I'm not saying I have the kind of cash for dropping on my RPG that Dwarven Forge is asking, but I'm wondering if anyone here has actually played a campaign using them, and how many kits you'd need to make a moderately complex dungeon – the stuff I see on their site seems to indicate that you'd probably only get one room or so out of a given kit.
[RPG] How many sets of Dwarven Forge do I need to start with
miniatures
Related Solutions
Miniature-scale "flame" lights do exist, but the limitation is not the size or power of the bulb; it's the power source and wiring that's the problem. Here's a visual that demonstrates the real hurdle to using these with movable 25mm scale miniatures:
Granted that's a full-featured campfire flame simulation kit with features you may be willing to do without. The circuit board handles the "flame flicker" as well the conversion of the suggested 9V power source to a voltage that an LED can accept (typically ~1.7V).
A smaller solution is possible in theory, using just a coin- or button-cell battery and skipping the circuit board. (For a bit more money, you can even get LEDs with built-in flickering effects!) The battery could be mounted under the base of a miniature. The leads would require disguising or drilling a channel through the miniature itself (the latter would be painstaking, or prohibitive on minis with small-diametre arms, but impressive). I'm not aware of any existing kits or props that supply such an arrangement, so it would be an entirely DIY kitbashing project.
In the end though, this would be almost entirely aesthetic. A normal LED will cast light far beyond the scale radius of any in-game light source, and you don't have room for circuitry to moderate its brightness to adjust that downward. Even if you did, the falloff for real light is analogue and wouldn't help to indicate the hard lines between lighting levels that most RPGs use to abstract lighting.
Whole list of maximum of creatures in single encounter
- 1 acolyte (pg. 46)
- 1 animated armor (pg. 171)
- 1 arcanaloth (pg. 184)
- 1 archmage (pg. 39)
- 1 assasin (pg. 108)
- 1 baboon (pg. 118)
- Up to 4 bandit captains[1], minimum of 3 (pg. 36)
- Up to 44 bandits[2] (pg. 121-122), minimum of 12 (pg. 36)
- 1 banshee (pg. 89)
- Up to 7 Barovian witches (pg. 72), minimum of 3 (pg. 72)
- 1 bat (pg. 133)
- 6 berserkers (pg. 198)
- 1 black pudding (pg. 78)
- 3 brooms of animated attack (pg. 191)
- 8 cats (pg. 114)
- 4 clay golems (pg. 170)
- 50 commoners (pg. 96)
- Up to 15 commoner's noncombatant (pg. 123), minimum of 6 (pg. 123)
- 4 cult fanatics (pg. 115)
- Up to 8 cultists (pg. 96), minimum of 2 (pg. 96)
- Up to 12 crawling claws (pg. 49), minimum of 4 (pg. 163)
- 1 death slaad (pg. 193)
- 1 deva (pg. 151)
- Up to 6 dire wolves (pg. 29), minimum of 5 (pg. 35)
- 24 draft horses (pg. 122)
- Up to 9 dretches (pg. 126)
- 6 druids (pg. 198)
- 3 flameskulls (pg. 184)
- 1 flesh golem (pg. 151)
- 10 flying swords (pg. 59)
- 8 gargoyles (pg. 55)
- 7 ghasts (pg. 192)
- 1 ghost (pg. 29), minimum of 1 (pg. 29)
- 6 ghouls (pg. 92)
- 1 giant goat (pg. 160)
- 4 giant poisonous snakes (pg. 162)
- 9 giant spiders (pg. 132)
- 3 giant wolf spiders (pg. 90)
- 1 gladiator (pg. 43)
- 9 goats (pg. 162)
- 1 gray ooze (pg. 81)
- 1 guardian portrait (pg. 70)
- Up to 24 guards (pg. 96, pg. 119), minimum of 12 (pg. 105)
