What fucking dice should I use? Tired of Chessex fucking over my characters...

That's true, and I wouldn't dissuade any fa/tg/uy who wanted to spend bucks on cool looking Veeky Forums stuff, but just be aware that it's not going to be a big improvement in randomness, because most dice are already plenty good enough for tabletop. It's just that people are bad at telling what's random and what's not.

What about casino dice? They've gotta be super calibrated. So the manufacturers of casino dice also make tabletop gaming dice?

I was a bit dismayed at how poorly the Chessex dice I tested were. Granted, it's only 2,000 rolls each, so you'd expect to see a decent bit of white noise, but the similarity of the results between the dice weighs in favor of imbalance. (For both dice, 20 had the least results, 8 had the second least results, 1 had the third least results, and 14 had the fourth least results. For both, 6 had the most results--though for the top die, it was a three-way tie.)

No, Vegas d6 makers don't make d20s.

>Also, stupid math trick
Sorry, could you explain this again? Dumb it down for us, Doc.

As far as I am aware only d6 exist, because who the fuck would care about some autismos and their unbalanced d20.

Here's that bottom (speckled) die compared with Excel simulations, so you can have something to compare it to. Of note is that out of 1,000 Excel simulations (of 2,000 die rolls each), only 2% had results as high as you see you see for the number 6 on that speckled die, and 0% -- nada, none -- had a result anywhere near as low as for the number 20.

youtube.com/watch?v=VI3N4Qg-JZM

Whatever group you buy from, try to get translucent plastic with minimal air bubbles, floating dice in salt water can help to determine dice balance.

I had a really bad d20 I think it was from Chessex, really big air bubble, once rolled it 206 times without scoring a 20, by my rolling chart (1000 rolls) it really favored the 4 area, lots of 4,3,7 over most others, only 7 20s on the 1000 test

I've got two dice sets on their way, this is the first set

This is the other set, forest themed

Jesus, fuck my eyes, no. Those are unreadable.

Get your money back.

Seriously? I'm having literally no issues reading these, and I don't even have them yet

You actually rolled your die 2000 times? How long did that take?

>deficient in 20s
Give it to your GM as a gift.

Now, I don't have any Gamescience tests to compare these to (I've ordered some Gamescience dice and will let you know the results once they show up, and I have the time and patience to test them) but I'm not happy with the results, especially since almost all of rather large dice collection consists of Chessex dice. I did test a couple of old dice I have from the 80's (see pic), and they did worse than Chessex dice, but I'm not sure how much that tells you. The bottom die is all beat up and crumbly-looking along the edges and rolls like a fucking marble, so I'm not surprised it did poorly. That the other die did much worse is rather shocking. Both dice are smaller than is standard now (14mm instead of 16mm?), which may have contributed a bit to the bias, but the top die is translucent and you can't see any imperfections in it.

Because you're looking at giant versions on a perfectly clean white surface. Good luck seeing the numbers quickly when rolling on a gamer's messy table IRL.

Chessex opaque dice are known to have extreme imperfections in the plastic, air bubbles, malformations, recycled plastic from other miscast dice, ect. Their balance can be WAY off to the point they're almost weighted dice.

Chessex translucent are fine, because you can see through them you can't get away with just saying "fuck it" to imperfections.

Pic is a chessex opaque d20 cut open.

I could've gotten this version of the Elven dice

Say you've got a d8, and you know it's funky. (Or players are arguing that they think the dice are funky, whatever.)
You can roll two of them and add them together. If the result is more than 8, subtract 8 from it, so 9 become 1, 10 becomes a 2, etc.

This makes the die results fairer. Even if both your d8s were loaded to roll say, a 1 most of the time, the combined dice will still be much closer to fair than to the loaded state, due to how the math works -- it spreads the bias out over the other numbers, flattening the results.

But testing your dice with salt water is a lot less hassle.

>You actually rolled your die 2000 times? How long did that take?
Way, way too long. I do it while listening to something -- radio news, music I'm trying to sort through, a lecture, etc. -- to keep myself from dying of boredom.

Even on the tiny ass thumbnails I could still read them
granted, I'm still new as fuck to tabletop gaming, I've got all the D&D 5e books and the DM screen on the way too

>Even on the tiny ass thumbnails I could still read them
You're fucking lying and you know it.

