Testing a D20 for Balance - the Death Die Results! | Dungeon Master's Blog

Testing a Twenty-Sided Die Used in Dungeons and Dragons

Do you have a lucky die that just rolls 20's? Or maybe Cornellius the Bard was undone because your D20 pulls up an inordinate amount of sixes. In my games, players have cursed my trusty old red D20 for years. It's been dubbed "the death die" or the "die of death" by more than one player. I've had it for ages, if I remember correctly my friend Jeff and I found it in an old Red Box starter set we got from a yard sale in roughly 1991. To be fair, I can't blame them for hating that die, as I pointed out in the Mürmaids Episode 3, It has killed more characters than dragons and dysentery combined.

Well, your days of wondering if your dice are cursed or just improperly manufactured (or maybe you just have terrible luck) are over. Here's how you can test a role playing die to see if it is evenly balanced.

How to Test a Die for Balance or Weight

1. Mix table salt and water together to create a solution with a higher density than the die. It may take a considerable amount of salt, and some time for the salt to dissolve into a solution.
2. Once the die can float, set it in the salt-water solution, and allow the solution to settle.
3. Gently push the die in the solution to turn it, and watch to see which number rests on top.
4. Repeat turning the die in the water, and take note of the number which floats to the top. If it rests on the same number an uneven amount of times, your die is improperly weighted.

If you cannot get your die to float in a salt-water solution, even after waiting a significant amount of time for the salt to dissolve and saturate, you can try using granulated sugar instead, since water can hold significantly more sugar than it can salt to create a more dense solution. Be warned, though, that this will make a syrupy, sticky mess. Trust us....

Testing the Die of Death

So how did it go with the die of death? Well, that's complicated. Salt wouldn't work, so we moved to sugar. We were able to test most of the dice I own in the sugar water, which allowed us to see that the experiment could succeed. In fact, it turns out that the newer Chessex Brand Dice I have (the yellow ones), are, in fact, weighted improperly. The D20 floats up to 20 every time, and the D12 floats up to 12 every time.

After a tedious amount of stirring, testing stirring and testing (thank you Kathryn), the evil, accused red die simply would not float. It has proven to be untestable. I've concluded that it is simply not a normal die, and it laughs at our attempts to understand its wonders. While most die have a pretty standard makeup of 99% PMMA and 1% dyes, pigments etc, the die of death is only 98% PMMA, 1% other, and 1% The Devil Himself.

Feel free to watch the comical attempts at measuring this in the video below. Near the end, if you listen very, very closely, you might even hear Lucifer laugh at us as his minion foiled us once again.
Here you go:

Video: Testing a 20-Sided Die for Balance