D6 Dice Roller
The cube. It is the only die most households own, usually a battered pair rattling around in a board game box. On standard Western dice the opposite faces always add to seven, so a 1 sits across from a 6, a 2 across from a 5, and a 3 across from a 4.
Press Roll to throw the dice.
Press Space to roll again. Type notation like 2d6+3 or 4d6dl1 straight into the box.
Recent rolls
- No rolls yet.
A d6 has 6 faces numbered 1–6. On a fair die every face is equally likely, so any single result comes up 16.67% of the time. Rolls run from 1 to 6, the average is 3.5, and the standard deviation is 1.71. The shape it is built from is the cube.
- Minimum
- 1
- Maximum
- 6
- Mean
- 3.5
- Median
- 3.5
- Std deviation
- 1.71
- Chance per face
- 16.67%
d6 probability
One die is flat. There is no curve and no middle to aim for, because each face has exactly one way to come up out of 6 possible results, so nothing is more likely than anything else. Add a second die and that changes immediately: totals start piling up in the middle. The dice probability guide works through why.
| Total | Ways | Probability | This or lower |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 16.67% | 16.67% |
| 2 | 1 | 16.67% | 33.33% |
| 3 | 1 | 16.67% | 50% |
| 4 | 1 | 16.67% | 66.67% |
| 5 | 1 | 16.67% | 83.33% |
| 6 | 1 | 16.67% | 100% |
When you'd roll a d6
A single d6 is the default when you want an ordinary spread of results and nothing fancier. Board games use it for movement, wargames use it for hit and wound checks, and plenty of card games use it as a tiebreaker. It is also the die you grab when a group cannot decide something and someone has already written six options on a napkin.
Common uses
- board games such as Monopoly and Catan
- ability score generation (4d6 drop lowest)
- sneak attack and fireball damage in D&D 5e
- Movement in older board games that step one die at a time
- Wound and shooting rolls in tabletop wargames
- Rolling for a random suggestion from a six-item list on a menu, a chore chart, or a shot list
d6 questions
Why do opposite faces on a die add up to seven?
It is a convention that keeps the numbers spread evenly around the cube instead of clustered on one side. Almost all Western dice follow it. Chinese and Japanese dice also use it, though they often paint the 1 and the 4 red rather than black.
What are the dots on a die called?
Pips. Faces marked with pips and faces printed with numerals are equally valid, and dice makers sell both. Pips are traditional for board and casino games, while numeral faces are common in role-playing sets where you sum several dice at once.
What makes casino dice different?
Precision dice are cut with sharp square edges rather than rounded ones, machined to tight tolerances, and the pips are drilled then filled flush with paint of the same density as the body. That keeps the weight even. They are usually translucent so tampering is easier to spot.
Is a d6 the same as a normal die?
Yes. The letter d means die and the number gives the face count, so d6 is the six-sided cube in every board game cupboard. The label only exists because tabletop games also use dice with four, eight, ten, twelve and twenty faces.