> caring about dice you use to play an imaginary games about elves and fairies and all that other shit

That's pathetic. I'm sorry, RPGs are cool, but you are taking them wayyy too fucking seriously. Do any of you even have girlfriends? lol

Here's your (You).

Holy shit, this is disgusting.

Anyway, I did a float test on my Chessex dice* and while I could only get a few of them to actually float at the top, most of them turned to favor the 20 side as they (slowly) sank. I can't give you exact figures at this point, but I'd say that only about 1 in 10 didn't display any bias.

*See: youtube.com/watch?v=VI3N4Qg-JZM

Oh, so hard. Granted I'm on mobile most of the time

Hunh, I didn't know that. Handy, thanks.

Okay. Have fun being a loser for the rest of your life because you actually care about pieces of plastic and complain that they might not be 100% fair. It's a fucking physical process, nothing is truly random except for possibly quantum noise and no one even knows that. Okay? The universe is made of some starnge shit, maybe until one day you are an actual scientist (Protip: you aren't) you should shut the fuck up and quit whining about things you don't know.

Your dice are fine. Go back to playing D&D or GURPS or whatever you play, and quit bitching.

You probably didn't use enough salt.

Here's your other (You).

Die.

This is why I just use computer dice rollers.

These are nice looking, especially this set, but I'm not sure if I could read those in real play.

They're pretty busy for gaming dice.

Here's somebody else's comparison of a Chessex and a Gamescience d20, with 10,000 rolls apiece. IIRC, they didn't cut/file the nub off the Gamescience die, so you would expect the number 14 to be less disfavored if you did so.

I got a mini set of quartz dice as a gift I like to use, and the only time it was an issue was when a fa/tg/uy at my table started to raise a fuss that they couldn't be balanced. Scuz me, guy, but you rolled four eighteens on character creation and you're calling me out because I beat you on a search check?

Now I'm thinking of going to the LGS with a cup of salt water to buy some new dice. Somehow I don't think they would appreciate it.

>You probably didn't use enough salt.
I used more salt that the water would hold. There was a thick layer of it at the bottom of the glass. I even tried it with different temperatures of water, but that didn't seem to make a difference to how well the dice floated. I've seen some folks suggest using epsom salt rather than ordinary table salt, and maybe that would've made the difference; I don't know.

Wow, I'm genuinely interested in knowing whether you are really this angry about how someone else is spending their time, or if you're just trying to upset that guy.

One of the few guys in this thread that's not salty enough.

Of note is the fact that the bottom die here (the one with the atrociously low number of 20s) is one of the dice that actually did float at the top of the glass, which maybe indicates it had a (larger?) bubble of air than most of the others. I'd say that maybe 1 out of 4 or 5 floated at the top.

For my first actual dice sets for a new hobby, I wanted something pleasing to the eye and also relatively cheap. I'll get fancier dice down the road made from antler or something

>Tired of Chessex fucking over my characters.
Unless you've been using the same dice for years and have been collecting objective data this whole time, you cannot infer that this is true.

Any data on whether stone dice are fair or not?

I don't know about recoloring but an extra-fine tip sharpie (at least I think it was extra fine) does pretty well if you're marking the numbers in black. To mark my d16s in white, I couldn't find a sufficiently fine-tip paint pen, so I ended up having to vigorously rub the paint off the surface (rubbing them against the leg of my fuzzy pajama pants, while I was wearing them, violently enough that they started to get hot from the friction seemed to work better than anything else), which was a pain in the ass. But that was with a d16 (which has small sides) and I was actually painting over black ink (well, I removed as much of the ink as possible with rubbing alcohol first, but it was still imperfect), so it might normally be easier, especially if you had a pen with a tip small enough to actually fit down into the grooves without going all over the surface. Regardless, the job looks good; it just took way too much effort. (Though I haven't used them much, so I can't speak to how durable it will be.)

>I've seen some folks suggest using epsom salt rather than ordinary table salt, and maybe that would've made the difference; I don't know.

Yes, water can absorb more of that than table salt.

Try crayons, I hear they work well.

Pictured: Lou Zocchi scolding some fool for using crayons on his dice.

...

