What are the dice for?

Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop roleplaying game created by the game developer giant, Wizards of the Coast. In D&D, you, your fellow players, and your Dungeon Master will create many fantastical stories throughout your Sessions, through the art of roleplay.

Roleplaying and storytelling are a bit nebulous, though, because it isn’t a computer game or a traditional board game where there are more rigid rules. Because of this, the developers needed a way to give these games a bit of structure.

Enter the dice!

Whenever the story and characters come upon a crossroads—i.e., a situation that could result in either failure or success—the dice are rolled to give the story both fairness and uncertainty.

Much like the real world, there are many things we can’t control. One such thing, for example, is how your partner will react if you surprise them with a new puppy.

The roll of the dice—particularly the d20—decides the outcome of the situation. To illustrate this, let’s pretend life was a roleplaying game.

If you rolled a natural 20 (a.k.a., a “Critical Hit”) on the dice, your DM might decide that your partner loves the new dog, and starts playing with her without hesitation. On the other hand, if you rolled a natural 1 (a.k.a, a “Critical Fail”), your DM might decide that your partner is deathly allergic to dogs, and immediately begins having a severe allergic reaction, sending them on an untimely trip to the hospital.

This is the main concept of Dungeons & Dragons—a series of decisions, and successes, and failures, all tied into an interesting storyline.

But what about the other 6 dice you find in a standard roleplaying dice set?

In Dungeons & Dragons, your standard set of dice is made up of 7 pieces—

• d20 — twenty (20) sided die
• d12 — twelve (12) sided die
• d10 — ten (10) sided die
• d8 — eight (8) sided die
• d6 — six (6) sided die
• d4 — four (4) sided die
• d100 — percentile die

Twenty-Sided Die (d20)

This is the dice you will be rolling the most in all your sessions, and it is also the basis for many D&D memes because of its relatability in many real-life situations.

Whenever you and your party (your group of player characters) do something that yields an uncertain result, your DM will ask you to make a “check” to see if you succeed or fail. In their minds, they come up with a number that corresponds to how difficult it is for you to succeed. This number is called a Difficulty Class, or DC.

The DC is the number you have to reach with your d20 roll so that you can succeed at what you were trying to do. Your roll should be equal to or greater than the DC.

As an example, let’s say you and your party are running through a dungeon and are being chased by some very angry orcs.

In the hallway ahead of you, you see a wooden door you could escape through, but you have no time to see if it’s unlocked. Your Barbarian¹ decides she’s going to try and smash through it.

At this point, your DM asks her to roll a d20. In your DM’s mind, he’s set 16 as the DC. The Barbarian rolls an 18 on her d20. She smashes through the locked wooden door easily, letting your entire party pass unimpeded, giving all of you more time to escape.

Some things to keep in mind:

• When you roll a 20 on the dice, it’s called a “Critical Hit” or “Natural 20”, which is an automatic success.
• When you roll a 1 on the dice, it’s called a “Critical Fail” or “Natural 1”, which is an automatic failure.

They add the word “Natural” to it because it’s the ‘natural’ roll of the dice, and is not modified with any other numbers. These numbers are called “Modifiers”, which I will cover in a future post.

Twelve, Ten, Eight, Six, and Four-Sided Dice (d12, d10, d8, d6, d4)

These dice are usually reserved for dealing damage, spell effects, or rolling tables². Weapons and effects have their own assigned dice. For example, a Greataxe has a base damage of 1d12. Another example is Cure Wounds (a healing spell) which has a base healing of 1d8.

An example scenario:

You are trying to hit a goblin that is shooting at you with a shortbow. You decide to show him what a real bow is made of and loose an arrow from your longbow. Your DM asks you to make an attack roll first, so you roll your d20 for a result of 15. A goblin’s AC (Armor Class)³ is 15, which you are able to hit.

Then your DM asks you to deal damage. The base damage of a longbow is 1d8, so you roll that for 7 damage. The goblin only has 7 Hit Points, so you kill the goblin with one hit.

One thing to note: I mention here the words “base damage” and “base healing”, because this is the roll that isn’t yet modified with any “Modifiers”.

Percentile Die (d100)

The Percentile Die is actually just a d10 with tens on its faces instead of ones. If a d10 has 1, 2, 3, and so on, a d100 has 10, 20, 30, and so forth. It doesn’t literally have 100 sides—not usually⁴ anyway.

Percentile Dice are used for things like rolling tables, or to determine the likelihood (in percent) that a desired effect will happen.

The standard way to roll a Percentile Die is with a d10. You roll both dice simultaneously, and you add both numbers together to get a number from 1 to 100.

For example: your party has just defeated a dragon, and now get to pick loot from the dragon’s horde before you need to surrender it to the king of a nearby kingdom. Your DM asks each of you to roll your Percentile Dice to determine what each of you will get.

You roll both your d100 and d10, and your rolls come up 20 and 4, respectively. You add these two numbers up, and you get a 24. Your DM says you get a Potion of Fire Resistance.

Your Rogue companion gets a 60 and a 5 respectively. She adds these up and gets 65. Your DM says she gets a Bag of Holding.

Your Wizard companion gets a 00 and an 8 respectively. He adds those up and gets an 8. Your DM says he gets a Potion of Greater Healing.

Your Barbarian companion, however, gets a 00 and 0 respectively. How do we handle this? When we get all zeroes on both the d100 and d10, that means you actually get 100. So your DM says she gets a Wand of Secrets.

In summary:

1. You tell the DM what you want to do,
2. The DM sets the DC and tells you to roll the dice; he may choose to tell you what the DC is, but generally DMs like to keep it secret.
3. You roll the dice, and the DM tells you what happens, and whether you succeeded or failed.

If you’ve read until here, congratulations! You now have a basic idea of how Dungeons & Dragons is played. :)

Next up: What is a Character Sheet?

Footnotes:

¹ ^ In D&D, “Barbarian” is a Class, not an insult; I’ll explain this further in a future post.

² ^ “Rolling Tables” are lists of numbered things, events, or loot. The number you roll on the specified dice is the item, event, or loot you get for that Rolling Table.

³ ^ “Armor Class” is a type of DC specifically meant to represent how hard it is to hit your target; more in a future post.

⁴ ^ There do exist some literal d100s out there, it’s just uncommon.