About CatMage Dice
Hey! I’m Alister, owner of CatMage Dice! I’m based in Canada, where I live with my partner and our two cats Finch and Ollie. I originally started my dicemaking journey by wanting to make handmade gifts for my D&D group, and fell in love with the process and materials. I’ve been experimenting with different ways to create unique-looking dice ever since, and now want to share my sets with you!
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Contact
Want to get in touch? Send me a message!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are so many products out of stock? Will you be restocking [X] design?
CatMage Dice sells handmade items, and the number of dice that can be produced is limited by my small-scale manufacturing process. As such, I don’t have the ability to mass-produce and stock designs on an ongoing basis. Most of my sets for sale are created as experiments for fun, or are the first rounds of commissions that don’t meet the customer’s vision, and thus are generally one-of-a-kind. Occasionally I will reproduce a past one-off design and make more available, but I make no promises that any particular design will be recreated.
What is different about your dice designs?
The design of my dice includes an outline around the number on the highest face of each die, to subtly highlight maximum rolls without replacing the number itself. For the D10 and D% dice, the 0 and 00 faces have been chosen as the high faces.
The D10 in my sets has also been slightly modified, replacing the “0” on the high face to instead display “10.” This makes it quicker to read the result when rolling D10s in your standard games, and makes the D10 a die that actually rolls from 1-10. For this same reason, the “00” face on the percentile die has been outlined as the high face, to represent a die that rolls from 10-100. I feel that this change benefits players who roll D10s more often in their average games, and outweighs the rarity of needing to roll D100 during gameplay.
To roll D100 with my sets by rolling both the D10 and the D% dice, simply treat the 10 face on the D10 as a 0, unless the D% displays 00. The rest of the roll is calculated normally.
- 1 and 30 = 31
- 10 and 30 = 30
- 3 and 00 = 3
- 10 and 00 = 100
Are your dice balanced?
Handmade resin dice in general are not precision-machined to ensure an exact weight distribution, and for that reason alone I would not recommend using any handmade dice outside of a lighthearted TTRPG setting.
My dice design features a thin outline around the highest face, which is comparable to other dicemakers who opt to replace the high number with the maker’s logo. This engraved outline is the same depth as the numbers, and I’ve found with a chi-squared test that this does not affect the outcome of rolls for standard tabletop play.
If and when I use inclusions in the dice that are not already made of resin, I do my best to center them so that the weight is evenly-distributed.
Why are handmade dice so expensive?
Large-scale dice manufacturers often use plastic injection molding to produce many batches of dice at once, and then normally employ some form of tumbler to polish the ink off the faces and smooth out the surfaces. As such, they are able to produce a high volume of dice at once to sell at a lower cost.
Smaller dicemakers (such as CatMage Dice!) normally don’t have access to the same materials and production equipment that manufacturing companies do. Our dice are handcast with resin in individual molds, each face inked one at a time, and the faces sanded/polished to maintain the die’s sharp edges without putting them in a tumbler.
Artisanal dicemakers’ prices are a combination of experience, small-scale production methods, cost of materials, time and labor spent working on each set. You are purchasing pieces of artwork from an artist that also serve a functional purpose, and we thank you for your support!
What are your shipping, turnaround, and return policies?
I ship internationally from Canada using Canada Post, and will provide you with a tracking number for your order once it’s shipped. Buyer is responsible for any customs or import fees collected by their country on delivery for goods being shipped from another country. Your dice will be packaged in a cardboard box mailer with shredded paper padding to keep them safe during transit so they don’t get chipped or cracked.
Orders for auction sets are normally shipped in 1-2 business days once paid for. Custom commissions are worked on based on the order of the waitlist: once you’ve reached the top of the list and placed your order, expect about 1-2 weeks to produce and ship your dice depending on how many rounds of revisions are needed.
I will offer full refunds for sets that arrive damaged or get lost in transit. I’ll do my best to set right any orders that are mis-delivered due to an incorrect address, but it’s ultimately the customer’s responsibility to double check that the shipping address is correct on your confirmation email. Since these dice are all made by hand and not machined, they may include small imperfections such as microbubbles or rough edges from sanding down sprues and flashing: I try to make every set as perfect as possible, but I won’t accept returns based on these reasons alone.
Who's the bunny character in your website photos???
The purple and white bunny mini is Ruby, my harengon warlock that I play in a Wilds Beyond the Witchlight campaign! The photos from that set were all taken by my generous DM who runs that campaign- thank you Shiloh!!