D&D: Different types of dice

In German usage, the dice in pen & paper games are abbreviated with a W. So an eight-sided die is a d8. (English: dice, D8 in this case) If you need more than one type of dice, put the number before the W. 4D8 are four eight-sided dice. 2d10 is two ten-sided and so on. The most important die here is the d20, because this is the die you use in combat to hit and outside of combat for all activities that test your character’s skills.

Polyhedral dice, different types of dice

Multi-sided dice are used in Dungeons & Dragons. Well, okay, every cube has multiple sides, if you’re being honest. The difference between polyhedral dice and standard game dice is that the dice in a D&D set have more and less than six sides.

W4: The Pyramid: The four-sided cube looks like a pyramid. In D&D it’s mostly used for small buffs like Bless or for damage from weapons such as daggers or clubs. Be careful not to accidentally step on your D4 – a Lego brick is a joke compared to that!

Using dice with dice faces is considered a bad habit by some D&D players; they prefer d6 with numbers.

Source: buffed

• W6: The fireball-Dice: Every Mage player loves his D6 dearly, because you use this die to calculate the damage for the iconic fireball– to roll spells. Of course you also need it for the damage rolls of many simple weapons. That being said, the six-sided die is the first to decide the fate of your new character. When creating a new hero, its values ​​are rolled (strength, intelligence, wisdom, …) and for this you take four D6 at hand if you follow one of the most common systems.

• D8: A typical damage die: To determine the damage of many weapons in D&D, you need a D8. For example, you use this cube for the longbow, the light crossbow or the longsword. Also many spells and magic tricks like ray of cold let you roll a d8.

• D10 and D100: Weapons, Spells and Random Lists: You mostly use your D10 to roll damage values. You need it for various spells (warlocks literally sell their souls for the Eerie Ray-Magic trick that deals 1d10 damage!) and to roll the damage values ​​of various two-handed weapons. Although there is actually a hundred-sided die, you don’t need it – unless you want to come across as extra fancy. To roll a hundred table or a percentage chance, you typically use two d10s. A typical dice set contains a D10 with the numbers 1-10 and a second with 00-90. If you combine these two dice, you can roll any number from 1 to 100. For example, 80 and 7 are 87. 00 and 2 is 2, and so on.

• W12: Only for barbarians: If you don’t play a barbarian, you as a player will probably never use the d12 of your dice set. (Barbarians use the d12 to roll their life totals.) While it’s needed for some high-level spells or class features, the bottom line is that you don’t use a dice as often as the d12.

• W20: The Cube Icon: By far the most important dice for any role player is the d20. In a way, you need it for everything: to hit opponents, for saving throws and for attribute rolls. There is no other dice that you roll across the table so often on a typical game night. Incidentally, a popular house rule is that a 1 on the D20 means a critical failure (= Natural One), while a 20 is a critical hit (= Natural Twenty), which always makes your project succeed.