These would make a good starter set of liquid center dice so tread carefully
Name: Aurora Core Dice – Glow-in-the-Dark Liquid Core Set
Description: This is a standard shape set of seven sharp edge translucent clear resin dice with liquid centers containing bright green mica powder with tiny bits of holofoil intermixed. The powder glows in the dark if exposed to a strong light. The d4 is the “shard” shape instead of the traditional tetrahedron (3 sided pyramid). The font used is: “based on a similar existing style, but we customized and adjusted the font ourselves to match our design and logo perfectly. We refined the shapes and details to make it unique to our dice” according to the people behind the Kickstarter campaign. My theory is that they (like so many dicemakers) don’t want to incur additional costs by using a licensed font, so they take elements of a few different fonts and merge them together with some of their own tweaks to come up with something that a font foundry lawyer can’t claim is based on their licensed typeface. I wouldn’t disparage someone for doing that to keep costs down. I see elements of Miller Text in this font but I can’t find any fonts that have things like the left sides of the ‘6’ and ‘8’ being heavier than the right, or the bottom of the ‘1’ being thinner than the top, which very slightly has the profile of a baseball bat. The serif that they added to the stem of the ‘6’ and ‘9’ is unpleasant to my eyes. Overall I don’t care for this font that they came up with unfortunately. The numbers are inked in black. The 6 and 9 faces use dots to indicate their orientation. The ’20’ face has a crescent and a small 5-pointed star: “☪” instead of a number. The d10s are quite wide with sharp edged waists.
Size:
d20: (Face->Face) 22.65 mm (Point->Point) 27.84 mm
Where did they come from: Kickstarter campaign (Desiree Stovall)
How much did they cost: $25
Material / color: Clear resin with liquid centers containing green and gold sparkling mica powder that glows in the dark. Black ink for the numbers.
Quality: Good
Readability: Decent if you’re looking straight down on it. Fair otherwise
Value: Good value!
Overall Rating: 7/10
Attempts needed to roll a natural ☪: 24 rolls!
One Hundred d20 rolls: 10, 18, 11, 8, 3, 10, 3, 7, 2, 18, 9, 7, 9, 3, 5, 8, 18, 7, 1, 17, 9, 1, 3, 14, 7, 7, 11, 8, 15, 17, 6, 5, 8, 19, 17, 12, 14, 14, 7, 19, 11, 14, 7, 6, 9, 20, 15, 20, 8, 9, 19, 6, 12, 19, 19, 4, 18, 13, 2, 20, 19, 19, 17, 1, 17, 2, 12, 20, 1, 14, 11, 1, 4, 16, 15, 15, 1, 4, 18, 17, 4, 16, 4, 16, 11, 1, 18, 3, 5, 18, 9, 18, 14, 19, 1, 15, 13, 12, 16, 11
Mean: 10.86
Median: 11
Mode: 1, 18, 19
Chi-square: 13.60 **
Result: Balanced
4d6 drop 1 stat block: 16, 16, 11, 12, 17, 7 (79 total) A Cheerful Gnome Monk from an enchanted forest logging company who was raised as a hostage by their father’s enemies
For reference: the Standard Array method totals to: 72 and the Point Buy method totals to: 69.
A Monk deflecting missiles at each level: Rolling for damage on Deflect Missiles from level 3->20 starting with an 18 Dex (16 from above plus 2 for race):
The damage is calculated as:
1d10 + DEX mod + Monk level.
Level 3: 4 + 4 + 3 = 11 damage
Level 4: 8 + 5 + 4 = 17 damage (ASI: DEX goes from 18 -> 20)
Level 5: 6 + 5 + 5 = 16 damage
Level 6: 8 + 5 + 6 = 19 damage
Level 7: 9 + 5 + 7 = 21 damage
Level 8: 10 + 5 + 8 = 23 damage
Level 9: 2 + 5 + 9 = 16 damage
Level 10: 3 + 5 + 10 = 18 damage
Level 11: 10 + 5 +11 = 26 damage
Level 12 1 + 5 + 12 = 18 damage
Level 13: 2 + 5 + 13 = 20 damage
Level 14: 5 + 5 + 14 = 24 damage
Level 15: 7 + 5 + 15 = 27 damage
Level 16: 7 + 5 + 16 = 28 damage
Level 17: 2 + 5 + 17 = 24 damage
Level 18: 1 + 5 + 18 = 24 damage
Level 19: 7 + 5 + 19 = 31 damage
Level 20: 6 + 5 + 20 = 31 damage
Yet another reason to do some more dice rolling (d10 in this case). I’ve only played a Monk once in a campaign, and it was really fun to be a “Shock Attacker” as Keith Ammann calls them (Buy his books!!) and always be running up to opponents and hitting them with a simple stick and then punching them until I ran out of Ki points. In all the time I played that Monk, I never once got to deflect missiles… which greatly disappoints me. It’s one of the Monk’s coolest party tricks. Thinking about that reminds me to give players opportunities to use their cool class features on the rare occasion when I’m the GM. Anyway, play a Monk sometime. They’re even better in the 2024 rules.
