Precious Math Rocks
I guess that Cleric has been reaching through planar boundaries lately. That must be how he’s getting all these strange otherworldly artifacts. I’d be careful if I was him. I mean, who in all of Handbook-World can guess what vast reserves of magical energy slumbers within those seemingly-innocuous icosahedrons?
For my part, I know exactly what potential slumbers within math rocks. The power to drain your bank account. The power to overrun your game room. The power to overflow your sorting bins, inflict d4 damage on your feet, and demand investment in a draconic security system just to contain them. The power to (and I’m not even making this up) literally arrive at my door in the midst of writing this blog post. In case it isn’t clear, I take the Thief approach to dice collecting. You can’t ever have enough.
Of course, I can understand the appeal of the Cleric approach. If you’ve inherited a set of dice from a family member, or if you’ve got some particularly lucky old battle-buddy left over from your first, long-ago high school campaign, then you only need one set. All the totemic power of the Dice Gods resides in that sole, singular lump of plastic, and Torag help the brazen house cat who dares to swipe it off the table and into the heating vent.
What about the rest of you guys? Do you like to keep a proper dice hoard, or do you have a Master Set that you use for every game? Tell us all about the lustrous, shiny, glittering treasures of your dice trove down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
I have my player dice and my Dm dice.
My player dice are a selection of different colour and make that over the years have proven themselves, with every die having its specific function (the brown flecked is for ranged attacks, my purple for initiative, etc), and my DM dice are a set of 100 identical black dice, so I can just pour a pile on the table for whatever use I need, and for players to borrow if they have forgotten theirs or just missing enough of one type for those truly big dice rolls. A few of the player dice that failed me have been tossed in the Dm stack (such as the ugly pink die that thinks its a d10, and the virtually unreadable purple/white die that might roll high, but no-one can actually tell)
I gather that you’re running d10 system.
Ah, no, I meant identical in colour, there is still the full set of different shapes
i might buy a new set of dice everyone month, but i find myself using the same set over and over regardless of the many other options i have.
What’s special about that one set?
Quite frankly, I find Thief’s approach utterly irresponsible. Everyone knows that, unlike what the Big Math would have you believe, there are Good Dice and there are Bad Dice. It is equally obvious that the Bad Dice can corrupt the Good Dice just by proximity. If you only have one set you can, through judicious application of the scientific method and/or confirmation bias, determine whether the Dice are Good or Bad and then either keep them or throw them away. But if you give in to the dragonesque instinct to amass a giant pile of shinies, you are almost guaranteed that at least one of the Dice will be Bad, turning the entire hoard worthless in short order. No wonder Thief rolls like crap!
If you have to give up your precious shinies to win, is it really winning?
You’re not a dragon, Colin, you’re a human. You don’t win in life by amassing shinies. You win in life by becoming a lich and leading your undead hordes against the Forces of Light. And you only need a single d20 to do that: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1014
I really need to go back and re-read that whole thing. It’s one of the ones that directly inspired Handbook.
“Order of the Stick” and “The Gamers” films are the two other biggest influences.
Are you sure, you’re fine with having your home address published to the web?
And… cropped. Good catch. :/
I have a dice bag full of dice…. which I never use. And I don’t think I’ve opened the draw string of in two full years.
Because long ago I bought a proper full set of dice in a color I enjoy very much (a sort of teal/aquamarine with white swirls) and they just sit on the top of my desk where I sit.
And I’m just not the kind of person who decides dice are lucky/unlucky or need a time out or whatever. So as far as I’m concerned I’ve got “my set” and all the random spares I could need in case something comes up where I need to roll extra dice at once.
Not to say I wouldn’t likely enjoy a set of dice that’s extra special in some way. But once I had a full set I enjoyed the look of, I just lost that desire to be buying more dice because they look nice when I could instead spend that money on other things.
How many dice are in a “full set?” Are we talking the Chessex style 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d%, 1d12, 1d20, or do you need more than that to complete the set?
Yeah that’s the kind I meant. Though I am sometimes sad for the lack of a d3 or d7.
What do you actually use a d7 for anyway? Aside from mirror images I mean.
