Beware of putting your heroes up on a pedestal, they may just fall off
Name: Malachite 7 piece set
Description: A set of Malachite (stone) dice (7 pieces). They are made of (likely synthetic) Malachite. The color runs from pale green to dark green and even black. The font is again not easily identifiable. It has some elements similar to a Ostrich Sans (flat back ‘6’ and ‘9’ digits with curved flags/tails but no serifs and no flag on most of the ones). The numbers are cut very shallowly into the dice and inked white. Other than the font mis-match between dice, the placement of the numbers is not consistent and on a few of the dice the numbers are very noticeably off-center. The font uses dots to indicate orientation for the 6 and 9 faces.
All edges are rounded and vertices are dulled. You could step on the d4 and it wouldn’t break the skin. It’d be about as safe as stepping on a Lego in the night. It would hurt but you wouldn’t be mopping up blood. The d10s have very slightly edged waists which are very hard to see with the striped pattern of the stone.
The dice are on the small side for my tastes but the draw of these dice is the nice stone patterns and vibrant color.
Size (d20): ~21 mm (They seem smaller than this to me)
Where did they come from: Norse Foundry (I think)
How much did they cost: $75 as part of a “Search for Loot” Xmas promotion
Material / color: Malachite (synthetic?) in standard green/black striated pattern
Quality: Decent. Nice striations and coloring but there are some dings / defects and definitely number placement issues
Readability: Pretty good. White numbers against dark green striped faces works out well
Value: Okay for a set of stone dice. This is an average price for a Malachite full set but I think the quality of the set is lower than average.
Overall Rating: 5/10
Attempts needed to roll a natural 20: 46 rolls
Ten d20 rolls: 13, 15, 1, 14, 10, 16, 15, 17, 1, 4 (10.6 avg) Bang-on average with those last 2 rolls bringing it into line.
4d6 drop 1 stat block: 12, 14, 10, 16, 13, 14 (79 total) A Respectful Tiefling Bard from a boarding school who in hindsight shouldn’t have had the treasure map tattooed on themselves.
For reference: the Standard Array method totals to: 72 and Point Buy totals to: 69.
Random Tables rolls:
Zero Hit Point injuries: 12 – The blade sliced across your face leaving a nasty, ugly scar. -1 charisma.
Fae Bargains: 18 – Touching rope whatsoever gives you rope burn instantly.
Final Thoughts: These are a set of dice that were one of my early “holy grail” sets back when I thought $75 was a lot to spend on a set of dice. I shopped and shopped and got this set (in their own wooden single-set dice case) my first xmas as a dice goblin and… never used them in a game. I didn’t look closely enough at them to see that they were kind of shit quality-wise and I should have looked further / been more patient buying them. I’ve only taken them to a game once. I played a xmas themed one-shot where I used them. They roll okay (rounded dice are going to wander) but I only noticed today how bad the number placement is on the faces. I can’t believe that they were sold with the numbers this askew. The sets of garbage plastic dice that come with the D&D starter set from WotC have better quality control than this set of “premium” stone dice.
When I bought this set I also naively though that when you bought stone dice that they were carved from stone individually. Later I came to find out that most stone dice are made by pressing powdered stone together in molds. This makes more sense than grinding down a piece of actual stone into each of the 6 different shapes and then cutting numbers into the shapes. This knowledge kind of put me off of stone dice.
I think about whether I want to replace this set with a better quality set of Malachite dice, but I question whether I’d actually take them out and use them at a table. I feel like this set is just the crappy plastic starter-set version of stone dice. I can’t get over the issue with the ‘1’ on the d6 and d20 having a flag but the rest of the ones on all other dice don’t. Did someone switch molds mid-production and just grab up any 7 dice from a mixed bin and throw them together in my order?
I like the idea of Malachite dice but the reality of them isn’t drawing me to take them to the table. I should look at chonk Malachite d20s because who doesn’t love a chonk?. Stone dice are hard to keep in general. Like other fragile dice, you need to keep them separate from other dice. It’s not like I can just throw this set in a bag with other dice (or even by themselves) and bring them somewhere. They’re somewhat delicate and cracking them is almost certainly not repairable. Learn my lesson faithful reader…
Leave a Reply