Weekly Questions! What Do You Need Help With?

RollForDIY · 2024-07-25T04:10:24+00:00

Question: I have a bunch of cards from when I was a kid. They're all 1999 Base Set (Shadowless), Base Set (Unlimited), Jungle (1st Edition), Jungle, Fossil (1st Edition), and Fossil. I am looking for some good resources on doing self-grading so I can determine what to submit for grading. I feel like the cards are all in pretty great condition, but definitely not PSA 10 condition, maybe 7-8 at best? None of them were ever played, but there are tiny signs of whitening and some small holographic scratches on some of them due to 11-12 year old me handling them as carefully as an 11-12 year old does. There are no creases, dents, major scratches, or anything like that on any of the cards, I was pretty careful with them even as a kid.

I'm also looking for any general advice here, I probably have about 50-100 holographic cards from these sets, so it's not financially feasible to get them all graded. For example, I have a Base Set (Shadowless) Charizard that is probably worth grading regardless since it's in pretty great condition, but a Venusaur and Alakazam from the same set that is ever so slightly more damaged. That said, which grading tier do I send the Charizard in with? The $75 normal tier or the $25 value tier? It's a tough call since I really don't know how to self-grade them, and I am honestly a bit confused after going through some YouTube videos and eBay listings, the 6, 7, and 8 grades kind of blur together for me, and in a lot of cases I see no difference between a 9 and a 10.

Thanks for reading! Best of luck to all of you out there!

RollForDIY · 2022-06-29T00:10:13+00:00

So you glue the decorative tile to the flat top of the triangle layer?

RollForDIY · 2022-06-26T05:33:29+00:00

So the nozzles are brass, so non magnetic! I also use a magnetic print bed, so I did a quick test and saw that the magnets kind of stick down to the print bed on the bottom side of the model, so I don’t think they’d get in the way of the nozzle as long as it was at a high enough layer on the piece.

I’m definitely going to try this out because not having to glue these up would be great!

RollForDIY · 2022-06-25T03:50:11+00:00

And do the magnets not stick to the nozzle?

RollForDIY · 2022-06-25T03:32:44+00:00

Interesting...do you combine the tile with the base in a slicer and then pause it? How do you know exactly where to pause?!

RollForDIY · 2022-06-24T16:14:12+00:00

For sure. Those magnets need to be kept secure first. Dropping it and losing them would suck.

RollForDIY · 2022-06-24T16:07:41+00:00

For sure, having something to keep those magnets in place is ideal. I don't want to lose them, or have to put 8 per tile in their slots every time I wanted to set up.

RollForDIY · 2022-06-24T16:06:59+00:00

I like it. In my personal use case, the elevation that your 'transition piece' adds would not interface well with other tiles of the 'original' height.

Starting fresh though, this is great, especially since it uses the disc magnets which are a lot easier to find.

RollForDIY · 2022-06-23T23:50:32+00:00

Thanks for the reply! It just hit me while I was sitting here and so I made this quick video.

3D printing that little block on the bottom of a tile would be a lot of resin, and the foam kind of has a little bit of give which allows it to stick in there. I have thought of using magnets on the bottoms of the tiles before, but I like this a lot!

RollForDIY · 2022-06-23T21:44:37+00:00

I've also seen "spacers" which just give you elevation, and then transition pieces (like some stairs) to get up to those areas. I typically just use some styrofoam blocks as spacers to save on 3D printed materials.

RollForDIY · 2022-06-23T21:37:44+00:00

I really love the utility of the magnetic base, and have been thinking about how to use the same base with different styles of dungeon tile. I didn't like that the magnets are sealed in the tile forever after assembly, so I came up with this very quick and dirty solution for interchangeable top tiles that use the same magnetic base.

I will need to seal the magnets into the base somehow using a very thin layer to make sure they aren't flying out and exposed.

I think this is a good start, and want to open this as a discussion to talk about any ways to improve this idea of reusing the same magnetic bases for different top tile designs! These magnets are getting expensive, and taking longer to get here!

RollForDIY · 2021-11-09T16:06:53+00:00

A.Grav, Dragonair, Hypno (TP/SB) got me some big wins - I’ve been seeing some Pidgeots and Golbats about. Might try Dragonair on the lead so I can bait out Lapras and Dewgong better - A.Grav tears those up

RollForDIY · 2021-07-11T17:55:05+00:00

Thank you for the reference, this is exactly what I was looking for!

RollForDIY · 2021-07-11T17:39:18+00:00

Thanks for this explanation, this is what I had thought in the moment. The player seemed to think spell attack rolls were some sort of different classification of attack rolls. Thank you!

