Rowboat + Rowboat Mimic (DND / TTRPG)

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This is a creature from out of waterdeep's dungeon of the mad mage but you could include it anywhere that small boats appear - or maybe this mimic was just trying out a new shape and it's a rowboat in the middle of the desert or in the darkest depths of a dungeon - lots of options!

For an encounter with this creature I highly recommend letting the party take it out onto the water before it transforms. It's like a frog and the scorpion scenario but the party is the frog. Like any other mimic it will try to grapple and eat the players. In this case it will grapple and then sink to the bottom of the lake to eat the player. Yum. This will make for very desperate combat where the players need to swim, fight at potential disadvantage and have an evil clam-oyster mimic thing trying to gobble up their kneecaps. It's pure evil and a good time all around.

As I work through the list of models that don't seem to exist for free I want to make sure that there are Good, Free printable minis available so in order to cross this off my list I had to publish a free mimic rowboat. But as I was making it I kinda went overboard (pun intended?) and made a crazy huge rowboat mimic so I dialed it back to make a more basic one and as per this usual trend I've created a Patreon Exclusive version out of this Epic mimic. This model is free (for now) over on my Patreon - you'll need to follow my account on at least the free tier in order to get access to the files - if you don't like this you can unfollow shortly after or stick around for more exclusives. Get the files here: https://goto.adamnant.com/l/mimic-rowboat?site=printables&model=rowboat&cta=teaser

For my process on this model it was all done by hand. I didn't record it because I was multitasking quite a bit. I'll work to get back into the recording swing of things here since it's a good practice. The boat was made from plains that I symmeterized and then solidified - I did the wood grain with annotations turned to curves and then I gave those curves some geometry. I really like this effect. I'm sure I could sculpt them in too but then ALL of the geometry ends up super high poly whereas this method is quite a bit less so. For the mimics I did my usual of using a mix ico spheres shaped and blocked out of dynamic topology and lots and lots of remeshes. After those darn crystals the other day I wanted something less pointy so I sculpted the teeth into more like nubby teeth. I'm pretty happy with the result and they should let people get creative with painting cracks and adding slime etc... I made the EPIC mimic first which is like a clam, oyster, I added oars and a pearl into its mouth too then I worked to make sure it could print upright. The epic mimic is really really big so it might need to be sliced up at some point but it can be scaled down too if you're resin printing. I kept the files at 30mb and my work isn't the most detailed so shrinking it it shouldn't come at a quality deficit.

The models are sized to fit about 3x 25mm characters - you could fit more of them in. That said they're pretty big so you could scale these to 75% and still have a good single character 25mm character rowboat or you can go to 50% if you want it for small characters. I've included the props as separate objects in case you want to print oars, the jug, bag or trunk as scatter objects to include around a scene. There are a couple variants of the boats to choose from as well so there are lots of options here. I might remix the boats into wrecks and create some broken boards etc... too... we'll see.

For printing - I've made the boats "mostly" supportless. Some will need simple supports - like the oars version. So use your best judgment but you should be fine with low supports (15-20 degrees) and printing straight up on the baseplate. For resin printing you'll likely want to scale them down to not waste resin. If you want a version with a hollow space for the goods I can help you but I would recommend printing the props separately then adding them in so you have a bit more versatility. The simple mimic is also meant to be supportless - when in combat it should sit upright with its tongue on the play area - it can go back to boat mode if knocked prone.

For the epic mimic it needs to be printed on its back - it will require some supports too. Same as the above 15-20 degrees should be fine. If you want to print at 0.08mm that's fine but I didn't add a skin texture so I think 0.2mm on a 0.4mm nozzle is fine. Again you can get the Epic Rowboat Mimic for free (for now) over on my Patreon - it's available to free tier follower / subscribers here: https://goto.adamnant.com/l/mimic-rowboat?site=printables&model=rowboat&cta=teaser2

If you want to print this in resin and are having trouble feel free to comment or reach out to me directly - I will work through that process with you. I prefer FDM for reallly big things like this but understand not everyone has both setups!

Thanks again for following along - happy sailing :)!

I've completed my quest for 1000 models in 2025 so now I'm trying to decide whats next - I'm actively asking my Patrons what kind of models that they want to see. You can follow along with me on Thingiverse, Printables, Cults3d or join in on the quests on Patreon here: https://goto.adamnant.com/l/quests-patreon?site=printables&model=rowboat&cta=footer (as well as get codes for exclusive downloads on Cults3d). If you have something that you need or a custom model like this that you want then let me know and let's make it!