Capturing Lightning Creating a Storm Cloud D20!

[@mainchain]

That is absolutely stunning!

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you so much!! 😊

[@AzureAlliance31]

Extremely underrated channel & videos

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you! We'll get there, just gotta keep doing good work! 😊

[@Pyolis]

This, hands down, is the best die I've watched you create. Sometimes simple is best. Epic piece.

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you so much! I totally agree. While I do love a lot of the fancier cuts, there's just something super satisfying about a good old fashioned sharp edge D20. 😊

[@pufthemajicdragon]

Your sister is VERY fortunate to have you as a sister, and this is an AMAZING gift! The hard work and skill, and the work that went into developing the skill, this is one of those gifts of a lifetime. It's a huge die, but I think that's well-suited for its purpose as a gift, and as much of a display piece as a functional die. And the size of the thunderstorm limits how much you can cut into it. I'm reminded of one of my characters, Qualna. We were doing Skulls & Shackles and I made a dark elf bard. We were very shenaniganny with that adventure, the GM let us get away with a lot of nonsense. We turned our pirate ship into a ghost ship; I used Whispering Wind to cast Haunting Mist and Message over distance (shenanigans); then when we caught the ship I used Blur to make myself and crew appear ghostly in the mist, Lullaby and Sleep to pacify the target crew, and Charm Person to get members of the crew to turn on each other. Then we'd mop up with combat anyone who made their saving throws. If I wanted to have fun I'd use my racial spells, like Faerie Fire and Darkness to mess with the enemy crew. Due to the spells, we could leave survivors and nobody would recognize us when we put into port, so we could operate across the Inner Sea with impunity. OOOH goodness do I miss that character... It was OP but it was FUN!

[@SageAndNettle]

Thanks so much!! I put a ton of love into this one and I'm glad it shows through! Qualna sounds like an amazing character! When they sail out to sea next, I'll make sure they make a guest appearance! 😊

[@pufthemajicdragon]

@@SageAndNettle Haha nice! I'd be honored if Qualna made an appearance! Her name means "Ocean Breaker", and I vaguely recall she chose the name herself after escaping from slavery. Don't ask me where I found the translation, I didn't write that down and don't know if it's accurate lol She was a level 6 female Drow bard in PF1e. Str 15, Dex 19, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 15, CHA 21 (I had REALLY good rolls). I put skill points in Bluff, Sense Motive, Intimidate, Perform, and one point in Spellcraft just in case someone tries to counterspell her. She wore a chain shirt +1 and amulet of natural armor +1 underneath an entertainer's outfit and wielded a masterwork short sword. I don't remember how but she got herself hold of a Besmara's Tricorne and had a Farglass spyglass. She spoke Abyssal, Aquan, Common, Elven, and Undercommon. In addition to the aforementioned spells she also had Sow Thought and Vicious Mockery. Of course you'll have to make a lot of adjustments for your level 15 party and whatever system you run :) But hopefully that gives you a bit of insight into who she is and how she handles herself. I would LOVE to know what adventures you take her on! But if you make her a combat encounter, her death will not be canon :P We followed the Skull & Shackles adventure, so she started out level 1 in The Wormwood Mutiny, press-ganged into bilge pump duty on the pirate ship Wormwood. Part of a skeleton crew on the newly captured Man's Promise, she and her compatriots were marooned in a storm. With a LOT of patience, she used her Mend cantrip to repair the ship, after which they mutinied against the survivors loyal to the Wormwood and took the Promise as their own, rechristening it the something something I can't remember and for the life of me can't find it in my notes.. Qualna was elected captain. They sailed to Tidewater Rock, conquering it and claiming it as their new home base.

