Rules About Rolling Dice in "Dungeons & Dragons"

Character Creation

"Dungeons and Dragons" players roll dice at the beginning of the game when they are creating a character and determining starting statistics. Roll six sets of dice to determine your character's strength, dexterity, constitution, wisdom, intelligence and charisma. This can change depending on the number of players in the group. One common method involves rolling four dice and choosing the highest three numbers six separate times.

During a "Dungeons and Dragons" game your character learns skills that he can use both in and out of combat. These skills can include seeing hidden items or monsters, rolling out of the way of enemies, understanding arcane tomes or picking someone's pocket. Each of these actions requires a certain level of skill. To check your level of skill, you roll a 20-sided die and add any bonuses that you have. If you meet or exceed the requirement, you succeed in your attempt.

On both skill and attack rolls you can have a critical success or failure. A roll of 20 often leads to a critical success. This means that in addition to succeeding at your attempt, something extra can happen. A critical hit on an attack roll can lead to extra damage. A critical success on a skill check may make a normally impossible feat possible or it may let you go above and beyond. A critical failure is the opposite. On critical failure attack rolls you automatically miss. These generally happen when you roll a 1 on a 20-sided die.

During Dungeons and Dragons you roll dice to determine how much damage a particular attach or weapon deals. The number of dice that you roll varies based on the type of attack. Factors that affect a damage roll include the weapon you are using, how you are using it and your character's size. Because of this, it is important to keep a rule book nearby. Players often print organized character sheets showing exactly how much damage each type of attack can do so that they know which dice to roll.