I designed minifigs of my champions and I'd like to share

[Danielle Blue Steele]

Hi everyone!

I have a very long, on-again-off-again relationship with DM2, and at various times, when I picked it up, this forum has been very helpful. So at the start, I just want to say thank you.

Now, recently, I've gone on another axe-grinding, cheese-eating session (did you know that the cheese-bat exchange ratio in the lands of Skullkeep is exactly 1:1? ) with my favourite set of champions, who are not the most optimised team, but they are my team and that's how I roll, and it inspired me to create figurine designs of them in HeroForge. I'm ridiculously pleased with how they came out, but none of my friends know DM2 enough to appreciate them, and I thought maybe someone around here will.

So, here they are. Can you guess who is on my team and what gear are they using?

[ChristopheF]

Nice! Did you have them printed in 3D ?

[Danielle Blue Steele]

Well, no. The price in dollars is pretty steep just for HF's digital blueprint, and I don't know anyone with a good enough printer to handle it anyway. The cost of getting actual physical product from HF, together with shipping, is absolutely prohibitive for lil' ol' Eastern-European me.

I just played around with the design tool for the sheer fun of seeing those characters take hi-res, detailed shape. I was particularly pleased with the round item that works perfectly as a techeye, and the smartphone for the magic map.

[Sphenx]

That's really nice job and a fresh looking take on the champions !

the smartphone for the magic map.

Exactly what I thought! The magic map is an early concept of smartphone combined with GPS tracker and drone control application

I like the colors and their stance. Torham is in your team. You have no choice (where is the Vorax ?)

[Danielle Blue Steele]

Thank you!

I'm a strictly-swords kind of person. (Well, actually, as a rule I'm a band-of-bows kind of person, but we all know how DM2 is with ranged weapons, sadly.) When it comes to melee weapons, I never go for anything blunt and only use axes on characters like stereotypical dwarves and suchlike, no matter how powerful (or how many un-stab-able skeletons around). It's just one of those things.

I did try to find a model for an axe laying on the ground, precisely to symbolise my non-use of Vorax, but there was no such thing. Nor was there a dead bat, steak or cheese. Hmpf.

[Ameena]

Woo, cool. I don't know the DM2 (or CSB) heroes off by heart like I do the DM1 ones, but I do recognise some of the gear there - Fire armour, Tech armour/shield, a couple of Blue Steeles...hmm, Ra-Sar armour on the third person down. And I'm guessing that's an undeployed Minion on the floor at Torham's feet at the top (I assume it's Torham anyway, as he's listed first?).

[Danielle Blue Steele]

Yay! You recognised the Ra-Sar armour! That one was the hardest to make, because I wanted it to be recognisable as armour and specifically as the Ra-Sar (which does look a bit like a cow hide pattern...) and at the same time at least a bit cool. And full marks on all the rest of the stuff, apart form Torham's (yup, of course that's him) floor bit - that was supposed to be a techeye, removed from its socket and discarded, to honour the techeye dungeon trap bit. The Corridor of Eyes and Fiery Death always makes me nervous. Always. No matter how well I know how to deal with it, no matter how many times I go through it, no matter how well I know that the techeyes are disabled, it always scares me. I know some people think DM2 is too easy, but for me that game is bonkers.

[Ameena]

Ahh yeah, it's been long enough since I last played that I had forgotten specific mechanics like that. I should replay it some day - I only ever finished it once. I still have the original disk, I'm sure I could get it running in DOSBox if I wanted. And yeah, I skimmed over your Ra-Sar armour at first because I had recognised the fire and tech armours much more quickly, but then went back and did a sort of double-take and remembered its existence . I feel like there was probably a fourth set of "special armour" but I can't recall what it was. I do remember the fire armour having male and female variants for some reason - boob plate, eww .

[Sphenx]

"There is no cow armour"

Only three sets of special armours, you got them. The fourth is just the regular plate armour.

[Danielle Blue Steele]

I do remember the fire armour having male and female variants for some reason - boob plate, eww .

On one hand, the boob plate is absolutely ridiculous and, in itself, a harmful extension of the prevalent oversexualisation concept.
On the other hand, I will never forget seeing it for the first time, back when the game came out and I was like seven years old or so, and my older brother played the game, with me looking over his shoulder. The sheer, pure triumph when I could point to it and say "See! See! This is specifically made for girls! Girls can be fighters!" That was so totally worth it.
The female fire armour will always hold a special place in my heart. Of course, DM2 doesn't have any female champions who make really good melee fighters, and I do hold on to Tresa for precisely this reason, but objectively she's not really that good. Still.

As for the fourth set of armour, there is a fourth shield (the dark one that takes away a priest level) so maybe that might mislead someone into thinking there was a fourth armour set.

And since no one mentioned Torham's Conspicuous Silver Footwear, I will do it myself and say I'm feeling pretty cunning about those mythril hosen.