Making people ask “What do you actually use a d7 for anyway?” smirk
ಠل͟ಠ
I used Thief’s method for a while, but then I decided I wanted something a little more “me.” So when I saw a Chessex dice vendor at a convention, I treated myself and picked out two new dice sets: a frosted pink set and a frosted light blue set. I added in an extra matching d6 and d8 to each set as singles. And those are my dice now. I keep them in a lovely pink-and-blue floral-pattern zipper pouch that my mom brought back for me as a souvenir from Hawaii. Later, I decided I needed more dice for rolling handfuls of them at once, so I used my employee discount at my LGS to buy an extra set of each.
I like the frosted dice. The frosting has long since worn off by now, but they still have that neat semitranslucent texture that I find very pleasant. Recently I added three more sets: frosted purple, frosted black, and frosted white. But I keep them separate from the pink and blue ones for aesthetic reasons.
The frosting can wear off? Like… How does that work? The whole outer layer of plastic has been sanded away through play?
I have a lot of dice because I often need a lot of dice. As a Gm, it’s sometimes really convenient to be able to just toss five d20s and have initiatives for all five of my supervillains, like I did last night. Other games, like World of Darkness, might actually see a Dice Pool over 10 (Gasp! The munchkinsim!). And finally, I do play Exalted on occasion, which as everyone knows requires a literal bucket of d10s. Shadowrun 4th Ed could be similarly demanding.
My current player set is a kind of transparent orange and white swirl with Fox heads for the highest number that my partner bought me recently. If I ever get to play a game that rolls d20s again, that is.
Dice Pool over 10 makes you gasp? Clearly you haven’t played Shadowrun 2nd/3rd edition…
Well, as I mentioned, it’s game specific. Exalted and Shadowrun are known for big dice pools. World of Darkness, you’ve probably really focused the character to get something above 10. It be like that.
Just grabbed some of these guys for Laurel for Xmas:
https://www.modiphius.net/products/vampire-the-masquerade-dice-set
And then she joined a Powered by the Apocalypse game. F.
You should look up the prices on some of the original run World of darkness Requiem, Awakening or Lost Dice. They get upwards of $100 for 10 d10 with different colored 8, 9, and 10 and a little baggy.
My dice have TPK’d my players one too many times, ruining many a campaign, and now I exclusively use online dice rollers until I can afford a helicopter trip over a Volcano where I can cast the accursed dice into the fiery depths. I used to be the goblin type in the above post, collecting all the dice I could because I liked the sound they made, but the curse has spread and affected all the dice I own. Only digital dice remain immune to the curse.
Now see, my players currently curse the Roll 20 roller. Nobody in my group seems to trust that thing.
The way I see it, there is no better arbitrator of the unknowable randomness of the universe then a cold, unfeeling robot.
I favor the yes / no machine that is player attendance. That shit is inexplicable.
As mentioned in the previous dice comic, I have two sets and I’m not sure where one is, two singular d10s, and a dice ring. But this Christmas, my mom got me this thing called Diceapalooza, which is a tube filled with different types of dice. It had 35 regular d6s of various colors and sizes, a couple that had the numbers printed instead of pips, two each of d4s, d8s, d10s, d12s, and d20s, six that had letters instead of numbers, some that had card faces on them from Ace to 9, and a handful that were just colors like they were replacements for Candylane cards.
Dice tube, you say? Sounds familiar in principle. Thief’s dialogue is more or less drawn from reality:
http://www.chessex.com/Dice/poundofdice.htm
That’s more or less it. Just with less odd dice types. I have no idea what I’d use those card dice for.
My partner and I are both one-set-per-PC people (though we make exceptions for one-shots). It works well at stopping the horde from growing too fast. The only trouble is I bought her a dice set for Christmas (made of flowers encased in resin; they’re very nice), and now she needs to wait for a new character to use them!
That’s once-set-per-PC thing is Laurel’s strategy too:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dice-rituals
I have one set that I got for my birthday many, many moons ago when I first started learning D&D, along with a pack of blue-and-gold D6s we call the fireball dice. Everybody wants to steal the fireball dice when they roll big dumb damaging spells now, because they always roll really well for that. I also have a drawstring bag full of miscellaneous dice I inherited from my dad, which we use when we need things like inspiration dice or paladin smite dice. Occasionally, we also just use the entire thing to represent a coin pouch or something when were emoting what our characters do.
