Dice Delve: D&D Waterdeep Dragon Heist Dice

From the very first set of dice I bought from my local hobby store, there's just something cool about "official" products for your game. It's like saying, "Okay, here's what we recommend you play with." The first of these TSR dice were called "Dragon Dice" back in the day, and while they were a necessary item at the time, the dice were made out of terrible plastic that didn't last six months before they started cracking and chipping on every edge. By the time TSR had corrected their "official" dice, they had been supplanted by a horde of other, better dice manufacturers selling quality, high impact plastic dice that looked like jewels. Game over, TSR. Game over.

Eventually, TSR crept back into that corner of the gaming marketplace, and did so with some modest dice that were clearly sourced from a major manufacturer. No more of those soft pastel dice that chipped and cracked at the edges like mica! And while they never got that market share back, it was a nice side-item of sorts.

Now D&D is in the capable hands of Wizards of the Coast, and these guys know how to accessorize. Have you seen those spin-down life counters? Those cool d20s with the speckled pattern and the Magic: The Gathering symbol on the 20? Those are so cool! If they can do those, and produce them for every one of their M:TG sets, then a set of dice for D&D should be a walk in the park for them, right? ...Right? 

Well...um...you see...

D&D Waterdeep Dragon Heist Dice

Rating:  1/5

Billed as “Premium dice for the World’s Greatest Role-Playing Game,” these dice are packaged as an official accessory for the game module. Do the extra bells and whistles overcome the $24.95 price point?

Clarity   Yes
Heft       No

Color     No

Theme   No

Value     No

The Good: Well, these are certainly dice, and you can certainly roll them. They have numbers that are clearly inked and they are made of interesting plastic. I’m really trying to list off positive traits, here. Oh, I know! You get 4d6 and 2d20, moving everyone closer to a realistic amount of dice in a set. Someone is paying some attention to something, I guess. And the hit point counter is, well, very easy to use.

The Bad: For starters, the heft is all wrong. They are lightweight dice, and this is made more overt because the set includes two d20s, one of which is really oversized. The oversized d20 is heavier than a regular Chessex d20 but still feels light, especially given its size (I’m guessing 24mm). And the other d20 is smaller than a normal d20, maybe 15mm instead of 16mm. It’s noticeable. And it feels light and insubstantial. The other dice have the same heft to them, or lack thereof.

Then there’s the dice color; it’s a marbleized blackish-bluish-purplish color, depending on what kind of light the die is under and the angle from which you are viewing it. But unless you’re trying really hard to figure it out, the color reads as midnight blue or black. So, they picked a special plastic mix that you can’t really appreciate for all of its subtlety.

As for the theme, I have no idea what on Earth might make them Dragon Heist dice. There was a kind of lip-service effort made to make the set useful by including 4 d6 dice and the 2d20 dice, and the larger one is sporting the stylized ampersand in place of the 20. Unless the color figures prominently into the scenario, there is no theme to speak of.

And to pile insult to injury, this little clamshell of joy will set you back $25, or thereabouts. I do not think that the included Hit Point Counter is quite enough to push this over the twenty dollar mark. I think much of the price point is in the licensing. You’re buying a logo, and the dice look and feel like Koplow dice from the late 1980s. There’s not even a low-quality dice bag with the branded “&” on it. Twenty-five bucks. Sheesh. I thought the Q-Workshop dice were pricey. Apparently, WotC looked at those Official Pathfinder Dice and said, “Hold my beer.”

L to R: 34mm, whatever that
Dragon Heist size is, 16mm.

The Ugly: Why was this even a thing? Huh? Isn’t Wizards of the Coast making enough money on the books and the other, much more useful accessories and ancillary merchandise? If this is what all of their other dice sets are like, I am confident in keeping my distance from them. In essence, you’re popping for the large d20 with the logo (they just love that ampersand, don’t they?) and the hit point tracker, which is nice, but emphatically not worth the price tag. At all. Especially when everyone already has a hit point tracker; it’s called a character sheet and a pencil.

Recommendation: I cannot think of a single reason to add these to your collection or present them at a game table. They are too expensive for not enough product. I like that D&D ampersand, too, but not for that much money. I really hate to say it, too, because I feel like I’m picking on Wizards of the Coast after my horrible experience with their deluxe Art & Arcana book. But really, head of procurement at WotC: how hard is it to buy dice that don’t suck?

Ugh. These percentile dice suck. And they appear to be differently-sized, thanks to the tens 10 numbers, but they aren't. This will drive my slightly OCD brain insane. I mean, I'd go hatchet-murderer-crazy looking at these cock-eyed dice. You have no idea.  

I don’t even know why this product exists. There have been a number of these “official” dice sets for other D&D products, and I am not sure if this is an attempt to horn in on what Q-Workshop has been doing or if there is some other reason for it. But hey, if there are some of you who like to get a new set of dice when you start a new campaign, and if you are Jonesing for a fix, here’s what I would suggest. Go to any games retailer that sells new and loose dice. I found these guys online in 15 seconds. You can buy two sets of Chessex Dusty Blue with Coppery numbers for $11.00 and then add two more d6, d8, and d4 dice, for a grand total of $15.00. You will have nearly the same color scheme on these dice, a little bit easier to read, that feel heavier and more substantial in your hand, for about ten bucks less. If you really need a big-ass d20, they make one in the same color at the 34mm scale for four or five bucks, still under this product’s price point. With the leftover cash, you can buy yourself a matching blue or black velour dice bag to put them all in.

Funny thing is, if WotC wanted to, they could OWN this product by simply making a set of opaque dice in basic colors, the same size as all the other dice on the planet, with nice hefty feel to them, and in the quantities you really need to play the game, including extra d8 dice and so forth. They put a simple bag with the branded “&” on it and call them official D&D Dice and sell them for $20. That’s your marquee, must-have product, right there. No wonky colors. No hit point trackers. Just high quality dice, easy to read, in a smattering of attractive colors. I hope this isn’t a trend for them; releasing a bunch of junk with every new book. They need to stick to what they know, and moreover, what they can pull off.