[Sphenx]

I'm feeling pretty cunning about those mythril hosen

Ah, I would have said these were greaves/foot plate. I guess the tool does not allow to have chainmail on foot. But it looks nice anyway, I like the shiny silver render. I also have the feeling that Torham is ready to shoot the tech eye towards some skeleton

The dark shield "Sar Shield" took the place of the regular Large Shield that has been replaced in CSB, and kept this place in DM2 (while there is plenty of room to have all kind of shields and armours...) You have another shield which is then alone : the Crystal Shield (also originating from CSB). What would look like a full set of crystal armour ?

[Ameena]

Ohh yeah it was just a bunch of fancy shields, wasn't it, not actual armour sets, yeah maybe that's what I was remembering . In my playthroughs of DM in recent years I've just had everyone (well, both characters since I only play with two these days) carry a flask in their off-hand so I can conjure up potions as I need them. I suppose in the case of DM2 I'd have someone keep the Tech Shield in their inventory, though, once I got hold of that. Teleports, woo .

[Gambit37]

Hey Danielle, these are really good, your heroes really capture the spirit of their DM counterparts. I'd not come across Hero Forge before, that's a great little tool and service, and has given me lots of ideas of how to use it to generate sprites for custom DSB/RTC adventures...

[Ameena]

I had a mess around on it once to see if I could make one of my DnD characters (that's kind of what it's for, they will produce the mini for you and send it to you - expensive though, especially plus shipping ) but they only really had the more "standard" races - humans, elves, tieflings, that kind of thing. No kobolds .

[Danielle Blue Steele]

Thanks! It's so cool to share with people who know what is this about

As for HeroForge, I like to mess around with it, particularly now that they've expanded and added colours. I always advise those of my RPGing friends who don't have artistic skills to use them as a visualisation tool for their characters, instead of trying to, say, draw portraits and get frustrated.

they only really had the more "standard" races - humans, elves, tieflings, that kind of thing. No kobolds .

There was some big update some time ago, now there's merfolk and rabbitfolk and all sorts of stuff, you'd surely be able to make a kobold now.
Damn, now I sound like I'm affiliated or something. I swear I'm not!

You guys are so nice, I feel like making a bit more of them. Uggo and Equus or something

[Ameena]

Ah cool, yeah it was years ago that I had a poke around on there. Maybe I'll have another look some time. Not likely to ever get anything made, though - it's pretty expensive and they're based over in the US so there would be a load of shipping costs on top of that .

You could try making the characters from the original DM, too. I'd certainly have a better chance of guessing them since I do actually know them all. I even once wrote a bunch of DM poems, one of which was about all the characters - had an intro verse at the beginning, then one for each hero, then a final verse at the end, so that was like, what...26 verses .

[Danielle Blue Steele]

I've never actually played DM1, nor CSB. And I'm not planning to, DM2 was always super-difficult for me and I keep hearing that, compared to the others, it's a walk in the park, so noping right out of that. Heh.

Poems, wow. I'm guilty of many a fanfiction, but never poems. My headcanon is that, while my team of DM2 heroes is trying to enter the keep and stop Dragoth, they're being pursued by a team of evil champions - Bane, Cletus and Jarod, led by Saros who is actually a vexirk acolyte and has infiltrated the garrison just for such a purpose.

And yes, I know those guys would mop the floor with my team, but hey, it's a challenge.

BTW I just realised I can also use links to the HF site which allow people to rotate the fig. So here they are, just in case:
Torham
Tresa
Het
Aliai

[Ameena]

Oh, DM is more like "tutorial mode" compared to CSB, that's true. DM2 was indeed fairly easy...but at least DM and CSB never had those incredibly annoying Minions that kept spawning and coming after you . I suggest trying out the original DM, at least - it's easy enough to start with. The version I tend to use is CSBWin because that uses the same Atari version I played "back in the day".

[m1ckey]

DM2 is too damn easy...

I actually bought it for my Amiga when it first came out, BUT couldn´t run it since it needed a 020 CPU or 2 megs of chip RAM or HDD...
Few years later I got a WAREZ CD /W DM2 for my then fancy PC and finished it in one evening.

Bit of a let down, really.

[Ameena]

I spent ages killing Thorn Demons (which we called "rhinos" at the time), and later farming axes to be able to buy as much cool stuff as I wanted from the merchants. I did finish the game eventually but arsing around with the early stuff I generally found mroe fun than slogging through the castle full of traps and stuff while being constantly pestered by those irritating Attack Minions .

[Prince of Elves]

Haha yeah same for me. I loved the outsides (and outer caves) of DM2, spent hours levelling my ninja skills shooting through that grate door in the bat cave. I hated most of the castle itself and never managed the final boss because I couldn't be arsed to open that gate and get over the bloody clouds every single time that bot-thing pushed me over the edge (well, or reloading, but that still leaves those clouds...)