So I started running a Pathfinder game for my girlfriend, her friend, and the friend's husband. We had our first (her very first) session this past weekend and as I am not entirely sure where all my minis and such are, or if I had appropriate minis, we used a handful of Hero Clix the husband had. They worked of course, aside from the fact that the bases on the wolves we were using (a druid and hunter in this party, so two animal companions) had the longer style bases that take up two squares on the mat, when as medium creatures they should only have taken up one space each. While a minor problem at best I decided to seek a solution.

First I took to Amazon (using the link provided by Olan if I decided to buy anything) to look at obtaining actual minis that would both better represent the characters we had, and would take up the right amount of mat space to avoid any confusion during combat as to which spaces were open and which were free. I located a decent selection of unpainted, Reaper brand, minis that looked great, but at between $6 and $12 each that was a little steep (especially with me between jobs) AND I would have had to eventually get appropriate paints and invest the time and money in adding color to the otherwise bland grey figures. In the end I opted out of buying the figures, erring on the side of frugality.

Then I remembered Paizo does a series of Pathfinder Pawns, Cardboard minis like you would find in a board game with the little plastic stands. So I price checked those, and found a set that would have given me a nice selection of humanoid NPCs AND animal companions, which I could use for this particular group quite nicely. The $40 price tag however turned me away once again, damn this economy!

I had almost given up, resigned to defeat, and accepted that we would just have to work around the oddly shaped figures we had available. Then I remembered something I had seen on a previous Google search, Paper Minis. So I took to Google as quickly as I could and began a search to see how I could go about getting my hands on some decent paper minis, I had just bought a printer after all and could print something out that would both be properly sized, but closer in appearance to the characters than having Taskmaster as our cleric. I however did not count on Paper Minis being something that I would have to buy, as I quickly found that in order to get the ones I had seen previously I would have to pay for the PDF that contained them. This would just not do, as I was already paying for ink and paper in the printer, I was not willing to pay for the images I would also be printing.

So instead I took to Google again, this time searching for the archetype of each of my player's characters, a female Cleric, a Halfling Druid and his trusty bear companion, and a sword wielding Elven Huntress and her loyal wolf. I found images I thought both looked good and seemed to fit the characters and then with a little resizing, duplication, and a flip I had the template for my own paper minis. Now I don't have any cardstock, so the figures would be mighty flimsy without a little extra support, so I cut a few strips off a notecard I had lying around and put spines in each figure for added support and then secured them to based I made out of said notecard. For a little added weight I then taped a penny to the bottom of each base and now I have what I believe to be more appropriate minis for my group, and all without spending any extra money. Now I just have to wait two weeks to see what everyone thinks of the work I put into these.

I'm curious though as to what my fellow Innmates think of the idea, have you ever improvised something like this on the fly, am I just too cheap for not wanting to buy something? Feel free to speak your mind on the matter. I'd be willing to post pics too if anyone wants to see what I ended up with.

I've never really used minis in gaming, to be honest. I've painted several and such but, as far as actually utilizing them in a game setting... nope. That said, your solution sounds like a damned fine one (and extremely cost-effective to boot). Well done.

P.S. You ought to post some pics of the final results.

I really only use the minis for combat, I find that with new players like those I am working with it makes it easier to manage the chaos of battle if you have some sort of visual representation. "The orc raider is 8 squares away from you and you can move up to 6, what would you like to do?" At this point they know with standard movement they can't get within melee range, so it's either move up and let him come to them on his turn, or engage with range... Otherwise the minis are just sitting there unused.



The Druid, being smaller and slower than the two Elves he travels with usually rides his bear, so of course I also made a mini for that purpose. While not the best job, it does represent a bear being ridden...

I had never considered this, but it's a fantastic idea!

For monsters, I also use those massive amounts of tiny toy animals you can get in the toy area of stores. Cheap, and easy to throw on the board.

If you draw maps with a wipe away pen, I hide sections with those cheap little glass beads for counters to cover sections and shove them away as people travel.

I was just using some simple red plastic counters I had to represent enemies, numbered with a small d6 for ease of keeping track. While I was looking on Amazon though I found several of the "army man" style sets of various zombies, skeletons, monsters (think universal studios, wolfman, dracula, etc) and I know those would work well too.

looking good, I thought you just bought a set at first glance, great job

I bought the pathfinder pawn set, (40 bucks is a lot cheaper than the dnd minis, 12 bucks for four random ones) so I didn't think it was a bad investment.

No, definitely not a bad investment, but I simply could not justify the expense while between jobs.