I got a few sets of GS dice too. Some I inked with sharpies and others by rubbing crayon. They look, roll, and feel good...so yeah, no complaints.

Whatever, bought some of his dice, "inked" them with crayon, they work great.

They do. My friend got me a purple set for my birthday inked in white. They're pretty dank. They roll fairly well for me and in an emergency I can use them as caltrops.

You might think they work great, but they're not giving you equal access to all the faces they have.

Characters are dying who deserved to live but who's dice could not roll saving numbers.

Pretty sure it's just a joke. He's said in an inking video that using crayon is fine and the only issue is that sometimes the numbers fall out and the warmer the dice gets the more prone this is to happening. It's not a problem, more just a mildly amusing minor drawback.

This is no joke! Does this look like the kind of face that would lie to you?

Anyone got an opinion on dice-roller apps?

kys

Digital rulebooks are barely acceptable. Digital character sheets are heresy, and digital dice rollers are heresy of the highest order.

Holy shit you americans are fat.

Yeah, he reminds me of a grandpa who can dish out some top quality bantz.

As this user said, they are far superior comparing to physical dice.

Because they couldn't roll saving rolls on their will saves.

>starving third worlder who doesn't even have the freedom to post political dissension online

>"haha a-at least i'm not fat like you MURRICANS, owned!"

Now that's a burn, son!

Gamescience dice in either opaque or translucent or Koplow Dice in transparent.

Gamescience dice are precision so no matter if you get opaque or translucent they will be consistently made. So you don't have to worry about hidden problems.

Kopleow Dice are fairly consistant in manufacture but the reason i'd recommend the translucent is because opaque dice can have bubbles that you wouldn't be able to see while translucent dice would be easier to check and would be categorized as seconds by Koplow.

>freedom
>when libtards shat on your precious constitution like there is no tomorrow
Ayy

>"y-you have libruls too, so that means you're as bad as us even though we're literally being slaughtered by refugees!"

Keep on projecting, kid.

This probably sounds retarded, but I like koplow dice because of the tube they came in.

>refugees
I didn't see any in my country, thanks.
>Keep on projecting, kid.

l-lewd

I've always liked Koplow dice they are well designed and have that old school appeal that made me choose them over chessex.

Not as old school as gamescience!

What's wrong with Q-Workshop dice? What do you mean by "busy"?

The correct answer is always gamescience dice

No love for dice towers?

No idea if they make things 'more random' but it keeps your dumbass from rolling dice off the fucking table every five minutes.

youtube.com/watch?v=1495Y-oa4SM

I have two sets of them, so don't think I'm just shitting on them.

"busy" meaning theres a lot of stuff on the dice faces besides the digits. They're super hard to read at a distance.

Holy shit they should call you Ol Eagle Eye

He has one on those too, and some dice cups
youtube.com/watch?v=LO8sfQsaWP0

Have a 40 minute video on how to ink gamescience dice, actually pretty informative
youtube.com/watch?v=zaDzqYZufIQ

too bad I'm blind as fuck without my glasses

I got these ako dice in red and black just because they look snazzy

I don't like towers, they kill any pleasure from rolling dice. Use trays to keep dice in place.

No offense but who needs to watch a 40 minute video to know how to ink dice? I did it my first time without any problem.

And I'm retarded.

>Digital character sheets are heresy
what if you're playing shadowrun?

I'll second you on the dice rollers and rulebooks.
My personal thing is even if everyone has a digiital rulebook, there should be at least one copy of a core book(s) physically at the table.

because it's interesting to some and tells you everything you need to know about dice, it's not just about inking

I've got koplow dice, I like them the best, got them first of any of my dice. Pisses me off since I keep losing them, though.
Missing my d20, d12, and one of my d6s from it.

like said, it kills the feel actually rolling dice.

They're impractical for quickly figuring out the roll results.

>inb4 those are special deathwatch dice not d6s

I want a fuck ton of the d6s just for games like Shadowrun, or anything else mildly futuristic

Nothing makes me as sad as lost dice.

I've seriously stopped using sets because i lost a die and now i don't have a matching set.

I haven't done that in decades, but the ones I did back in the 80s were less than stellar. Maybe there is some technique or type of crayon I needed to use, but the "inking" isn't anywhere near as smooth and uniform as with a sharpie or paint pen.