[@AarynGulledge]

@@pufthemajicdragon I still play PF1e when my gaming group desires, and we had a GRAND campaign playing as privateers, hired to go fetch rare and valuable items with our void-jammer (spelljammer across realms/planes, I dunno, I just had fun). We had a LOT of fun interfering with rival trade groups, making good with local civilizations to help their trade, and making a TON of money for ourselves, not to mention a significant name to be reckoned with. Those are some AMAZING stats, but it's really how you use to stats that determines how influential and memorable the character is. The dice we use to play the characters are aspects of the whole play experience, and rolling nat 20's in critical situations with incredible dice just makes the whole adventure that much more memorable and epic! @SageAndNettle Keep crafting epic dice for epic adventures!

[@pufthemajicdragon]

@@AarynGulledge Yeah, the dice rolled well for Qualna's attributes, but those attributes really didn't have much impact on playing her. She was fun to play because she was clever in how she used what she had to solve problems (the biggest problem being "how do we get more booty"). Over the course of her adventures, that cleverness created an aura of power and mystery that she leaned into and amplified with more clever tricks at every turn. Not to mention the pure joy that comes from being the magical mystery ghost ship.

[@SageAndNettle]

Haha I love that! She honestly sounds like an incredible character! I always love hearing your suggestions. There's just something so amazing about characters that people have put to much creativity into, and they're always just so incredibly inspiring. I'm not sure when my group will set sail again, but I can already imagine some absolutely incredible moments spending a few session sailing alongside The Promise. 😊 Thank you for all of your amazing stories! They always spur such great inspiration!

[@joegeomancer6978]

Wow... im speechless with hella goose bumps. That monolog at the end with the reveal was awe-inspiring. you've definitely have subscriber out of me. Can't wait to see more. id love to see more character themed die. as a 10 year DM I've got plenty if you need suggestions. lol

[@SageAndNettle]

Thanks so much! A lot of that goes to my wonderful players who create such amazing stories! I'm so grateful I can pull such wonderful inspiration from them! Also, I'm always on the hunt for good hand-made NPCs. I love hearing character inspirations that people think match my dice!

[@azhain]

Awesome as always!

[@SageAndNettle]

Thanks for the support! 😊

[@DubulaUmfundisi]

Very cool die and I love the story telling at the end of this videos.

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you so much! We've made told some absolutely incredible stories at our table, so I have a lot to pull from! 😊

[@Cryptkeeper-cp4wr]

An awesome and epic piece. Definitely a collector item for your sister to have at the table as she plays.

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you! She's been in my group from the very beginning and I'm so happy I could finally make something nice for her and her character! 😊

[@daresnems2370]

An absolutely gorgeous dice!!! It is my favorite one so far and I am super excited what you will create next

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you so much!! Totally agree, this is definitely one of my favorites as well! There's just so much love that went into this piece. My sister has been in my group from the very beginning and I'm so glad I could create something so beautiful for her and her character! 😊

[@gEtar87]

Nice

[@SageAndNettle]

Thanks!

[@AarynGulledge]

A simple but incredibly elegant die. Well done! Hopefully, your experience polishing glass will translate to polishing obsidian, once you decide to tackle that hurdle. Good luck on your adventures!! Happy New Year, and may your future be full of worthy challenges and satisfying successes. I can't wait to see what you have in store!

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you so much, I always appreciate your support! Yes, this has absolutely quelled any concern I had for cutting some of that beautiful obsidian! Honestly, with how nicely this cut and how easily it polished up, I'm even more excited to try some of them out. Happy New Year to you as well! I hope you have a New Year filled with joy, inspiration, and success in all your pursuits! May the dice gods bestow their blessings upon thee! 😊

[@Lily-gr1ct]

I'm a glass artist and I've been wanting to cut one of my marbles into a d20 for a while now. The result looks phenomenal. My uncle is a jeweller (although in another country) so I might have to ask him to help out

[@Loko-wl7fo]

Stunning!

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you!

[@Loko-wl7fo]

@SageAndNettle I have a large (certified?) raw sapphire and was wondering if you would be willing to use your skills to make a D20 from it?

[@ssteele1812]

She's going to need a yoga mat to roll that thing on! Lol. When I first saw the sphere, I was thinking you were going to be lucky to get all the meet points and not cut into the bottom of the lightning. The final product looks awesome and the storm is centered perfectly.

