D&D 5E (2014) What is best company for dice?

[mcbobbo]

As for color I will say that IME the ugliest dice typically kill PCs with higher frequency. I used to have a speckled pink one that I would only roll when I wanted things to get more lethal...

 

[Joe Liker]

a long roll on an rpg die is just more time for the die to find its 'rut' caused by oddities in its shape. the fact that Game Science dice don't do this is a selling point.

and even then, just put a little more energy into rolling your dice and they'd tumble around just as much as a chessex.

It's not a selling point if the so-called "rut" doesn't actually result in a statistically significant variance from the expected distribution.

If you still believe Game Science dice are significantly more balanced and random even after performing a statistical trial on your other dice, it means you have bought into a load of hooey.

 

[Mistwell]

Gamescience is a scam.

No, they are not. He never claims they are made to Casino quality. He claims they are more accurate than the competition for gaming dice...and he's right, they are. As this independent analysis indicates. They concluded, "Crystal Caste translucent dice are clearly the least consistent dice, Chessex and other styles of Crystal Caste appear to be more consistent than Crystal Caste translucent but less consistent than GameScience and Koplow dice, with Koplow opaque dice representing a “middle of the road” option." So, no scam. If you want more consistent dice, you should buy GameScience or Koplow. If you don't much care, then Chessex or non-translucent Crystal Caste is fine. And translucent Crystal Caste is the worst.

Plus, every single time you get a gamescience die, you have to sand off the extra elements that are always on them. It's like they were all molded on a large rack and then broken off, so there's extra bits of plastic on them, that you have to sand off. The end user sanding off plastic, doesn't sound like it would do a very good job at ensuring the dice get a scientific outcome.

And this I find hilarious.

ALL dice are made this way. It's just that competitors are sticking the dice in essentially a rock tumbler...to round ALL the edges, including the sprue. You are much more accurate in carefully removing the sprue, than any dice company that is bulk rolling the entire die, sprue and all, in a polishing device. Because you're just removing the sprue - not all those other edges in an essentially random method.

If Chessex uses a process of: molding, then cutting, then polishing, then inking the numbers.
Gamescience only does two of those, then somehow tries to convince you its better.

First, Gamescience does offer inked dice, it's just up to you which you buy. Second, yeah, "polishing" means "dumping them all in essentially a rock polisher" to make all the edges rounded. That is not a "feature" for many people, it's a "bug". It means some edges are more flat than others. It means stacking those dice on top of each other will get you a more random height, not as fixed a height. And that's provable.

 

[diaglo]

i own well over 13000 dice.

my favorites are my originals. which are crappy as all heck. but they are what made me love the game.

Tech Sgt Lou Zocchi makes the best dice. by far. over anyone else i have bought dice from.

yes, i have crystal caste, koplow, gamescience sans lou, q workshop, and chessex. i have others too. some homemade and some from various board games and boxed sets.

 

[Uder]

Tech Sgt Lou Zocchi makes the best dice. by far. over anyone else i have bought dice from..

This used to be true, the company he sold off to however puts out inferior goods, with inferior materials.

 

[ColinChapman]

This used to be true, the company he sold off to however puts out inferior goods, with inferior materials.

That was indeed true; however, Lou recently bought the dice and manufacturing back (in part due to the complaints regarding increasingly poor quality, IIRC) and is working on getting GameScience dice back to where they were in terms of quality and production.

Jargogle

 

[Uder]

That was indeed true; however, Lou recently bought the dice and manufacturing back (in part due to the complaints regarding increasingly poor quality, IIRC) and is working on getting GameScience dice back to where they were in terms of quality and production.

Jargogle

That's fantastic news. Looking around the net, though, the latest news I found was almost a year ago. Does Mr. Zocchi know about Kickstarter?

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Most of my dice are Chessex dice. I have some Crystal Caste dice as well as a number of sets from unknown manufacturers.

Personally the biggest things I look for in my dice are that they are easy to read and they look cool. All the Chessex dice I own are easy to read and look really good.

Are Chessex dice perfectly weighted? No.
Are they good enough for me to use in a game with friends? Yes.
Will I inevitably roll low when making spell saving throws for my monsters and have a CR17 monster curb stomped after falling victim to Grease and Glitterdust spells? It is almost guaranteed.

 

[Uder]

I don't see the bias of rounded dice mattering too much unless you play bucket-of-dice games like Warhammer 40k (rolling 100 d6s is called "turn 1" for my Tau or Imperial Guard) or RPGs that use dice-pools.

Throwing aside dice bias, I love pine dice the best for their light feel and bounciness. I haven't sprung for any of the more expensive/exotic polyhedral wooden dice at Artisen Dice yet, but Xmas is coming...

 

[ColinChapman]

That's fantastic news. Looking around the net, though, the latest news I found was almost a year ago. Does Mr. Zocchi know about Kickstarter?

Yeah, it's great news; I have some older GS dice that are very good, but when I purchased some of the ones manufactured by Gamestation, they were pretty shoddy. Here's hoping Lou gets things up and running properly again soon.

If I'm not mistaken, this is his new website:
http://www.gamesciencedice.com/

Not much up there yet, but as he's only just got everything back I wouldn't expect a lot to appear just yet.