That cube o’ d6s is an important and oft-overlooked component of dice collecting. You do not want to be rolling that one d6 20 times.
Wait … did you … actually post a picture of your address on the Internet?
That seems like, uh, not a great idea …
And… cropped. Good catch. :/
Many dice will come and go. The only constant in my little leather-bound pouch is the mammoth ivory d20. It will be passed to my little goblin when she is old enough to roll a barbarian, and to her children when they they roll theirs.
You got one of those mammoth ivory dice? Nice! I heard that smell horrible when they’re being cut.
Yeah, it’s from sitting in bog water for thousands of years, I think. They don’t smell at all by the time you get it, except maybe a slight cedar scent from the case they ship it in. All I can say is there is nothing in the world like it. The texture, the heft, the little imperfections unique to reach and every one they cut.
Besides, how many people can say they own something thousands of years old?
Is it safe to roll? I’d be scared to death of chipping the silly thing, lol
Had mine for a few years now with no chipping, though I would still be wary of concrete floors and the like. My wife has an ancient kauri wooden d20 and I dont think it will ever chip either.
When I got back into D&D I got myself a set of dice. The d20 rolled like shit.
Over time I acquired a block of d6, and purchased 7 additional d8 and 4 additional d20 from my FLGS’s loose dice bin.
I saltwater tested my d20s, and the original was imbalanced, but the supplemental ones were fine. I retired that one, and now use 4 really unremarkable looking ones.
Do not ascribe agency to the polyhedron.
Did a materiality class lass semester. It’s… complicated.
https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/materialworlds/1825.html
I currently only have two dice, but after last nights game I’m debating melting them and buying new ones. Then again, even when I used an online dice roller I couldnt roll higher than a 10 in combat. Skill checks though I pulled off fine.
I think the world is telling you to play a rogue.
I dont wanna! I like my lawful dumb barbarian
Is there a skill-monkey barbarian? Someone must have made one at some point….
How does “9.99CP” work? Copper is the lowest unit of value. How do you give .99 CP?
According to my math based on labor value 1 copper = $3. Your average adventurer is walking around with a small fortune.
An unskilled laborer makes 2SP/8 hour workday. A US minimum wage earner makes $58/8 hour work day. This puts 1SP at roughly $30. Doctors, lawyers, and programmers can easily make 10X that. Skilled laborers can make 2GP/8 hour day. In terms of labor our economy is pretty applicable to the D&D economy.
The major difference is the price of goods. Since most D&D worlds are pre-globalism, pre-automation, and pre-mass production every single manufactured or imported good is notably more expensive. For example, a book (Pre-printing press) is 25GP.
You don’t read the scroll-over text, do you?
it doesn’t work on iPad
or at least not with the browser I‘m using.
It might be different on iPad, but I found that iPhone + Chrome allows you to read it by holding down on the comic, like you want to copy the image. The scroll-over displays at the top of the pop-up menu.
On mobile chrome, the alt text shows by pressing on it, HOWEVER it ends up cropped most of the time because the alt text only shows an amount of text depending on the screen size (and you can’t select it or show more if your screen is small), so you can’t read more than a few words of it.
Maybe you could put a copy of the alt text in the commentary somewhere (e.g. a dot that is a link)? Or something similar?
I like the idea of more people having access to scrollover text, but I’m not sure what you mean by “a dot that is a link.”
For a good way to do scrollover text for mobile/tablet, see the xkcd website (xkcd.com normal and m.xkcd.com on mobile). The mobile site has a little link under the comic that says “(alt text)”, and when you click it the scrollover text appears. You could also just do that with the main site in addition to the scrollover text, to avoid having a separate mobile version.
Wait there’s scroll over text? Do I have to go back and read through all these again? Drats!
Yay! You get to go back and read through all these again!
I do, then I forget what it says in time to post the above.
That said, most coin value have comparable values to the raw material, so an amount of copper that weighs 1/10th of what 1CP weighs would actually be viable.
I am of the sort who goes for the treasure hoard. Tragically, my whole collection was stolen with the backpack that held it last year, so my collection is small again. My gaming group is super great and helped me restart my collection, along with getting me a mini and even making me a dice box (which were also stolen)!
You carved out a paperback book as your dice box?
