Put Your d20 On Trial!

Ever wondered if your d20 was balanced correctly? Concerned that you have a die that always rolls low? A guy called Daniel Fisher has the solution for you - a trick that golfers apparently use to test their golf balls! All you need is your d20, and a glass of salt water (room temperature water with a load of salt in it - as much as needed to make the die float).

[video=youtube;VI3N4Qg-JZM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI3N4Qg-JZM[/video]
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[turkeygiant]

Wow that's really disappointing, i just bought a ton of d10s from chessex to use with the new edition of Exalted and now I think I am going to have to test them...

 

[Ricochet]

Tried this with a huge cup of water, over ½ salt in it. Nothing floats. Youtube thread indicates my dice are good quality because they just sink.

 

[Greybird]

I did a few of my dice, and every one was off. I'm not too concerned, though. While imperfect dice would be a problem for a scientific study with tens of thousands for rolls, in gameplay it would be largely irrlevant. These aren't loaded dice with lead plugs, they're slightly off balance d20s. What the die lands on is 3% balance, 97% physics. Your die roll is determined at the point of release. An off die might affect the roll one time every couple of sessions, and that effect is not going to be to push it to 20 or 1 every time. Look at a d20. Properly made d20s have the numbers clustered in such a way that they're spread out. The 20 will be next to the 14, 8, and 2. The 1 is next to the 7, 13, and 19. Being slightly off balance will very occasionally push it to one of those numbers, and even then only when the physics put the die teetering on the edge of one of those anyway.

 

[turkeygiant]

Tried this with a huge cup of water, over ½ salt in it. Nothing floats. Youtube thread indicates my dice are good quality because they just sink.

Ok so I just tried this with a set of grey-white speckled dice from Chessex, I have three full sets of d4-d20 in the same colour for D&D. Looking at the d20s, two of them floated to the surface with 1 showing every single time...crap, and one of them wouldn't float no matter how much salt I added, I had the water saturated with as much salt as I could get to dissolve and it wouldn't float.

So that is telling me that two of my dice are heavier on the 20 side making them more likely to roll 1s, and one of the dice is much denser that the other two despite being visually identical on the surface.

 

[TarionzCousin]

...crap, and one of them wouldn't float no matter how much salt I added, I had the water saturated with as much salt as I could get to dissolve and it wouldn't float.

In the video, you can see the undiluted salt at the bottom of the glass. I am pointing this out to speculate that maybe you need to add even more salt.

My Chessex dice are very pretty.

 

[Nylanfs]

I had three dice that I had to double amount of salt to get to float.

 

[turkeygiant]

In the video, you can see the undiluted salt at the bottom of the glass. I am pointing this out to speculate that maybe you need to add even more salt.

My Chessex dice are very pretty.

I had about half an inch of undissolved salt at the bottom by the end and the water was super cloudy, I could be wrong but I think I hit the saturation point of the water.

 

[VoidAdept]

In order to increase the salinity of the water I tried very hot water, nearly boiling. I had a half-inch of undissolved salt on the bottom of the bowl I was using, and salt crystals were actually forming on the surface as the water evaporated. If I remember my high school chemistry, I'd say it was as saturated as I could get it.

Three of my d20s floated. Every one of my other dice sank like rocks.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Three of my d20s floated. Every one of my other dice sank like rocks.

Would you say they were "balanced" or "unbalanced" rocks?

 

[ingeloak]

Tried this with a huge cup of water, over ½ salt in it. Nothing floats. Youtube thread indicates my dice are good quality because they just sink.

if you notice, the bottom of his glass had salt in it. the water has a saturation point where salt will no longer dissolve. you probably need to add more until you reach that point. im not 100% sure of this, but he said "a lot of salt."

you might also try a smaller glass