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you so much! I took a few minutes before cutting to make sure I had my dop and stone aligned juuuuuust right. I was worried that I would end up cutting into the cloud at the top, but it totally worked out. I had some back up plans just in case, but I'm really happy that it came together this nicely. It's definitely a CHONK but it honestly rolls surprisingly well! Haha! 😊

[@foldionepapyrus3441]

I too was impressed with how well centred that storm turned out to be, can't have been easy lining it up so well when the original sphere had no registration or orientation aids, with the centre of the sphere perhaps not even being a suitable centre for the die...

[@chrisjames7803]

I always loved pulling the resist off,, you knew your piece was nearly finally ready.. Loved this, really enjoyed the lapping, I blew glass for 20 years and loved coldworking!

[@SageAndNettle]

Thanks so much! It's always so satisfying seeing everything come together. I don't have a lot experience with glass, but this piece was an absolutely pleasure to work on! I put a ton of work in and I'm really glad you enjoyed it! 😊

[@chrisjames7803]

@@SageAndNettle a ton is an understatement.. made me almost miss the taste inside my respirator...

[@maxbarbee989]

Looks great! how long did it take to polish each facet with that Cerium Oxide lap?

[@SageAndNettle]

Thank you!! I did prepolish and polish in about 8 or so hours per side. I did have to go back through prepolish on a few of the faces, which took some extra time. But I would say each polished up in about 30 or so minutes per face, which is pretty quick for such large faces, and much faster than some of the other stones I've worked on! I'm very happy with how the lap worked, and would absolutely recommend it! 😊

[@whatthefunction9140]

Doesnt cutting the numbers out change the weight balance

[@SageAndNettle]

It's a pretty contentious question, but most people agree that it's not enough to really effect the balance of a die in standard play. Even standard resin/plastic die have material removed for the numbers. I opted to sand blast the numbers in rather shallow, since I was just going for a frosted effect. So these have even less material removed than what I would normally do to hold paint. Hope this helps! 😊

[@whatthefunction9140]

@SageAndNettle wounder if you could get gold leaf to stick

[@SageAndNettle]

Oooo that's a great idea! I've used gold paint in a few of my dice, but I've never tried gold leaf. I could totally make that work! Thanks for the suggestion! 😊

[@whatthefunction9140]

@@SageAndNettle ❤️

[@foldionepapyrus3441]

If you want to get really technical no die is perfectly balanced, it just is not possible to actually make it perfect in the real world - though it might just be possible to make it too perfect for our current measurement devices to prove otherwise. And the usual mass produced die are usually imperfect enough it isn't hard to show it at home with similar methods to propeller balancing jigs. But if you then roll that imperfect die many times the distribution will look reasonable. As the actual impact on the rolls of being even quite badly off balance accidentally is pretty small - Assume its 5% heavier on the nat 1 side than any other face as it has the least material removed with the 18 being the lightest face if you were to only be counting up to the cut depth for the numbers (as under that we assume a perfectly balanced material). Then consider the total mass of each face down to that depth - which depending on the cut depth will vary but it probably doesn't even make up maybe 10% of the die's total mass for every single face we are considering - the numbers are quite shallow. So of that 10% that is the outer shell each face if there were all identical makes up only 0.5% of the die's total mass, and the variation between them is we assumed 5% so 5% of 0.5% of the dies total mass*... It just doesn't move the COM of the die meaningfully. And you can change those assumptions to be much worse and still not shift the COM enough to really make a meaningfully weighted die, now if you really wanted to make a deliberately weighted 'gemstone' die you almost certainly could, cut deeper on some faces, fill the numbers with heavier 'paint', don't put the numbers in the normal order and subtly alter the geometry etc. But really to do it effectively with a transparent die would be tricky unless the base material is already very unbalanced (which with natural rock it really could be). *technically this isn't strictly accurate mathematically as in one case we are comparing the heaviest face to the lightest, then we just assume the weight of those faces based on an even distribution - its hard to write maths in normal English, but the concept is clear enough I hope