Pro tip: Stop using the wrong dice for RPGs and here is why it matters

I run a D&D group at my local library on Thursday nights and I keep seeing people grab those cheap plastic dice from Amazon that come in a bag of 50 for like $12. The problem is those dice are almost never balanced right. I tested a set of 10 d20s from one of those bulk packs by rolling each one 100 times and writing down the results. Four of them landed on the same number over 20% of the time which is way off from where it should be. That might not matter for a casual game but when you are in a boss fight and someone keeps natting 20s or rolling 1s it totally kills the tension. I have a buddy who 3D prints his own dice and he showed me how to do a water float test to see if they are weighted wrong. Has anyone else dealt with bad dice messing up their sessions or do you just not care about balance lol

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jake6h ago

That cheap bag of 50 dice thing reminds me of the time I bought a bulk pack of miniatures and half of them arrived missing arms.

sage_park65h ago

That story about the bulk miniatures missing arms hits close to home actually. My group bought a bunch of those pre-painted plastic minis from a random lot online and we got a guy with no head and another one that looked like it melted in a car dashboard. We started calling him the "sunburned wizard" and it became a running joke for months. But honestly, I think the unbalanced dice thing is worse because at least a broken mini still works for roleplay, you just pretend the head fell off in battle. Bad dice can actually ruin a clutch moment if you don't catch it early.