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For those that don't know

Step 1: roll up a half orc barbarian
Step 2: wield a great axe
Step 3: roll a natural 20 on an attack

Now you use the three dodecahedrons!

If it came down to figuring out the three dodecahedrons or using the communal sponge on a stick, I'd take the risk with the dodecahedrons.

Last time people 3d printed a whole bunch and handed them out to random people to see what they used them for.

Some old British granny used them to knit fingers for gloves and apparently it's awesome at that.

It wouldn't be something everyone owned, no one family needs that many gloves.

But one that gets shared amongst a community/village makes it a worthwhile investment. Especially in cold ass England.

There were likely wooden ones as well that didn't survive, but it makes sense we find heavy duty ones in England of all places.

You need to read Motel of the Mysteries. Here's the premise:

It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.

Measuring dry spaghetti portions is a ritual.

Well it's probably not for making cakes.

they've been found in coin hordes and the like... they were definitely more valuable than that

As an apprentice blacksmith, yeah. I would have difficulty attempting to make that thing out of bronze, and would definitely learn more about smithing than I do now, just making the thing.

It just hasn't been proven. Its a fun hypothesis but it could be fucking anything.

I hate to break it to you, but ritual and religion have been a thing forever.

Walk into most homes today, and you'll find a bunch of ritual objects. Crosses, Rosary Beads, Menorahs, and dozens of other every day objects that you'd never think twice about.

The ancient world had even more such objects.

A fun example that I can think of off the top of my head is the demon trapping bowl. It was common in parts of the Middle East, and how it worked is you'd write a bunch of incantations on the inside of the bowl in a spiral down to the center, and then bury it upside down under the main entrance to your home.

That's clearly a ritual object. It serves no other purpose.

These dodecahedra might be the same. After all, there are 12 zodiac and playing with the meaning of the zodiac was quite popular in the Roman world at various times.

By the late empire, if you were playing a legion campaign it was pretty standard to run 30-40% barbarians.

I can't wait for the antivirus ride

For a biblically accurate cock

The Romans had dice that would roll better.

They seem to have favored d20 and d6, but other dice have also been found.

But I would bring my own to a Roman game of D&D, because the Romans also tended to use lopsided dice (They believed in fate rather than luck, so hand waved away loaded dice)