I”ve wanted a set of steel dice for a long time. Carpe Dice em!
Name: Stainless Steel Dice Set
Description: This is a slightly oversized set of very sharp edge dice made of Stainless Steel. They are a very lovely shiny silver color. The sides are very smooth but show milling marks on them. I’m guessing that due to the hardness of Stainless Steel that it’s labor intensive to polish them enough to get rid of the marks. The numbers are carved from each face and not inked. The font is a “handwriting font” similar to Comic Sans called: “Rony Siswadi 16”. Very different from the big foundary fonts (Helvetica, Garmond, Times, Courier, etc…) No Serifs or little balls on the ends of any of the numbers. The 6 and 9 faces use very tiny dots underneath the digits to indicate their orientation which is a new one for me. The 20 face has a small thinly carved design of a small dragon curled up into a ball. The d10 and d% have very sharply edged waists. They arrived in a metal tin with a viewing window and foam insert for protection. The dice are so sharp that they made creases in the plastic viewing window in the top of the case. They’re very fancy yet very simple dice.
Size:
d20: (Face->Face) 21.45 mm (Point->Point) 26.65 mm
Where did they come from: Robin’s Nerd Supplies
How much did they cost: $100
Material / color: Stainless Steel / Silvery steel color
Quality: Fantastic
Readability: Poor at an angle and forget about farther than 2 feet away
Value: Fair value for stainless steel.
Overall Rating: 9/10
Attempts needed to roll a natural 20: 23 rolls
Fifty d20 rolls: 20, 4, 17, 4, 14, 14, 6, 6, 10, 10, 18, 5, 16, 16, 9, 2, 7, 11, 4, 9, 20, 5, 19, 9, 19, 6, 11, 10, 10, 6, 6, 16, 18, 1, 4, 16, 13, 18, 6, 5, 10, 3, 4, 20, 9, 7, 17, 10, 11, 7
Mean: 10.36
Median: 10
Mode: 6, 10
4d6 drop 1 stat block: 14, 11, 8, 17, 17, 15 (82 total) A Blunt Dragonborn Wizard from a city with towers that rival the clouds who is afraid of fire.
For reference: the Standard Array method totals to: 72 and the Point Buy method totals to: 69.
20th level Evocation wizard casting Illusory Dragon against a… Dragon Turtle The Wizard has maxed STR and CHA, has a robe of the Archmagi, using 5e rules
By gathering threads of shadow material from the Shadowfell, you create a Huge shadowy dragon in an unoccupied space that you can see within range. The illusion lasts for the spell’s duration and occupies its space, as if it were a creature.
When the illusion appears, any of your enemies that can see it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of it for 1 minute. If a frightened creature ends its turn in a location where it doesn’t have line of sight to the illusion, it can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on itself on a success.
As a bonus action on your turn, you can move the illusion up to 60 feet. At any point during its movement, you can cause it to exhale a blast of energy in a 60-foot cone originating from its space
When you create the dragon, choose a damage type: acid, cold, fire, lightning, necrotic, or poison. Each creature in the cone must make an Intelligence saving throw, taking 7d6 damage of the chosen damage type on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
The illusion is tangible because of the shadow stuff used to create it, but attacks miss it automatically. it succeeds on all saving throws, and it is immune to all damage and conditions. A creature that uses an action to examine the dragon can determine that it is an illusion by succeeding on an Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC. If a creature discerns the illusion for what it is, the creature can see through it and has advantage on saving throws against its breath.
Starting off, the Dragon Turtle rolls a 10 and fails the initial WIS save, and is frightened for 1 minute.
The wizard then spends 10 rounds with the illusory dragon exhaling a random breath weapon. The Dragon Turtle must make a 21 INT save or take full damage. Having a 10 intelligence (+0), only a Natural 20 will succeed for the Dragon Turtle. The Dragon Turtle has resistance to fire damage.
1) INT save: 11 FAIL. 22 fire damage reduced to 11 fire damage
2) INT save: 3 FAIL. 25 necrotic damage
3) INT save: 19 FAIL. 30 acid damage
4) INT save: natural 20 Succeeds. 0 damage
5) INT save: 17 FAIL. 31 Poison damage
6) INT save: 10 FAIL. 22 fire damage reduced to 11 fire damage
7) INT save: 6 FAIL. 25 necrotic damage
8) INT save: 1 FAIL. 28 necrotic damage
9) INT save: 6 FAIL. 19 poison damage
10) INT save: 6 FAIL. 22 cold damage
Total: 202 damage. The Dragon Turtle is hurt but not very badly.
(Just is another excuse for rolling dice)
Random Tables rolls:
Things that Demons/Devils ask for in their contracts: 32 The PC will have to surrender the soul of their most beloved one. Wife, to child, to best friend. The Demon demands it for the contract to be fully bound. If the contract is broken, the soul is sent to the deepest depths of hell. But if the contract is completed to satisfaction, the soul is returned, after being exposed to hell for maybe a day to a week.
Things to find in a cult hideout: 28 A summoning circle etched into the floor, buried under a layer of dust
(I’m getting these random tables at: https://d100tables.com by the way
Final Thoughts:
I’ve wanted a set of stainless steel dice for some time now, so I was willing to tolerate a logo on the 20 face (WHY DO YOU DO THIS, YOU VAIN, VAIN DICE MAKERS???!!!) for a reasonably priced set of steel dice. I just love the weight and feel of these dice. They throw heavy and don’t wander at all. The edges are the sharpest of any set I own. The d4 would be completely embedded in your foot if you stepped on it. The d10s are also incredibly sharp at the vertices.
These dice aren’t perfect though. Some of the faces have rough tooling marks. They’re still very smooth but they have character from the patterns left by the CNC machine that they were cut with. The numbers on some of the faces are pretty roughly carved out if you look very closely.
The dice use tiny dots to indicate the orientation of the 6 and 9 faces. In an odd turn of events, the dot is on the bottom left of the number 6 and on the bottom right of the number 9. I’ve never seen this configuration before.
I love the gorgeous silvery unblemished color of the dice. I hope that they won’t rust and get dull / cloudy as they age. I don’t know if they’re treated with something or how well stainless steel maintains it’s smooth shine over time.
I found these dice in a kickstarter campaign that was very fast to deliver them. They must already be making them in contrast to a lot of Kickstarter campaigns where you have to wait months because the process doesn’t start until after they’re funded. Anyway, I didn’t see much else worth getting at the website of the people who make these dice. There are decent dice there but nothing else that I’m interested in. The logo on the 20 face of a d20 really turns me off of dice.
The font on these dice isn’t great either. I’m trying to embrace it even though it’s very Comic Sans-y in my eyes. I tried to look up the font with my font-finder website but didn’t see anything even close. I submitted a question to the sellers on their kickstarter page and they got right back to me with the name of the font very quickly. I’m impressed by this. Every other time I’ve asked about font names, the dice sellers have no idea. I just wonder how the fonts are chosen and why someone selling dice would have no idea what font is on their dice.
Overall, these are very nice dice. They’re weighted very well and seem balanced to me. I love how they roll and can’t wait to use them at the table next session. I think they’d make a great set of dice for a Paladin or some other character wearing full plate armor. The whole “Knight in Shining Armor” vibe. I have an idea for a character like that but alas I’m only playing in one campaign currently so I can’t just put together other characters that are bouncing around in my head (currently 3 other character concepts are up there) I have several sets of metal dice but these are my nicest. I need to get a titanium set and maybe some day the holy grail: Tungsten. (I’d need major “fuck you money” for that to happen though)
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