- 3 hell hounds (pg. 92)
- 1 imp (pg. 115)
- 1 invisible stalker (pg. 65)
- 2 iron golems, statues of knights, you might want separate minis (pg. 82)
- 1 lich (pg. 189)
- 1 mage (pg. 109)
- 2 mastiffs (pg. 107)
- Up to 60 mongrelfolk (pg. 151), minimum of 16 (pg. 152)
- 1 mule (pg. 155)
- Up to 35 needle blights (pg. 174), minimum of 30 (pg. 174)
- 3 night hags (pg. 127)
- 1 nightmare (pg. 93)
- 2 nobles (pg. 100)
- 4 nothics (pg. 193)
- Up to 7 phantom warrior (pg. 136), minimum of 6 (pg. 138)
- 1 priest (pg. 97)
- indefinite number of ravens (pg. 142), minimum of 1 (pg. 29)
- 1 quasit (pg. 185)
- 4 red dragon wyrmlings (pg. 55)
- 5 revenants (pg. 139)
- 6 riding horses (pg. 122)
- 1 roc (pg. 159)
- 1 rug of smothering (pg. 69)
- 1 saber-toothed tiger (pg. 115)
- 7 scarecrows (pg. 162)
- Up to 6 scouts (pg. 29), minimum of 2 (pg. 100)
- 6 shadows (pg. 154)
- 1 shadow demon (pg. 79)
- 1 shield guardian (pg. 194)
- 10 skeletons (pg. 79)
- Up to 100 skeletons (eh, pg. 88 for reference)
- 1 skeleton and 1 warhorse skeleton forming one skeleton rider (you will probably need separate miniature for this one)
- 1 smoke mephit, that is actualy a dragonet (pg. 136)
- 7 specters (pg. 188)
- 3 spies (pg. 44)
- 1 stone golem (pg. 186)
- Up to 8 Strahd zombies, prepare for severed limbs (pg. 29), minimum of 6 (pg. 82)
- 1 Strahd's animated armor (pg. 69)
- 10 swarms of bats (pg. 74)
- 1 swarm of insects (pg. 51)
- Up to 7 swarms of poisonous snakes (pg. 165), minimum of 1 (pg. 165)
- Up to 8 swarms of rats (pg. 41), minimum of 4 (pg. 65)
- 4 swarms of ravens (pg. 101)
- Up to 5 thugs (pg. 49), minimum of 2 (pg. 49)
- Up to 100 toads (pg. 126)
- 1 tree blight (pg. 180)
- 24 twig blights (pg. 174)
- 6 vampire spawns (pg. 118)
- 1 veteran (pg. 43)
- 3 vine blights (pg. 198)
- 2 vrocks (pg. 157)
- 6 wereravens, both human and raven form (pg. 174)
- 3 wereravens' noncombatant (pg. 174)
- 7 werewolves, both human and raven form (pg. 171)
- Up to 15 wights (pg. 88), minimum of 7 (pg. 148)
- 1 will-o'-wisp (pg. 29), minimum of 1 (pg. 29)
- 20 wolves (pg. 35)
- 1 wraith
- 1 young blue dragon (pg. 169)
- Up to 18 zombies (pg. 29), minimum of 3 (pg. 29)
This doesn't include named NPCs from appendix D or encounters from Death House
Death House
- 1 animated armor (pg. 214)
- 1 broom of animated attack (pg. 215)
- 2 ghasts (pg. 219)
- 2 ghosts (pg. 217)
- 4 ghouls (pg. 218)
- 1 grick (pg. 218)
- 1 mimic (pg. 219)
- 5 shadows (pg. 218)
- 1 shambling mound (pg. 220)
- 1 specter (pg. 215)
- 1 swarm of insects (pg. 217)
- indefinite number of swarms of rats (pg. 220)
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If "Mysterious Visitors" adventure hook is used and characters arrive at Area G accompanied by a travelling party
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Vistani camp: Alexei, 6 intoxicated Vistani in a tent, 12 bandits on a search party, 9 sober Vistani from three surrounding wagons, up to 16 sleeping Vistani from 4 surrounding wagons
Best Answer
I love my Dwarven Forge!
That said, you are correct. Buying only one set is basically a tease. You will spend way too much time breaking down each room to build the next one. If you are running D&D 4th, you want big spacious interesting areas to fight in most of the time and one set just won't work very well at all.
I recommend 3 sets to start: