Focus on a D&D 5E mini: shrieker

Why bother with a shrieker miniature?

Shriekers don’t even have attacks and can’t move, so they seem at first glance like a poor choice for a Dungeons & Dragons creature, yet they have stuck around since the early days of D&D. While shriekers are never going to be a big bad in your campaign, they are great creatures for getting adventuring parties into trouble. These Plants (yes, I know that fungi are not plants, but will someone please tell Wizards of the Coast that?) are planted in place, immobile, but when a creature gets within 30 feet of the shrieker, the shrieker starts screaming loudly, which can be heard 300 feet away. This alerts everything around that someone who is not meant to be there is waiting to be attacked. They can be planted, acting as an alarm system, or they can just be part of a cavern naturally, but large carnivores will use them as a way to determine where their next meal is coming from. Either way, it’s a great way to keep your adventuring party on their toes.

What about this mini?

This unpainted metal miniature is from Otherworld Miniatures, a company which I have bought many minis from over the years. It has very recently closed due to the owner’s retirement, so minis are no longer available for purchase from them. However, the molds have been sold for many (all?) of their miniatures, so they are slowly being added to websites. Fenris Games got about 100 of the miniatures from Otherworld Games, and Crooked Dice as well as Dragon Bait Miniatures also got some of their miniatures, so if you are looking for any of their minis, keep an eye on their websites as they add the new (to them) models, which is great news! I have quite a few of their miniatures, because I really like them. This shrieker is from a set of 3 miniatures called Shriekers & violet fungi (3) #DM8. It is on a medium base like it is meant to be. This set was sculpted by Kev Adams, who is known for his goblins, but I also really enjoy his mushrooms and mushroom men. I particularly like that this mushroom is so very large that it has shelf fungi growing off the side of it. I really liked the attention to detail that Otherworld Miniatures put into the minis, and is part of why I got this mini. That, plus I could not find any other shrieker miniatures for sale back when I bought these.

How useful is this mini, really?

Shriekers are included in 10 published Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition books:

That’s nearly 1/4 of the published D&D 5E books- not bad for a big mushroom that can’t even move or attack. If you run published campaigns however, you will need to pick one of these up eventually, since WotC love using them in their campaigns. If you homebrew everything like I do, they’re still a nice thing to throw at your players to keep them on their toes.

But why are you doing this?

As usual for these videos, my aim is to provide both good views of the featured miniatures as well as accurate sizing information about them. As I already pointed out, the shrieker miniature is on a medium sized base and that’s the correct size. I would additionally like to thank the wildlife artist Sherrie York, the premiere reduction linocut artist of our time, for kindly allowing me to use one of her reduction linocuts, Shivano Sunset, as the mini backdrop in this video.