Roll 4 Dice
Four dice is an awkward count, and it is worth being honest about that. Very few published games call for exactly four six-siders. Its real home is character creation, where you roll four and throw one away, plus the general case of grabbing a handful when a homebrew rule asks for one.
Press Roll to throw the dice.
Press Space to roll again. Type notation like 2d6+3 or 4d6dl1 straight into the box.
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Rolling 4 six-sided dice gives totals from 4 to 24, out of 1,296 equally likely outcomes. The most likely total is 14 at 11.27%, while 4 and 24 each turn up only 0.08% of the time. The average roll is 14.
- Minimum
- 4
- Maximum
- 24
- Mean
- 14
- Median
- 14
- Std deviation
- 3.42
- Most likely
- 14
- Its odds
- 11.27%
4d6 probability distribution
Each of the 4 dice is flat on its own, but the totals are not. There is exactly one way to roll 4 and one way to roll 24, while 14 can be built several different ways, which is why the chart leans on the middle.
| Total | Ways | Probability | This or lower |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 1 | 0.08% | 0.08% |
| 5 | 4 | 0.31% | 0.39% |
| 6 | 10 | 0.77% | 1.16% |
| 7 | 20 | 1.54% | 2.7% |
| 8 | 35 | 2.7% | 5.4% |
| 9 | 56 | 4.32% | 9.72% |
| 10 | 80 | 6.17% | 15.9% |
| 11 | 104 | 8.02% | 23.92% |
| 12 | 125 | 9.65% | 33.56% |
| 13 | 140 | 10.8% | 44.37% |
| 14 | 146 | 11.27% | 55.63% |
| 15 | 140 | 10.8% | 66.44% |
| 16 | 125 | 9.65% | 76.08% |
| 17 | 104 | 8.02% | 84.1% |
| 18 | 80 | 6.17% | 90.28% |
| 19 | 56 | 4.32% | 94.6% |
| 20 | 35 | 2.7% | 97.3% |
| 21 | 20 | 1.54% | 98.84% |
| 22 | 10 | 0.77% | 99.61% |
| 23 | 4 | 0.31% | 99.92% |
| 24 | 1 | 0.08% | 100% |
When you'd roll 4 dice
Almost every time someone rolls four d6 they are making a character. Roll all four, discard the lowest, add the remaining three, and repeat until you have six ability scores. Outside that, four dice turns up in house rules, in party games that want a lot of numbers at once, and in situations where a designer wanted three dice worth of curve plus a bit of insurance against a bad result.
Games that use 4 dice
- D&D ability score generation (4d6, drop the lowest)
Rolling 4 dice: questions
What is 4d6 drop lowest?
Roll four six-sided dice, set aside the single lowest one, and add the other three. It produces friendlier ability scores than rolling three dice straight, because the worst die never counts. Most tables repeat it six times to build a full character.
Are there any games that use exactly four dice?
Very few standard ones. Four d6 mostly appears inside larger systems rather than as a game in its own right, character generation being the obvious case. If you need a four-dice game, most three or five dice games adapt cleanly with a house rule.
Why drop the lowest die instead of rolling three?
Discarding the worst die shifts results upward and cuts down on truly miserable scores. It keeps the shape of a three-dice roll while trimming the bottom end, which suits games where a character with a hopeless ability score is not much fun to play.
Can I roll four dice for a random pick?
You can, but the totals cluster hard in the middle, so options at the top and bottom of your list will almost never come up. For an even chance use a single die with the right number of faces, or split a list across separate rolls.