it's not often someone corrects my spelling(even though I did actually meant a car-wrecked princess, but that's beside the point).
lol, I wasn't trying to be clever, I was genuinely concerned I had misunderstood. That plus I haven't slept since Monday and my vision is more than a little blurry.
Yes, in the example of a die, you're using three times the number of verts, but it's a small number. With a much larger object where the number of verts was more significant, it's highly unlikely you would be using three times as many verts, because you probably wouldn't want that many sharp edges. I suppose it it is technically possible, and certainly if you have a really large amount of low poly objects, it could happen, but generally it probably won't.
But if you need them, you need them. Having smooth edges when you really need a sharp edge is ugly, and I'm pretty confident you won't notice a speed hit no matter what you're doing with them.