I love it when a great combination of colors are made into pretty dice
Name: Star Belt sharp edge resin dice set
Description: This is a set of 7 sharp edge resin dice made with black resin and a glittery blue vein of color running in belt pattern around each die. The numbers are cut grooves and inked gold. The font looks closest to BW Modelica Bold but there are (of course) some subtle changes that make it just different enough to not require a license to use that font. The d10s have edged waists, and underbars are used to indicate orientation of the 6 and 9 faces. The dice came in a small plastic bottle with a screw-on lid.
Size:
d20: (Face->Face) 20.64 mm (Point->Point) 25.74 mm
Where did they come from: (King of Crits) bought at Board Bard in Portland, OR
How much did they cost: $35
Material / color: Black and blue resin with glitter and gold numbers
Quality: Very nice
Readability: Excellent
Value: Very good
Overall Rating: 9/10
Attempts needed to roll a natural 20: 29
One Hundred d20 rolls: 17, 13, 10, 2, 13, 15, 2, 16, 10, 7, 11, 10, 9, 2, 7, 18, 17, 4, 20, 9, 15, 1, 10, 2, 2, 8, 10, 14, 10, 4, 3, 5, 16, 10, 9, 7, 14, 20, 15, 6, 19, 18, 10, 18, 3, 20, 17, 13, 13, 17, 1, 6, 14, 11, 5, 6, 2, 5, 18, 15, 1, 12, 2, 5, 8, 4, 17, 16, 11, 14, 20, 19, 7, 18, 16, 1, 4, 7, 13, 3, 4, 8, 4, 13, 19, 16, 16, 14, 14, 15, 10, 16, 11, 14, 7, 20, 20, 11, 20, 17
Mean: 10.85
Median: 11
Mode: 10
Chi-square: 14.80 **
Result: Balanced
4d6 drop 1 stat block: 12, 14, 11, 6, 14, 10 (67 total) A Confident Tiefling Cleric from an underground military stronghold who is convinced that they’re always being left out
For reference: the Standard Array method totals to: 72 and the Point Buy method totals to: 69.
A 16th level Life Cleric casting Mass Cure Wounds, up-cast to 8th level with a maxed WIS, rolling each party member’s healing separately. (for more dice rolling)
Mass Cure Wounds at 8th level is 6d8 HP + WIS mod. Life clerics then add another 2 + the spell’s level HP to all healing. This makes it 6d8 + 10 + 5 total per player.
PC 1: 28 + 10 + 5 = 43 HP regained
PC 2: 21 + 10 + 5 = 36 HP regained
PC 3: 30 + 10 + 5 = 45 HP regained
PC 4: 24 + 10 + 5 = 39 HP regained
PC 5: 22 + 10 + 5 = 37 HP regained
PC 6 24 + 10 + 5 = 39 HP regained
Total healing for 6 party members: 239 HP (of which 90 were bonuses). Pretty solid healing for an 8th level spell. So why not cast it at 9th level? Two reasons:
First: at 17th level, Life clerics don’t have to roll for healing any more, they just take the maximum possible rolls, so it’d be 48 + 10 + 5 (63) HP per player and I wouldn’t get to roll the dice.
Second: If I was going to burn a 9th level spell, I’d just cast Mass Heal and have a pool of 700 HP to distribute however I wanted for the party members. Mass Cure Wounds only produces a total of 378 HP of healing for that same 9th level spell slot.
Thank you for attending my TED talk.
Random Tables rolls:
Unusual / Uncommon Laws: – 87 Every refreshment establishment open to the public must contain a small oaken stick in a mint or pepper oil bucket, to aid in cases of barrel gremlin intrusion.
Construct or Golem type: – 49 Padded Leather
(I’m getting these random tables at:https://d100tables.com by the way
Final Thoughts: I was again traveling through Portland, OR and stopped at a new (to me) game store which had much surlier workers on average than Guardian Games. They had a small D&D section and an even smaller dice selection inside of their glass display case. (This is where they keep the fancy math rocks that I’m interested in). They had a few sets of stone dice, one very nice set of striped wooden dice that were similar to the dice in post #111 “Wilderness” only a little bit bigger. Then I saw a few plastic jars with sharp-edge resin dice in them and found this set. This is one of those sets that I’ve seen online for the last 6 months or so in some color combination and thought: “In the right colors, those would look very nice.” I think I found the color combination that I wanted for them. Dark Onyx black with deep royal blue glitter for the stripe / vein in the middle.
They just look gorgeous with the contrast between the dark black and the lovely royal blue color. The gold sparkles in the vein of blue resin are a nice touch and pair well with the gold ink that they used for the font. The font which is a very calm / plain font and other than the digits being a little bit small on the faces of the d20 the font is very readable.
The dice are a good size and weight. The edges and vertices are nice and sharp, there are no obvious flaws in the resin or numbering. They feel nice to roll and they look great. I paid $35 for them, which is Local Game Store (LGS) pricing and I’m fine with that. I think that’s a reasonable price for a set of dice like this. I don’t know how many other color combinations I’d want these dice in but I’m sure there are some others I’d buy. Maybe this same onyx black with a deep red/maroon vein of color or something with a very dark green or blue resin and a nice contrasting middle vein of color in it. I’m sure there are other options on the vast interwebs but I really don’t need to go shopping for dice right now. The only downside is that the bottle that the dice came in has a neck/mouth that isn’t much bigger than the dice so it’s difficult to get the dice out and you really don’t want to shake them too hard and accidentally dent the edges of the dice, so once you get them out of the bottle, never put them back in. Use that bottle for something… anything else.
If you like these dice, pick up a set in your local game store if you can find them, or even ask them to order some for you. Try hard not to buy them at the South American rain forest company though. That guy is doing well enough and gets too much of your business as it is.
** I’ve added a new value to the reviews called “Chi-square” which is a calculation of the difference between of the number of times each value was rolled in the d20 roll test compared to the number of times each value would be rolled in a perfectly equal roll test. (perfectly equal means every value comes up the same number of times, or [total number of rolls / number of sides on the die]) Chi-square gives a sense of how far away from the statistical average the results of the d20 roll test were. It’s not a perfect measure of a die’s balance and fairness but it’s a good step in that direction. More information about die fairness / balance roll testing can be found here: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/70802/how-can-i-test-whether-a-die-is-fair
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