D&D and RPG dice roller online

How to use this RPG dice roller

There are two ways to roll. You can pick the dice by hand: tap the d8 twice and the d20 once and exactly that combination lands in the tray. Or you can type the roll in dice notation, just as it is written in the rulebook or on your character sheet.

To roll, press the Roll button or drag the dice with your finger or mouse and let go over the tray. The dice have real physics: they tumble, knock into each other and settle on a face, and the total is worked out automatically with any modifier you typed.

The advantage and disadvantage buttons roll two d20s at once. With advantage the higher one counts, with disadvantage the lower one, which is how the 5th edition D&D rules handle it. If the roll has a modifier, it is applied once, to the die that counts.

In a game over video call (Discord, Zoom, Teams or Meet) you can share your screen or browser tab so the rest of the table watches the dice land. Plenty of groups agree that you say what you are rolling before you roll ("longbow attack, 1d20+6") so nobody questions the result.

The seven-dice set and what each die does in D&D 5e

A standard RPG dice set has seven dice: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 and a second d10 marked in tens (00, 10, 20… 90) that is rolled alongside the ordinary d10 to get a percentage. The d stands for die and the number is how many sides it has.

Damage of the most common weapons

You add your Strength modifier to the weapon die (or Dexterity for ranged and finesse weapons). Spells call for dice too: magic missile deals 1d4+1 per dart and fireball deals 8d6.

Hit Dice by class

At 1st level your hit points are the highest number on that die plus your Constitution modifier. After that you roll the die at each level (or take the fixed average), and during a short rest you can spend Hit Dice to recover hit points.

How to read NdX+M dice notation

Dice notation sums up in one short formula how many dice you roll, how many sides they have and what you add at the end.

Examples: 3d6 means rolling three d6 and adding them (3 to 18). 1d8+2 runs from 3 to 10. 2d6+1d8 mixes two kinds of die, which is common when a weapon deals extra damage. d% is another way of writing d100.

Suffixes tell you which dice to keep or discard. In many apps and on Roll20, 4d6kh3 means "roll 4d6 and keep the highest 3", and 4d6dl1 means "drop the lowest one"; both describe the same roll. 2d20kh1 is a roll with advantage and 2d20kl1 one with disadvantage.

This shorthand was not in the original 1974 D&D, which described rolls in words. Ted Johnstone proposed it in 1975, in the first issue of the fanzine Alarums & Excursions. It spread through fan circles and Gary Gygax adopted it in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books (1977 to 1979).

Advantage, disadvantage, critical hits and death saves

Advantage and disadvantage

When circumstances help you (you attack a prone enemy at close range, or an ally takes the Help action) the DM gives you advantage: roll two d20s and use the higher. When they hinder you (you attack something you cannot see, or you are poisoned) you have disadvantage: roll two d20s and use the lower.

• Several sources of advantage do not stack: you never roll more than one extra d20.
• If you have both advantage and disadvantage, they cancel out and you roll a single d20, even with three reasons for advantage and only one for disadvantage.

Critical hits

A natural 20 on an attack roll (the die shows 20 before modifiers) is a critical hit: it hits whatever the target's Armour Class. You roll all the attack's damage dice twice and add the modifier once. A longsword that normally deals 1d8+3 deals 2d8+3 on a crit, raising the average from 7.5 to 12. Extra dice such as the rogue's Sneak Attack are doubled too. A natural 1 on an attack roll always misses.

Death saving throws

If you start your turn on 0 hit points, you roll a d20 with no modifiers. A 10 or higher is a success; anything lower is a failure. Three successes make you stable and three failures mean the character dies. A natural 20 gives you back 1 hit point and a natural 1 counts as two failures. Each roll has a 55% chance of success.

Rolling ability scores: 4d6, standard array and point buy

The six D&D abilities (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma) can be generated in three ways, both in the 2014 rules and in the 2024 revision:

1. Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest six times, then assign the results.
2. Standard array: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8, assigned as you like. They add up to 72.
3. Point buy: 27 points to raise scores between 8 and 15. Every score starts at 8; a 9 costs 1 point, a 13 costs 5, a 14 costs 7 and a 15 costs 9.

Each ability modifier is the score minus 10, divided by 2 and rounded down: a 15 gives +2, an 8 gives −1 and an 18 gives +4.

The average of 4d6 drop lowest is 12.24, a little above the 10.5 of plain 3d6. Six rolls add up to about 73.5 on average, slightly more than the standard array, but with far more spread between characters.

The most common result is 13. An 18 comes up on 1.62% of rolls, about three and a half times as often as with 3d6, where the chance is 0.46%.

Useful dice probabilities

Average of each die

The average of a die is its lowest and highest face added together and divided by two.

That is why the fixed hit points per level are 7 for a d12, 6 for a d10, 5 for a d8 and 4 for a d6: the average rounded up.

Advantage and disadvantage in numbers

A d20 with advantage averages 13.83 and with disadvantage 7.18. The gap compared with a normal roll is widest when you need a middling result (around 11) and narrowest at the extremes.

2d6 against 1d12: greatsword or greataxe

The two big two-handed weapons look equal because both top out at 12, but they are not. The greatsword (2d6) averages 7 and the greataxe (1d12) averages 6.5. With 2d6 the results bunch in the middle and 7 is the most likely total; with 1d12 every face is equally likely.

The greataxe rolls high and low results more often; the greatsword is steadier and slightly better on average.

Other tabletop RPGs and their dice

D&D made the d20 famous, but each system uses dice in its own way. This roller covers all of these.

From wargames to Dungeons & Dragons: history and trivia

Dungeons & Dragons was published in 1974 by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules), Gary Gygax's company. Gygax and Dave Arneson wrote it and it grew out of miniature wargaming. Its starting point was Chainmail (1971), Gygax's rules for medieval battles. Arneson had taken Dave Wesely's Braunstein games into a fantasy setting he called Blackmoor, where each player ran a single character. He showed it to Gygax and their collaboration became the first D&D.

The main editions have been original D&D (1974), the split into Basic D&D and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977), AD&D 2nd edition (1989), 3rd edition (2000) and 3.5 (2003), 4th edition (2008), 5th edition (2014) and a revision of 5th edition in 2024, with a new Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide that year and a new Monster Manual in February 2025.

• The ten-sided die is a pentagonal trapezohedron, a shape patented as a gaming die in the United States as early as 1906.
• A d20 numbered 0 to 9 twice can also be used for percentage rolls.
• Ability modifiers run from −5 (a score of 1) to +10 (a score of 30). A 10 or 11 is the ordinary human average and 20 is the usual ceiling for an adventurer.