ChessexPound-O-Dice

I recently started tabletop RPG gaming with a new group, and so, unsurprisingly, we needed a few sets of dice to go around. After being relatively impressed with the Wiz Dice 100+ dice pack, receiving 17 complete sets of polyhedral dice, I decided it was only fair to see what Chessex—by far the market leader in RPG Dice—have to offer in their similarly priced pack.I wasn't disappointed... but I wasn't overly impressed either.I actually got a fairly good number, and selection of dice. In my pack, I received 23 x d20, 9 x d12, 24 x d10, 6 x d10 percentile, 15 x d8. 14 x d6 (numeric), 8 x d6 (pipped), and 11 x d4, plus one complete set (which we will discuss later). In total, this was 110 random dice, plus 7 matched dice for 117 total dice. The dice were different sizes and shapes, with only a couple of duplicates.This was a similar number of dice as I received in the Wiz Dice set, though obviously, these were all matched sets. At most, you could make 9 complete (unmatched) sets from these dice, and then only using standard d10's in place of d%, though, to be fair, at least for D&D/Pathfinder, the one's you have extras in (d20's, d10's, d8's and d6's) are likely to get a lot more use than the d12's and d4's anyway, so this is no bad thing. This pack was actually purchased for that specific purpose—as spares or replacements when a particular dice is just not rolling your way, or when you need to roll multiples—rather than to be used as sets anyway.That said, I did receive enough really nice dice to build up three complete, unmatched sets that I am sure will be getting some play time. There were a lot of really nice speckled/granite dice, with cool contrasting numbers, which is a style Wiz Dice don't seem to produce, so I have built up sets primarily from these, though I was forced to use some plain D4s and a lustrous d% because there simply wasn't enough variety in these to completely stick with the speckled ones.Of the 110 random dice, the mix really was completely random, unlike the Wiz Dice pack. There were a hand full dice which had clearly come from the same batch across the various dice types, but aside from the one pack-in set, there was nothing even approaching a matched set.This, of course, is absolutely fine, and exactly what Chessex advertise, so there is really little reason to complain about this. Unlike some packs, I did not receive any unusual dice. I received no backgammon doubling cubes, no Warhammer scatter dice, or anything like that. I also received no "custom" dice (With a company logo replacing the 6 or 1) or no dice with blank faces, so in that regard, I'm pretty happy.Chessex advertise these dice as factory seconds (even though the Amazon listing does not say this, which I think is a real oversight on their part) so you expect to run into the usual scratches, gouges and number filling issues, and these were noticeable throughout the pack. Most dice manufacturers dip their dice in paint, then run them through a rock tumbler to remove the paint from everywhere but the numbers. This works well, but is not a perfect process, which can scratch the dice, remove some paint from the numbers, or even wear away some of the dice, and overly round their edges, and these are the most common types of issues which cause dice to be removed and sold as seconds.That said, of the 117 dice received, around 15 (or around 12% of the dice) were completely unusable because of how badly they are damaged. Of these, the majority were either cracked, significantly chipped, or had obviously been "tumbled" for far too long, and were visibly uneven. Three of the D4s for example, were significantly smaller than usual, so much so, that parts of the numbers had been worn off. Similarly, one of the D20's was almost round, to the point that it was impossible to get it to stand with the 14 side up, even when placed that way, it just rolled over onto another number.Additionally, three or four of the d20's, and a number of the pipped d6's were usable, but not as dice. They were noticeably more rounded on several edges than a usual d20/pipped d6, and I would not be confident that they would roll true. That said, they were not so round as the d20 previously mentioned, and could easily be used as a spin-down life counter, or +1 counter in a game like Magic the Gathering (which is what I will do with them).Still, overall, nearly 20% of the dice total cannot be used as dice, which is a significantly higher percentage than I would expect, which, given that the Amazon listing doesn't mention that they are factory seconds, certainly cost it one star.On the flip-side, however, I did get a very pleasant surprise when I opened the bag. My bag included four "precision" dice. Companies like Game Science sell dice which have not been dipped and tumbled, because they believe this makes them more accurate. I am not convinced it makes that much of a difference overall, but my bag included a D20, D12, D8 and D4 which had not been dipped or tumbled, and once I have filled the numbers with a crayon, I will give them a go and see if this is true. Worst case, I will keep them on hand in case I get a picky DM who doesn't like people using unreliable "cheap" dice. The d4 does not have the sharpest points, which I guess they do to prevent them breaking off while it is tumbled, but this will not effect their roll, and also means it is less painful if stepped on!The other thing, however, that I was most disappointed with, was the complete set.The Chessex website claims "This assortment features one complete 7-die polyhedral set of never-released speckled dice, available ONLY in this Pound O' Dice assortment!!" This would be pretty cool, if true, but in my case, it simply is not.In my case, the dice set was indeed unreleased—it was a hot pink set, which I have never seen before" but it is not a speckled set, instead it is an opaque variety.It's not too much of a problem in and of itself—it may have still been used by some in our group—although a little disappointing, as the speckled sets are much nicer. The bigger issue is that it is a faulty set. I understand that the dice in the mixed bag are seconds, but I didn't think that was supposed to be the case for the complete set. Three of the dice in the set (d4, d6, and d10) have noticeable chips along the edge of the dice which will prevent them from rolling true. This is a huge blow for this pack, and something that is not really easy to overlook.In my case, since I already had 17 complete sets from the Wiz Dice set, and these were really only for comparison and as spares, it is not going to prevent me from playing the game, but if a player had brought this hoping to build complete sets to play the game, this would be a really huge blow.Given that these sets also seem to be seconds—actually in worse condition than many of the mixed dice—it makes it really hard to recommend this pack over the Wiz Dice set. There is just so much being left to chance here, that, if you need complete sets of dice to start RPG gaming with, you'd be much better just buying a few complete chessex sets, or going with the Wiz Dice pack.This is a fun way to add some interesting extra dice to your collection if you need some spares, but because of the true random nature of the pack, is a much harder recommendation than the Wiz Dice set.

