A plain-English tour of the polyhedral dice — what each one is, and which games reach for it. Every die here rolls with real physics in Dice Drop.
Roll these dice free →There is no tidy two-sided solid, so a "D2" is simply a coin: two equally likely outcomes. Dice Drop shows it as a coin with a crown for heads and a star for tails, so the result reads at a glance.
Used for Any yes/no or either/or decision — who goes first, which way a trap springs, a 50/50 save. Handy in board games that call for a coin you do not have to hand.
A true three-sided die is impossible to make fair, so a D3 is usually a D6 read in pairs, or a cube marked 1-1-2-2-3-3. Dice Drop uses the marked-cube version so every face shows its number.
Used for Small random counts — minor damage dice, the number of wandering monsters, how many turns an effect lasts. Common in wargames and older RPGs.
The four-sided die is the odd one out: it lands point-up rather than face-up, so the result is read from the numbers meeting at the top apex (or, in some sets, around the bottom edge). Dice Drop lets you pick which convention you read.
Used for The smallest common damage die — daggers and darts in D&D, magic missiles, and healing potions. Its sharp shape is famous for finding bare feet in the dark.
The die everyone already owns. Faces are pipped rather than numbered, and opposite faces always add up to seven. It is the most balanced and easiest shape to make fair, which is why board games rely on it.
Used for Everything: Monopoly and Backgammon movement, Yahtzee, Catan, craps, and huge damage pools in RPGs (a fireball is a fistful of D6s). If a game says "roll the dice" and does not specify, it means these.
Two square pyramids glued base to base. A clean, fast-rolling shape with opposite faces adding to nine.
Used for A mid-range damage die — longswords, light crossbows, and many spells. Also the hit die for sturdier character classes.
Ten kite-shaped faces numbered 0–9 (the 0 usually counts as 10). Its elongated silhouette is unmistakable, and it is the only common die whose faces are not triangles or squares.
Used for Percentile systems and dice-pool games. Two D10s together make a D100 (see below). A whole handful of D10s drives Vampire, Werewolf and the rest of the World of Darkness line.
Twelve regular pentagons — arguably the prettiest of the set, and the one that rolls the longest. Opposite faces add to thirteen.
Used for The greataxe and greatsword damage die, barbarian hit dice, and a favourite for anything that wants a wide, even spread without a D20’s swinginess.
The face of tabletop gaming. Twenty triangles, opposite faces adding to twenty-one, and the die that decides whether you hit, dodge, sneak or persuade.
Used for The core resolution die of D&D and the entire d20 System: roll, add a modifier, beat a target number. A natural 20 is a critical success; a natural 1 is a fumble.
Not a single 100-sided ball but a pair of D10s: one read as tens (00, 10, 20…) and one as units (0–9). Together they give a flat 1–100. A "00" and a "0" is read as 100.
Used for Percentage-chance systems — Call of Cthulhu skill checks, critical-hit and loot tables, and any "roll under your skill%" mechanic.
Almost everything is a D20 roll plus a modifier against a target number: attacks, saving throws and skill checks. The smaller dice do damage and healing — a longsword is 1D8, a fireball 8D6, a cure spell 1D4+ up the levels. Advantage and disadvantage roll two D20 and keep the better or worse.
Pathfinder grew out of the D&D 3.5 rules, so it uses exactly the same dice, with no special faces or markings. The differences are in the maths around the roll (how bonuses stack, degrees of success), not the dice themselves — a common misconception is that each system needs its own physical set. It does not.
A skill-based, roll-under system: to use a skill you roll D100 and try to land at or below your rating. Roll well under and it is a hard or extreme success; fumble high and something goes wrong. Damage and sanity loss use the smaller dice.
Instead of adding dice together you roll a handful of D10s and count how many beat a target number (often 8 or higher) — each one is a "success". More successes means a better outcome. This is a dice-pool, success-counting system, so it is the way you read the dice that differs, not the dice themselves.
Combat is resolved in D6 waves: roll to hit, roll to wound, your opponent rolls saves — often dozens of dice at once. Dice Drop’s mixed pools and up-to-20 dice make those big handfuls quick to roll on screen.
Build a pool of D6 from your action rating and situation, roll them all, and read only the single highest die: 6 is a full success, 4–5 a success with a complication, 1–3 a setback. Two 6s is a critical.
Fudge dice are D6s marked with two +, two −, and two blank faces. You roll four, add the pluses and minuses for a result from −4 to +4, then add your skill. (Dice Drop can add these as a dedicated die type — see the guide’s note on game-specific dice.)
Roll five D6 up to three times, keeping the dice you like between rolls, to make scoring combinations — three of a kind, a full house, a straight, or five of a kind (the Yahtzee). A pure D6 game that needs no special set.
The shooter rolls two D6; the total drives the bets. Seven or eleven wins on the come-out, snake-eyes (two ones) and boxcars (two sixes) are the extremes. Backgammon also uses two D6, with doubles letting you move four times.
Mostly no — and it is worth being clear about it. D&D and Pathfinder use the very same seven polyhedral dice with the very same numbers; there are no special "D&D faces" versus "Pathfinder faces". What changes between systems is how you READ the dice: D&D adds a D20 to a modifier, Call of Cthulhu rolls D100 under a skill, World of Darkness counts successes on a pool of D10s, and Blades reads only the highest D6. A few games really do use genuinely different dice — most famously FATE/Fudge dice (marked +, − and blank) — and those are worth having as their own die type. So rather than fake cosmetic "game skins" on the same numbers, the meaningful version of this feature is (1) a proper Fudge/FATE die, and (2) optional result modes that count successes or read the highest die for pool-based games.