Arstechnica | Here’s what a $300 set of official, sapphire-loaded D&D dice looks like

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  2019 was both the fifth anniversary of D&D's Fifth Edition and the 45th anniversary of the game itself, so series handlers Wizards of the Coast decided to commemorate it with a whopping $300 set of dice. The, er, "gem" of the collection is this D20 with a sapphire in-laid to its "20" spot. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

On the occasion of Dungeons & Dragons' 45th anniversary this November, series handlers Wizards of the Coast celebrated by announcing a rarity from the company: official, limited, super-pricey dice. Are you as old as, or older than, D&D? Does that make you feel so allegiant to the game that you'd like to own a gem-infused 20-sided die, with a set of aluminum dice to match?

If so, Wizards had you in its sights with its $300 Sapphire Anniversary Dice Set. Only 1,974 were made (get it?), and from the look of things, they haven't sold out as of press time. While we'd never recommend spending so much money on tabletop dice—we tend to lose our cheapos thanks to errant, booze-soaked tosses amongst friends—we figured we'd at least photograph and describe the set that surprise-arrived at the Ars Orbital HQ earlier today.

The above gallery tells most of the story, though it only goes so far to convey the glory of a shiny blue sapphire inside of a 20-sided die. We've yet to rig up our dice-rolling robots to test Wizards' claim that an in-laid gemstone doesn't negatively affect rolling weight for a D20. Instead, I rolled the thing 100 times while uploading this report's images, and my tally was... drumroll, please... two critical hits, and three critical misses. Hmm.

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