If you’ve always been a Cleric main and you know it clap your hands
Name: Beadle & Grimm’s Character Class Dice: The Cleric
Description: This is a set of 14 brown and white dull edge resin(?) dice from Beadle & Grimm’s that are themed for a Cleric. The dice have swirly mica powder in them which refracts light in a pleasant way. The white dice have flashes of silver and the brown dice have flashes of gold. The numbers are inked either in brown (on the white dice) or white (on the brown dice) The font has similarities with ITC Bodoni Six (EF) but the one has a very slight bar across the middle. It’s almost like it’s a small hinge or something so that you can fold the one up when you need to pack the font set away or something. Perhaps this font was designed for computer use so that the uppercase “eye”, the lowercase “ell” and the one can be differentiated. Yet another font that eludes me. The 6 and 9 faces use dots to indicate their orientation. The dice came in a metal tin with neat Cleric-themed designs on it.
Size:
White d20: (Face->Face) 19.62 mm (Point->Point) 23.06 mm
Brown d20: (Face->Face) 20.69 mm (Point->Point) 23.29 mm
Where did they come from: Barnes & Noble (made by Beadle & Grimm’s)
How much did they cost: $25
Material / color: resin / white and brown with a little bit of mica powder for glittery shine
Quality: Decent for dull resin dice
Readability: Very good. The numbers contrast nicely against the resin
Value: fair. It’s 14 dice set that’s themed for a character class and it comes in a metal tin. It’s a wash.
Overall Rating: 7/10
Attempts needed to roll a natural 20:
White d20: 11
Brown d20: 14
Fifty d20 rolls (white d20): 13, 9, 1, 11, 6, 2, 15, 12, 6, 19, 3, 16, 2, 7, 17, 10, 7, 3, 6, 3, 17, 16, 1, 8, 13, 16, 6, 1, 14, 13, 19, 19, 17, 1, 4, 14, 12, 7, 13, 20, 15, 13, 15, 18, 19, 2, 18, 1, 7, 8
Mean: 10.3
Median: 11.5
Mode: 1, 13
Fifty d20 rolls (brown d20): 9, 13, 2, 8, 17, 7, 14, 10, 16, 3, 6, 6, 2, 11, 5, 1, 7, 1, 3, 12, 7, 12, 4, 11, 1, 11, 17, 12, 18, 11, 6, 18, 3, 16, 1, 5, 3, 7, 19, 11, 16, 9, 8, 18, 11, 7, 10, 12, 13, 9
Mean: 9.18
Median: 9
Mode: 11
6d20 drop 1s and 2s stat block: 11, 16, 15, 14, 13, 9 (78 total) A Loud Elf monk from a royal lineage who failed to protect the royal family.
For reference: the Standard Array method totals to: 72 and the Point Buy method totals to: 69.
A 20th level Way of Mercy Monk with maxed DEX/WIS, and the Alert feat and a Staff of Striking fighting against a CR 8 Frost Giant. With the Alert feat, the Monk acts first in combat
The Monk takes two attacks with her staff and uses 2 charges of the staff for each attack that hits until it runs out of charges.
Monk Attack #1: 19 + 14 = 33 HIT! 1d6 + 5 + 3 + 2d6 = 19 damage
Stunning Strike: (vs. CON 19 save) 10 + 8 = 18 FAIL, the giant is stunned
Monk Attack #2: 10 + 14 = 24 HIT! 1d6 + 5 + 3 + 2d6 = 21 damage
Bonus Action Flurry of Blows with Hand of Harm:
First blow: 19 + 11 = 30 HIT! 1d10 + 1d10 + 5 = 13 damage & the giant is poisoned
Second blow: 15 + 11 = 26 HIT! 1d10 + 5 = 13 damage
The giant is stunned and thus incapacitated and can’t take the attack action until the end of the monks next turn.
Monk Attack #1: 14 + 14 = 28 HIT! 1d6 + 5 + 3 + 2d6 = 21 damage
Monk Attack #2: 18 + 14 = 32 HIT! 1d6 + 5 + 3 + 2d6 = 19 damage
Bonus Action Flurry of Blows with Hand of Harm:
First blow: 11 + 11 = 22 HIT! 1d10 + 1d10 + 5 = 10 damage
Second blow: 11 + 11 = 22 HIT! 1d10 + 5 = 15 damage
Total: 149 damage and the Frost Giant is no more.
I didn’t expect the fight to finish so quickly. Way of Mercy Monks have some great features, the automatic poisoning with no saving throw using Hand of Harm and the high DC for their stunning strike so that even a Giant has a chance of failing.
Random Tables rolls:
Books: – 64 The Shadows of The Varuitha Kingdom The book details the fall of the varuithian Kingdom which fell centuries before the current kingdom leaving several different ruins across the known land. The ruins each hold a secret of about the previous civilization and locations of ancient treasure.
Heraldic Signs: – 87 A knight laying down his sword before a monk holding a book aloft.
(I’m getting these random tables at: https://d100tables.com by the way
Final Thoughts: I’m a Dice Goblin. We’ve established this dozens and dozens of posts ago I hope. I see dice and I think: “Oh, that’s kinda cool” or “wow, those are gorgeous but can I spend that much on dice?” or “I’ve never seen dice like that before. I must have them!”. These fall into the “that’s kinda cool” category. These are dice themed for the type of character I’m playing in my campaign right now? This set also has extra dice for the most common dice rolls that my class has to make? I’ll take one please!
I found these dice at Barnes & Noble (a bookstore chain here in the US with ~700 locations across the nation) while I was looking through their not-too-big-but-not-too-small D&D / TTRPG section. I don’t love the look of the dice themselves (they’re just basic starter-set dice) but I like the novelty of the set, the theme of the box, and I trust Beadle & Grimm as they are a good small retailer who should get my money and stay in business for all of the good products that they are creating for TTRPGs. Bad dice, good decision.
This set contains a slightly odd assortment of Cleric themed dice (why brown and white?) It only has 3 x d6 and not 4 which always confuses me. Does anyone ever need either 2 or 3 six-sided dice in their set and not 4? Rogues need more for sneak attack, but everyone rolls up characters with 4d6 drop one right? RIGHT?? Can we agree on that? I understand why there are 4 x d8, for the Cleric spells that often do some number of d8s of damage. I don’t get the extra d10 though. I can’t think of anything that would require just 2d10.
The brown and white colors go together well enough but they’re not very inspiring. I’m never going to be excited to pull out a set of brown and white dice at the table. I don’t understand why they picked that color combination for a cleric. Maybe because it kind of matched the Sepia-tinted colors that they used for the metal tin that the dice came in?
The dice themselves are made of cheap resin in boring entry-level designs with concave faces from the resin shrinking inside the mold. These dice aren’t geared toward me, a Dice Goblin with very snobby taste in dice.
When I was rolling them, I was reminded that cheap resin d20s bounce around and wobble back and forth before they shudder to a stop in the rolling tray. I don’t like this motion at all. One of the best parts about sharp-edge resin dice is that they stop very quickly when you roll them.
Beadle & Grimm also sell other “Epic Character Class Dice” sets that are more expensive than this set, so I looked on their website. The “Epic” set for Clerics is just these same crappy white dice with some slightly upgraded brown dice and a piece of foam that goes in the dice tray with spots for each of the dice. This didn’t feel like a bargain for $40 (discounted from $60!). Give me some sharp-edge resin or even metal dice Beadle & Grimm and I’ll buy them in a second. I’ll be writing a whole different story here.
Leave a Reply