think I would have been sitting here thinking, "What's wrong with me!"

Clearly, the correct answer to this question is TGP.

Not very old in my case. I don't eat a lot of candy so, under normal circumstances, there isn't any candy lying around at home. This means that any candy that is purchased is purchased with the intent of immediate gratification and so tends to get eaten that same day.

The great thing about old stuff is that, for me, it actually comprises the most useful stuff and the main reason why I would want to buy additional stuff in the first place. The hardest thing I used to face many, many moons ago when I was still playing RPGs was coming up with the adventure idea. The plot and the hooks to get players into the adventure. This kind of stuff doesn't age and material from old sourcebooks and modules are just as valuable now as they were then from the point of view of inspiring you with adventure ideas. Monster stat blocks, dungeon maps etc are useful in that they can be convenient but honestly, that is also the kind of stuff that can be easily replicated from the latest monster manual or whatever equivalent your RPG uses.

I don't have any feelings one way or the other on this. I'm happy to be celebrating neither. What VitM said. Although I did buy some nice chocolates for the missus which we enjoyed together.

That is marvelous. I can't even begin to imagine how many hours went into that!

Yeah, it's been a while! In fact, it's been so long that I even managed to forget how to take pictures of my completed minis. I completely forgot which settings to use on my camera and also forgot to take a picture of the back of the mini which is where you can actually see more of the drybrush work.

Cream of mushroom is probably my favourite - though honestly, it's hard to pick just one! And that choice doesn't change just because I'm sick. In sickness and in health 'n all that jazz! Beagle - I don't know how to tell you this gently so I'll just come out and say it. You're supposed to drink soup with your mouth.

Yay - I'm painting again! Just rough tabletop quality as I have a mountain of minis to get through. I figure at this point that it's more important to get through some of them before I start trying new techniques etc. With that said, I do need to experiment a bit to find a middle ground between speed and quality that I'm comfortable with. Below is the alien Xeno-Morph from Galaxy Defenders. This was one of the KS sculpts and is inspired by the classic Alien from the movies. The mini itself is done with just drybrushing and a little bit of edge highlighting at the tail. Quick and easy!

I have no idea what you are talking about. I don't have a goblin relative chained up in the basement and I resent any implication otherwise!!!

I have no preference as long as its a mammal with massive super-cute eyes. And for the love of all that's holy, nothing insect related!

That is jaw-droppingly gorgeous!