Red or green, the choice is yours if you have good blind bag karma
Name: Two blind bag d20 dice
Descriptions:
Red d20: A standard size d20 with a deep red matte paint coating textured to look like there are tiny red wires wrapped around the die. The raised numbers are peach colored and use a strange horror-ish font? The font has serifs but only on the ‘1’ digit. The ‘4’ and ‘9’ digits are annoyingly similar in this font. The font uses very small underbars to indicate orientation of the 6 and 9 faces. The 20 face still has a ’20’ on it but the zero is meant to look like an eyeball. A strange gray and peach colored eyeball. The blind bag also came with a metal pin of a witch on a broom or some such nonsense that was in a similar color scheme as the d20.
Green d20: A standard size d20 with a deep forest green shiny (but not glossy) matte paint coating textured to look like it’s wrapped with tiny green wires. The raised numbers are yellow colored and use the same font as the red d20, suffering from the same serif/underbar problems. The 20 face still has a ’20’ on it but again the zero is meant to look like an eyeball. This time the eyeball has a yellow/green iris and a yellow pupil. It works a little better than the gray/peach eyeball of the other d20. The blind bag also came with a metal pin of a dragon with it’s wings spread that was in a similar color scheme as the d20.
Size:
Red d20: (Face->Face) 22mm (Point->Point) 25.1mm
Green d20: (Face->Face) 22mm (Point->Point) 25.25mm
Where did they come from:
Red d20 & Green d20: Lost Star Tabletop Gaming
How much did they cost:
Red d20: & Green d20: They were each $18 in a “blind” grab bag and they came with a matching pin
Material / color:
Red d20: Metal (zinc?) with a non-glossy powder? coating in deep blood red
Green d20: Metal (zinc?) with a shiny non-glossy coating in bright forest green
Quality:
Red d20: good overall with a few very tiny scuffs and spots that were mis-painted
Green d20: Excellent. no scuffs or defects
Readability:
Red d20: Good but not great. I was able to read it from 4 feet away but not from 8 feet away
Green d20: Decent. I was not able to read it from more than about 2 feet away.
Value:
Red d20 & Green d20: Good. They’re nice dice for $18 each, especially from a “blind” bag where you can usually expect garbage dice that would otherwise end up in a landfill. They each came with a pin that somewhat matched the die inside but I don’t care about pins (Definitely not a pin goblin) so I gave them to my youngest child and she was okay with them.
Overall Rating:
Red d20: 7/10
Green d20s 8/10
Attempts needed to roll a natural 20:
Red d20: 30 rolls
Green d20: 38 rolls
Ten d20 rolls:
Red d20: 2, 8, 14, 18, 20, 11, 14, 7, 5, 12 (11.1 avg)
Green d20: 15, 13, 17, 7, 16, 18, 15, 14, 17, 18 (15.0 avg!) New high score!
6d20 (min. of 3) stat block:
Red d20: 3, 18, 14, 10, 16, 18 (80 total) A Guarded Dwarf Bard from a city in the shifting sands who was born in a different body
Green d20: 13, 14, 8, 4, 3, 6 (48 total!) A Spiteful Dwarf Wizard from the Forked Islands who was a weapons instructor for the city militia
For reference: the Standard Array method totals to: 72 and Point Buy totals to: 69. (I used 6d20, re-rolling 1s, 2s, and 3s so the totals are silly)
Random Tables rolls:
Red d20:
Ghost Haunting Reasons: 11 – Showed disrespect for divine powers
Diseases: 18 – Hippogryff Hives A an itchy rash that makes it unbearable to wear armor or heavy clothing until it’s treated. Highly contagious via skin to skin contact.
Green d20:
Lingering Injury: 14 – Festering Wound. Your hit point maximum is reduced by 1 every 24 hours the wound persists. If your hit point maximum drops to 0, you die. The wound heals if you receive any magical healing. Alternatively, someone can tend to the wound and make a DC 15 Wisdom (Medicine) check once every 24 hours. After ten successes, the wound heals.
Items in a Bandit’s lair: 4 – A chest with a note on it that says “DANGER do not open”. There is a killer ooze inside along with 100+3d6 gold pieces.
(I’m getting these random tables at: https://d100tables.com by the way)
Final Thoughts: These are blind bag dice, so all hopes of something good are out the window. Luckily I was able to preview what the dice looked like as I know everyone who works at the shop and one of them had already bought this same blind bag and showed me the quality of the dice. I like the look and the texture of the dice but the font is pretty bad. The red/peach color combination is more readable than the green/yellow but I think another color for the font (yellow or light powder blue) would have looked better on the deep red background. The green d20 while harder to read and slightly less attractive (that deep red is pretty) the green/yellow looks better together than the red/peach and there aren’t any noticeable flaws on the green d20.
One thing that I don’t like very much about both of these dice is their tendency to wander around when rolling them. The edges and vertices are dull enough along with the font being slightly raised and having textured faces that both dice aren’t good at stopping. You’d need a dice tray for these. I even had one roll on the red d20 where it was cocked between faces just on a flat surface, not resting against anything. Maybe this would be a good gift for Ashley Johnson (from Critical Role) who seems to be constantly fighting cocked d20 rolls on the show. Or maybe it wouldn’t be a good gift as she already has enough dice that suffer from that problem. I don’t know how much I’ll use these d20s in-game but I’ll hang onto them in case I need to gather dice for a character’s specific color scheme.
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