I read this yesterday and immediately started looking up how to hollow out secret compartments in books. How cool would a big book as a dice box/dice tray be? Especially if you play a wizard.
Well that of course raises the question: What is the most appropriate book for a D&Dice Chest?
I‘m Dice Elf I guess.
one carefully crafted die for each purpose.
I even got a set of black d6 with white dots and colored the dots to correspond to the different types of elemental damage for „flaming“, „corrosive‘ „icy“ etc. weapons.
Tiny d6 for Sneak Attack damage.
A set of matching d8 for Cure spells.
and so on.
or maybe I‘m a Half Elf Half Goblin.
d4 for the daggers under the ribs,
d6 for the dragon’s breath in a fiery cone,
d8 for hit dice, (better roll high!),
d20 for the DM on his dark throne
In the Land of Basement where the Nerds lie.
d10 for vampires, percentile for Mythos,
d12 for barbarians, and their greataxe crit-o’s,
In the Land of Basement where the Nerds lie.
I see your alt text and raise you a hoard of dice.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/26/62/e2/2662e2245908b583ed389452c437e681.png
Dice-wise, I play on roll20 almost exclusively, so I don’t actually use any physical dice. That said, I still bought a plain blue and red set of D&D dice, just in case. Then a felt W40k dice bag to keep them all in. Then a single spiffy blue-acyrilic-painted d20, which I keep in a dice box, like a museum exhibit, because it looks cool. And then a set of transparent blue plastic dice. I wanted to get red transparent dice set too, but it wasn’t in stock. :v I have yet to use any of them in a game.
I even have a spiffy d2, a metal coin with ‘yes’ on one side and ‘no’ on the other in multiple languages, that I got out of a novelty bathroom soap bar.
I love that artist so many. My favorite is the VHS dragon:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/20/07/09/200709e5dcdaf26fc0af1e2ba14b95ce.png
I actually had a different meme-dragon in mind though:
https://imgur.com/gallery/puWAm
It sounds to me like you’re on the slippery slope to dice hoarding despite your roll20 habit. Welcome to the club. 😀
I used to get one dice set per PC. I still remember the sets I had for my first two characters, and every now and then I wonder where I put them…
Nowadays, though, with all the nice sets available? Many of which are limited editions or Kickstarter projects? It’s very hard not to turn full goblin. I just picked up the seventh and eighth sets for a wizard I’ve only been playing a few months. My favorites are two that were colored like ice cream, because dice didn’t look candy-like enough already.
And the more I get, the more I want to get. Rolling the damage for a big spell all at once is so satisfying…
You’ve gotta try some dice pool games. Dropping 20+ dice every other check is all manner of satisfying.
I have a lot of dice, but I mostly use two sets. I have a set of bloodstone dice (only one d6) and a set that’s mother of pearl colored (4 d6s) and the rest of them mostly just sit around looking pretty.
Dice should not be sitting around looking pretty, where just anyone can see them. They must be kept of sight; secreted away so that they sparkle for your eyes only. Let none know where they lie. Guard well the entrance of your trove. People it with bound spirits. Draw your strongest wards upon its walls, and place ’round about it traps so deadly that none but the mad would dare set foot within your rec room.
I’m not going to pretend I haven’t researched the possibility of getting dice made from human bones before.
And what’s the verdict?
On a related note: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/feb/16/andrew-scott-hamlet-skull
…dude. That would be an awesome thing to leave somebody in a will. Of course, that’ll exacerbate any dice superstitions your beneficiary might have… (“Man, you always roll terribly.” “I know. I was never Grandfather’s favorite.”)
I wonder if there’s enough large, sturdy chunks in a human skeleton to get a complete set from a single person?
In my rpg bag I’ve got 5 sets (3 teal sparkly, 2 red with black specks) minus the d%s, 5 extra purple d20s, a die-within-a-die d10 I use for percentile, and one of my leftover 40k scatter dice.
And then there’s the 4+ dice cubes I use for 40k.
As for the mouseover text, I present to you the most adorable dragon https://i.redd.it/t6l9eumvk6o31.jpg
We, my group, use what we get. We gladly use the master race for our enjoyment. I have even made some paper dice in case one is missing. We do what we can with the tools at our disposal. We can’t afford fancy designer dice unless we take them as souveniers at the local casino 🙁
Nice dice you got by the way. The “Against the Aeon Throne” ones looks great, but I would like them more if they were cyan instead of green. I like to combine black and cyan 😀
Hell of a typo you got there. O_O
Starfinder is set for this weekend. Stoked to close out Book 3 of Strange Aeons with the system-appropriate set.