Random Tables rolls:
Different Arrow Types: – 83 Meteor Shower Arrow – A Pure black arrow that marks a target for a meteor shower. Meteors are summoned and take 1 turn to arrive. After 1 turn a shower of massive flaming meteors rain down on the target dealing LOTS of fire and bludgeoning damage. 15 foot radius.
Demon Lords: – 22 Gerrimor- The demon lord of bad luck. Gerrimor subtly influences the fates of every mortal in the planes. Everything from minor inconveniences to horrific tragedies can be traced back to the influence and presence of Gerrimor. He appears as a deformed, skeletal cow head, and his presence is marked by the stench of rotting meat.
(I’m getting these random tables at:https://d100tables.com by the way
Final Thoughts: On the surface this is a nice looking set of liquid-core dice. The bright green mica powder with little bits of green/gold holofoil mixed in looks great when it swirls around as the dice come to a stop during a roll. The holofoil really catches the light and contrasts well with the clear resin and black numbers. The mica powder even glows in the dark if you shine a bright light on it and then look at it in dark enough surroundings. These were a very good deal at only $25/set through the Kickstarter. I’m surprised that the campaign didn’t do very well. I’d guess that it came down to marketing / promotion and that they weren’t able to get the word out. This one should have been a slam dunk at such a good price. Even me (who doesn’t like dice with logos on the high faces) went for it.
There are a few quirks that I noticed after the dice showed up, the first being that the font is… not great. I understand why they would want to use a custom font (saves licensing fees or better meets the style that they’re going for) but this font has some odd elements to it. Thick stems on only one side of the 0/8/9, curly serifs on the 2/3/5/6/9, a tapered stem on the 1/7. It’s kind of a mess. If you were to read a sequence of numbers in this font on paper or computer screen I don’t think you’d like it.
The next thing that I noticed about this set of dice is that the liquid center bubbles are off-center in the d4, d8, and especially the d6 which also has a relatively small liquid center for its size. The photo above really makes it obvious. It’s a shame too because the dice look great when they’re rolling or just sitting still with the mica powder resting at the bottom of the bubbles.
The dice roll a little oddly, by which I mean that they will often change direction or back up one face just as they’re about to come to a stop. They also do the rocking back and forth movement that most liquid core dice do. I’ve compared this set against other liquid core dice and the movements seem more pronounced in this set. It’s not a problem, just something I noticed. The liquid in the center of the d10 and d20 also isn’t as clear as the rest of the dice so they have a little bit of a cloudy look to them.
Unfortunately this set of dice are hard to read unless you’re looking directly down at them so that the black ink of the number has the green powder in the center of the die below it to make it stand out. From an angle, the clear resin shows the numbers on adjacent faces quite clearly through the die and it confuses the eye. This effect is especially prominent on the d% die.
Of course I don’t care for the logo on the 20 face but I like the look of these dice overall. The bright green mica powder in the centers looks great. I think they could have maybe picked a better color for the ink but I don’t know what that would be off the top of my head. These dice are also available with red or blue powder in the centers. Those two colors both looked good but I liked the looks of the green set the best. If these dice didn’t have the moon and star on the 20 face I would have bought all three sets. Finding a decent set of liquid core dice for $25 (even with the few flaws that this set has) is a fantastic deal and these are nice enough that I was willing to put up with the logo on the 20. You could do a lot worse than these dice for even $40. These are a great starter set of liquid core dice.
** Chi-square is a calculation used to test whether your data is as expected. The basic idea behind the test is to compare the observed values (the results of my 100 roll test) to the expected values. (what you would see if a d20 landed on each number with the exact same frequency) and compare the two results to determine whether a die is balanced in this case.
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