Breakdown:d4 - 14d6/numbers - 7d6/dots - 14d8 - 8d10 - 26d% - 5d12 - 5d20 - 19+ the full set for 7 more. 105 in total.Percentile isn't an issue since it's just more d10s basically, but only five 5 d12 is a bit disappointing compared to how many d10+% and d20 are in there. The colour split seems to be very brown. Very very brown. Dark, chocolate, speckled with blue, speckled with red, white numbers, yellow numbers. Brown.It's fair enough though as that makes it a bit easier to put together makeshift sets even though they aren't identical across different faces.Can't confirm if any show any bias as have not used them enough or salt water tested, but for condition only one seems to have any shape issue (a d10 with a flattened point), and one d8 has some colouration where the number colour has bled. The rest are pretty much as expected of dice.

Quite a nice mix of dice, in my pound I received (excluding the complete set):D20 - 15D12 - 5D10 - 30D% - 5D8 - 12D6 -11D6-pip - 7D4 - 8This totalled to 100 dice with the complete set.Ideally I would have preferred fewer d10s and maybe a few more d% and d12s but the spread is fine. There's certainly enough of each dice type here to supply a gaming table's needs. Since most people checking this out will be looking for dice for games such as DnD or Pathfinder, it's really good that I've yet to hear of a pound that is seriously light on d20s; not getting many d12s or d%s hardly matters when they're some of the least used dice in your game.The mix of colours in the bag was pretty nice too with some colour-schemes I really would like to find a full set in (in particular, a couple of two-tone speckled d6s in green-blue and orange-red as well as a purple-teal d4 caught my eye)The quality of the dice is really good. They seem to roll more or less fine and any issues are largely cosmetic ones. The only time a cosmetic imperfection is an issue is on the d20s where sometimes the underscore that differentiates the 6 and 9 are gone or very difficult to make out.The complete set was fine but I'm not totally sold on the flesh-pink colour. They're not horrendous but they're not exactly that nice either. From what I can gather there are 10 possible full sets available in the PoD, so I'm really not sure how a set like this made the shortlist.