Sorry to disappoint you, but we enlightened and superior beings can give us the pleasure to use even the scrawny members of this so-called master race as dice for our games and enjoyment… Just kidding 😛
My usual notebook got broken untill I get it back I am using one of those tablets, so my writing can be weirdeder then befor 😛
So you are gonna finish Storage Aeons using Starfinder dice, or I am reading it wrong?
Dang it… Said “Strange Aeons,” meant “Dead Suns.”
Typos, they are contiguous… contagious I mean 😛
I have a rainbow of dice, sans orange. I’ve not been able to find a good set of orange dice that I like and want added to the collection.
Beyond that though, I have 1d20, 1d12, 1d%, 1d8, 4d6, and 1d4 in red, gold, green, blue, purple, pink, silver, grey, black, and rainbow.
I seem to remember thinking these looked pretty slick:
https://www.krakendice.com/phoenix-12pc-gold-ink-dice-set-with-kraken-logo/
That’s a nice looking set, but the logo on the d20 kills it’s chances to join my arsenal.
I like my 20s to say 20, my 6s to say 6, etc. I don’t go for dice with logos or whatnot in place of one or more numbers.
To for with the aesthetic of the other dice, I also don’t like the d10/0 to have its numbers written lengthwise, and I prefer the d4 to have its numbers on the flat of the edge, not by the points.
This all makes it harder to shop, though. :/
I invested in a big bag o’ dice when our group was getting started — everybody including me has their own set or two out of that bag, with enough spares for a set of fireball d6s or for people to swap if they’re rolling badly. I eventually added a set of metal dice someone gave me to the set I generally use.
I’ve also got a set of miscellaneous dice I bought for my first game ever as well as my Dad’s old dice (which are the old-school straight-edged kind where I think you had to ink the numbers by hand — they might require some re-inking). Those dice are cool to have, but I don’t use them in our regular games because I don’t want to get them mixed up with the big bag o’ dice. I might break them out if I get another shot at being a player instead of Forever DM.
Laurel just gave me my first set of metal dice for our anniversary. And I was like, “Oh cool. These are gorgeous… And I’ll never use them because they’ll ruin our table.” And then she gave me a dice tray for X-mas, which was the best possible way to tell me to shut up and use my damn present. 😀
I have noticed a slight tendency to leave small dents in things when rolling them… Fortunately, the surfaces we usually play on are either 1) card table where we don’t care if it’s dented (and the dents don’t usually last anyways) or 2) basement table that isn’t super-fancy and usually has a tablecloth on it anyways.
I have 12 sets of die, each in a different color and then one artistic set.
When I GM i use the artistic set, and when i play I use the colored ones. For each character I pick 2 colors that match their theme. For example, my egyptian themed monk with storm powers = light-blue(sky/storm) + yellow (sand, culture, defense) or my Efreet summoner = Red (fire) + purple (summoning). The dice can change depending on the character, like when the monk starts gaining death powers the yellow dice are replaced with black ones.
I dig the versatility. But what happens if you have a summoning (purple) character who is also a noble (purple)? That’s double purples, yo!
So if dice-wise, Thief is the ‘Gremlin’ and Cleric is the ‘Elf’, what does that make Fighter and Wizard? I gander at least one of them quarantines and dice shames the ‘cursed’ dice and praises the blessed d20s.
I think it’s safe to say that both Fighter and Thief go in for dice shaming: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dice-jail
I have a small pouch of dice ranging from a couple of unusable original plastic ones from the 1970’s (they were notorious – low grade material and poor construction. The edges wore round and the ink faded or fell off) to also a very nice metal set, and finally a big foam rubber set meant to keep first generation gamers from injuring ourselves in our dotage while having the added benefit of large-print numbers to accommodate our failing eyesight.
I will never go in for those customized dice, no matter how beautiful they are, in fact especially if they are beautiful. What good is a $100+ die you’re afraid to chuck across the room when it fails you? Having that kind of leverage almost guarantees the dice will betray you at the earliest possible convenience.