just came across this comic book article about daggerheart at gen con. I find it interesting that daggerheart is moving away from d20s.
just came across this comic book article about daggerheart at gen con. I find it interesting that daggerheart is moving away from d20s.
Not just that, the d12 has a very useful amount of divisors (2, 3, 4 & 6), which gives a lot of options for different tables and it means it can technically replace a d2, d3, d4 or d6 …for a higher number of divisors in a single die you’d need d24 or d30, which isn’t very common/practical.
It could theoretically also be used as a d10 with 2 extra numbers that can be used for critics/fumbles (that’s what The One Ring does, their custom dice is a d12 with an “eye of Sauron”, a “Gandalf rune”, then numbers from 1 to 10).
It nicely matches the handles of a clock, so you could use it to represent direction/angle, as well as time.
It conveniently matches the months of the year, which could be used when you need a random date, or could also be used as a way to get a weather estimate, with winter months representing colder weather, summer hotter, Autumn rainy, etc.
A lot of occult / religion stuff matches to the number 12, so you could use it to determine, for example, astrological signs/houses (it might be useful when determining random personality / values for an NPC), Chinese zodiac (if you prefer that one), the 12 Olympian gods (each linked to a profession/theme), the 12 main Hindu gods (if you are more familiar with those), etc.
It’s a pity the d12 is often so overlooked.
Using a d12 as a d10 with extra bits is absolutely genius for me. I’m working on a dice-pool based TTRPG system that is based on d10, but I may incorporate this fun tidbit to get some extra juice out of dice rolls.