Stone dice: Is the beauty they worth the cost and fragility? Lets find out…
Names: Cat’s Eye dice with Dragon Font
Descriptions:
Mint: A set of 7 Cat’s eye gemstone dice in a light green color with a white fade, a gloss finish and silver painted-on numbers using a custom “dragon” font that has little dragon heads on all of the numbers. The points and edges are not sharp but not quite dull either. They’re somewhere between those two ends of the spectrum. If you stepped on the d4 in the night, it might pierce your skin, or it might not. Do you feel lucky? The d10s have edged waists and the font uses underbars to indicate orientation for the 6 and 9 faces. The dice are predictably a little lighter than metal dice but heavier than resin / plastic dice. In other news: water is wet.
Rose: The exact same set of dice but in a pinkish hue with a purple tint to it and gold ink used for the font instead of silver.
Size: d20:
Mint: (Face->Face) mm (Point->Point) mm
Rose: (Face->Face) mm (Point->Point) mm
Where did they come from: Easy Roller Dice
How much did they cost:
Mint: $69.90
Rose: $69.90
Material / color: Cats eye gemstone in a mint green / dark rose color with silver / gold font respectively
Quality: Pretty good. No blemishes or chips and the inking looked nice when I got them.
Readability:
Mint: Not great. The dice have different density and clarity so some of the sides appear more white than green and the silver font is harder to see on those sides. The combination of an odd font where some of the digits are hard to read by themselves regardless of contrast and the silver ink make these difficult to see in most lighting conditions
Rose: Better than the Mint dice. The gold color font stands out much better on these dice than the silver does on the Mint dice. We are only left with the readability of the dragon font to contend with. They’re still just “good” readability at best. Both sets of dice failed the readability test when thrown a few feet away onto the carpet.
Value: At full price (~70 / set) they’re a “fair” value. Thankfully I saved up my frequent buyer points and knocked the price down by $25/set which made them more of a value at $45 / set. The dragon font really takes these dice down in my eyes. As somewhat of a font nerd, I don’t like fancy silly fonts like this even if it’s on-brand for what it’s being used for. That goes for the Dwarven and Norse fonts used on other dice. These are pretty to look at and that’s what drew me to them.
Overall Rating: 8/10
Attempts needed to roll a natural 20:
Mint: 20 rolls
Rose: 23 rolls
Ten d20 rolls:
Mint: 13, 4, 5, 7, 1, 16, 4, 16, 8, 4, 8 (9.6 avg)
Rose: 8, 15, 2, 13, 15, 15, 18, 19, 15, 2 (12.2 avg)
4d6 drop 1 stat block:
Mint: 15, 11, 10, 15, 10, 12 (73 total) A Loud Half-Elf Cleric from the Petrified Wood who bribed a nobleman to help them smuggle slaves out of the tyrannical kingdom.
Rose: 9, 16, 8, 17, 8, 7 (65 total) A Cynical Gnome Warlock from a boarding school for the children of middle-class Wizards who can’t stand silence
For reference: the Standard Array method totals to: 72 and Point Buy totals to: 69.
Random Tables rolls:
Mint:
NPC Attributes: 38 – Very muscular
NPC responses to bad news: 45 – Bans the PC’s from their establishment/home
Rose:
Dwarven features / quirks: 45 – Is petrified of open water. Can’t swim.
Rare Zombie-infested D&D locations: 39 – Abandoned Military Base – This former military base has been overrun by zombies, making it a hazardous and potentially lucrative location. The base is filled with all sorts of forgotten weapons and supplies, as well as a few powerful undead beasts that guard the area. Careful exploration of this abandoned base could yield some impressive rewards for brave adventurers!
(I’m getting these random tables at: https://d100tables.com by the way)
Final Thoughts: Gemstone dice were on my bucket list early-on in my dice-goblin awakening phase. I picked these up with points / coupons from Easy Roller. I needed to spend the points and with their perpetual low stock of dice, they only had Cat’s eye dice with this abysmal Dragon font on them. I thought I’d be okay with it but I didn’t know that I’d end up being so picky when it comes to fonts and readability on dice. I’d trade both of these sets for one new set with a normal font on it.
I do like the way that these dice catch the light from certain angles / orientations depending on how dense the stone is where the light hits it. I want to believe that these are actual real Cat’s Eye (Chrysoberyl) stone and not just some lab-made “stone” re-constituted from powder or something. I’ll never know short of going to a Gemologist and having them inspected and then (I suspect) being thrown out of his store for wasting his time looking at these laughable fake stone dice. They do look pretty though. I thought about getting a few more colors, but I have trouble paying > $50 for a set of stone dice that I’ll rarely take to a D&D table, and be worried about chipping when I roll them into each other.
It’s a shame that while Chrysoberyl is at a lofty 8.5 on the Mohs hardness scale, that they’re still not strong enough to be made with sharper edges that wouldn’t just immediately chip after a few rolls.
Things that could make these dice better:
– Carved out numbers instead of painted-on numbers
– Numbers inked in a complementary color other than silver or gold
– A font that is less folly and more readability
– Slightly (maybe 10%) bigger.
It’s not a long list of complaints but I’m just mr. brightside over here with my “why these dice aren’t better” attitude. I really should give these another try at the table now that I’m just beginning what is planned to be a long-term campaign (fingers crossed) and see if I like them enough to buy them in a few more colors. I’ve seen them in a very nice deep emerald green, both powder blue and a deeper royal blue, a nice deep purple and also a few shades of orange and gray that don’t do anything for me.
Are they worth $70/set? I don’t think these two sets are specifically, but if I found a set that ticked the boxes that I listed above, I’d snap them up pretty quickly, and so should you.
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