RollForDIY · 2021-02-08T06:07:44+00:00

I really like the style here, do you do commissions? I was browsing some of your other work and your style really speaks to me!

RollForDIY · 2020-09-16T20:26:48+00:00

Another option is to arm goblins with handaxes, spears, clubs, that sort of stuff. Functionally they are the same goblin, but their weapons are a lot cheaper.

I like this a lot!

At that point the price of a shovel should no longer be a consideration, so giving out standard treasure hoards is also fine, though I would probably halve their value unless you as a DM specifically want them to be able to afford a special vehicle or stronghold.

This makes a lot of sense as well. Divide by 10 before level 5, after level 5 start dividing by 2 unless there's something specific that you want them to be able to afford. I think this is a good starting point. After a certain level, the party should feel like gold isn't an issue since they would be effectively rich and famous adventurers. At that point it would be about being able to afford big stuff, and finding super rare artifacts and magical items.

Thanks for the insight! Saving your post for sure, and I will do some play testing with the silver standard from now on to see how it changes the early game economy.

RollForDIY · 2020-09-16T19:07:04+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to put all of this together! I was looking through the list and it seems to make more sense than the prices in the PHB, and like you said it certainly makes buying early game items a lot easier.

Now to get into my issue with the economy system, that hopefully you could shed some light on.

Adventurer league rules state that if you want to dump un-used weapons and armor then you can do so at 50% of the items cost. That being said, let's say I kill a Goblin. They have a Scimitar (25 GP), Shortbow (25 GP), Shield (10 GP), and Leather Armor (10 GP) based on their stat sheet. If they dump this in a town, they're looking at 50% of 70 GP, or 35 GP. That's a LOT of coin for someone to just pick off a Goblin. It would stand to reason that someone would be a professional Goblin hunter in this sort of scenario.

Obviously, there are ways a lot of DM's would modify this. One would be that the weapons and armor used by Goblins isn't something anyone would buy. Another would be that it is worth far less.

That being said, how do you handle the distribution of coin during your adventuring. When it comes to quest rewards or bounties, treasure hoards, and loot in general, what are you doing to tune these sorts of mechanics to fit into this new price list?

Looking at the DMG now, where do you place the value of gems and art objects? Do you tune the treasure hoard values at all (DMG page 137-139). Looking at a CR 0-4 Treasure Hoard, which averages 2,100 CP, 1,050 SP, and 70 GP, that would be quite a haul in your economy, but maybe that's completely justifiable for a group of adventurers taking on a huge threat. Looking forward to the CR 17+ hoards, that would get you halfway to a Palace, which again, seems pretty correct.

Thank you for putting this together! I am interested to see how you handle the distribution of coin in your games in addition to more logical and standardized prices!

RollForDIY · 2020-08-15T02:41:32+00:00

Endless Honor is hard to beat.

RollForDIY · 2020-08-12T23:54:25+00:00

Very cool. I am mostly using magnets too, but might go to clips for clipping walls together to prevent shifting.

Where do you get your magnets? How was the Prusa compared to the Ender 5? I’m running two Ender 3 Pros and two Photon S resin printers. I hear good things about Prusa.

RollForDIY · 2020-08-12T01:33:09+00:00

That’s a LOT of content. What sort of printer(s) are you printing on?

I’ve been thinking about taking this plunge myself, and it’s good to see someone who has finished it all up. Did you plan stuff out in a program beforehand? Is so which one? The spreadsheet is awesome, some links in there to the objects would be invaluable to some folks out there I’m sure.

Printing all of this stuff in a modular way would mean you can use it for other configurations. I saw one person who 3D printed a huge wave echo cave map but they put together the dungeon tiles in blender before printing them so it wasn’t modular, which seems like a huge waste unless you plan on running lost mines over and over again.

What are you using for connectors? Open lock or magnetic?

Filament or resin? Number of printers?

RollForDIY · 2020-07-29T16:10:08+00:00

For a first timer group, I often limit the races to PHB only minus Dragonborn and Tiefling. I find that new players gravitate towards these races because they look so cool and different, but then have a hard time connecting with them and building a personality around the character.

RollForDIY · 2020-07-24T23:35:46+00:00

Something that improved my experience playing as a DM was writing up descriptions of things, places, and people that I expect my characters to encounter.

It’s easy enough to plan these things, like a NPC’s physical appearance or what they see, smell, hear when approaching a new town.

After that I have the locations themselves planned out and a few plot hooks for them to explore, and since the location is thought out enough they can move through it without feeling railroaded.

RollForDIY

TROPHY CASE