How about a set of purple stone dice to fancy up your ttrpg rolls?
Name: Purple Turquoise Gemstone Dice
Description: This is a standard-size set of medium-sharp (almost sharp? sharp-for-stone-dice?) edge stone dice. I’ve read that purple turquoise isn’t a real thing that occurs in nature so I don’t know if these are synthetic stone (i.e.: press molded from powdered stone and other coagulants) or if they’re some kind of other (not Turquoise) stone dyed purple. I hope it’s the later. They are a deep purple color with white spidery lines / blots over all sides which give them a natural stone look. The numbers use a very simple font, like a wider version of Futura ND but with a ‘3’ that doesn’t curve in so much at the ends and a ‘6’ and ‘9’ that don’t meet at the waists. The font also uses “old style” or “non-lining” numbers. You can see this on the d% where the ‘5’ in ’50’ is larger than the ‘0’. The same thing is present on the ’70’. I’m generally not a fan of this style of numbers. I find it harder to read numbers in print when they are non-lining. The 6 and 9 faces use square dots to indicate their orientation (even on the d6) and the d10 and d% have edged waists. These dice are also available in a red Turquoise and an orange-and-green Turquoise color (which is not as ugly as it sounds strangely). All of the stone dice at Dark Elf Dice are currently on sale, which prompted me to buy these and another set to be reviewed soon.
Size:
d20: (Face->Face) 20.4 mm (Point->Point) 25.2 mm
Where did they come from: Dark Elf Dice
How much did they cost: $48 (gotta watch for those sales)
Material / color: Purple turquoise stone
Quality: Very good quality. No cosmetic flaws or chips. If I get the magnifying glass out, I see some very minor scratches on a few of the dice.
Readability: between poor and fair. I could read a few of the rolls on the rug from 4 feet away but mostly the matrix lines / pattern makes the numbers hard to read
Value: Very good. Catching these on sale makes them a good deal
Overall Rating: 8/10
Attempts needed to roll a natural 20: 11 rollsTen Fifty d20 rolls: 19, 4, 19, 12, 20, 4, 13, 5, 19, 19, 7, 14, 19, 1, 7, 12, 6, 16, 17, 12, 14, 10, 4, 14, 5, 3, 16, 17, 18, 2, 20, 3, 7, 16, 13, 6, 3, 18, 12, 5, 2, 15, 4, 19, 6, 19, 7, 6, 5, 14
Statistics:
Mean: 10.96 (the average)
Median: 12 (middle number)
Mode: 19. (most frequent)
4d6 drop 1 stat block: 12, 18, 13, 10, 12, 11 (77 total) A Methodical Dragonborn Warlock from a sleepy harbor town who really knows how to party.
For reference: the Standard Array method totals to: 72 and the Point Buy method totals to: 69.
Casting Psychic Scream (9th level):
You unleash the power of your mind to blast the intellect of up to ten creatures of your choice that you can see within range. Creatures that have an Intelligence score of 2 or lower are unaffected.
Each target must make an Intelligence saving throw. On a failed save, a target takes 14d6 psychic damage and is stunned. On a successful save, a target takes half as much damage and isn’t stunned. If a target is killed by this damage, its head explodes, assuming it has one.
A stunned target can make an Intelligence saving throw at the end of each of its turns. On a successful save, the stunning effect ends.
On a failed Intelligence save, each target takes: 49 psychic damage
(This is another excuse for rolling dice)
Random Tables rolls:
Small Familiars: 47 – A finger sized eldritch deity that gives +2 necrotic dmg to the PC’s attacks, as well as a 10% chance to cause madness to the target of a PC’s spell for 1d4 turns. A pact must be made with it to help it seize power of a realm.
Enemy last words: 87 – Throws themselves off the nearest balcony/cliff/chasm.
(I’m getting these random tables at: https://d100tables.com by the way
Final Thoughts: I thought I’d dip my toe back into the stone dice pool. I had such bad luck with the Malachite (post #18) and the red and green Cat’s eye stone dice (post #27). I’ve been eyeing Turquoise dice for a while, looking for the right set at a reasonable price. From what I’ve been reading online, Turquoise colored purple doesn’t naturally occur. The Dark Elf website says that these are “hand crafted from red Turquoise”, whatever that means. I’ve also read that red Turquoise doesn’t exist in nature either and the people selling red Turquoise are usually selling stabilized and dyed Howlite or Magnesite that resembles turquoise. I don’t know what the actual composition of these dice are but I wanted to get them after seeing the pretty purple Turquoise-like design with the white striations (called “matrix”) from the host rock.
The numbers on these dice are larger / thicker than usual for gemstone dice, which I’m thankful for. They’re inked in gold, which is never my first choice. I don’t know if there’d be a better color for the numbers on these dice though. White, black, red, silver, and purple would all look muted and terrible. Maybe a yellow color but that might be too much in the other direction. Gold was probably the best choice. The dice are a challenge to read though as the gold blends in a little bit with the white “matrix” pattern on the stones. I don’t know what could have done to make them easier to read short of a really contrasting ink color that would have probably looked terrible.
The dice were shipped in a nice leather box with foam inserts inside which look very protective. I’ve never bought stone dice from Dark Elf before so I don’t know if this is their standard stone dice packaging or if it’s a new thing for them. I like the leather case but I doubt that I’ll keep using it to store the dice. I’ll probably keep these stone dice in one of my many dice tubs with the rest of my dice. It’s too easy to lose track of dice when I keep them in small boxes on their own. I’ll probably reuse the Dark Elf leather box next time I donate a set or two of dice to my LGS for a raffle as I’ve done for the last few years. The dice I donate seem to be popular in the raffles and it makes me happy to give them a new home.
These dice feel nice and smooth, are neither sharp nor dull. They look fairly bright. For once they’re not totally different than the marketing pictures on the website. The dice make a nice “click/clack” sound when they hit each other (which is something I should try not to do but rolling percentile dice lends itself to this happening). The dice have a satisfying plop/skitter sound when I roll them on my paper notebook. The weight of these dice is less than I expected from stone dice but only a little. These are much better quality stone dice than the Malachite set from post #18. Overall, other than them being hard to read, I really like the look and feel of these dice. I would recommend them to anyone that wants to get a set of stone dice.
Leave a Reply