I want to make a low- or medium-res statue out of M4. Turning him into a prop and giving him a single material zone for marble or stone is easy. The problem is that he's over 100,000 polys when a hair prop is included.

Is there a way to reduce the resolution of the figure for this kind of use? Assume that I don't have an expensive 3D modeler that does a good job of poly reduction.

You can reduce it somewhat with Carrara using its decimate function.  Since Carrara was free via 3Dworld magazine, I assumed that you may have scooped it up.  You may be able to get it to around 30K polys using that program (more causes the model to begin to look bad, very bad, astronomically mind blowing bad).   Jan 

Quote - You can reduce it somewhat with Carrara using its decimate function.

Or even any other modelling program that has a similar function.
Blender has one and it's free.

Or you  can take the low resolution M4 object from Daz studio and aply M4's skeleton to it in Posers setup room.

This will give you a good looking moving Mike4 at 17000 polys.

If you know before you start what the end result has to be?
Start with a lower Poly figure to begin with..

I rarely, if at all use the high Poly figures.
A render is what?
At the most 10" tall??
With the main figure half of that?
How dence can you get?

I work result oriented, try to use the right tools for the job.