Painting Miniatures and Running D&D

One of the things I end up liking about painting miniatures is that I think it makes me a more creative dungeon master. At first blush, one might think that being limited would tend to make it harder, but I think the solution to a constrained optimization problem is often more interesting than the solution to the unconstrained problem. Or maybe it does make it harder, but the extra thought often results in a more interesting outcome.

Most of my games tend to revolve around taking an existing adventure and adapting it for my world. I tend not to run entirely homebrew, but I do extensively modify pre-written adventures. And one of the ways I do that is to look at pre-written encounters and compare it to my collection of miniatures. Then I might modify the stat block of an existing encounter to better reflect the miniature I’ve chosen.

For example, the climatic battle against Auril and her roc in Rime of the Frostmaiden. I didn’t have an appropriate roc, but I did have this Frost Dragon (from Archvillain) which happened to be one of my favorite miniatures.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CaH_J5tOIpg/ (Stats)

I thought it made a much better mount for Auril than the Roc, and I had fun modifying the stat block of a white dragon to be a little more powerful.