What is Dice Roller?
The complete polyhedral set — D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20 and the D100 percentile die — with no set-up and nothing to install. Roll one die or a fistful, mix types in the same throw, and every die animates and lands on its own while the total adds up beside them. Recent rolls stay on screen as you play, so you can point at the evidence when nobody believes you rolled three natural 1s in a row. Six presets cover the throws people repeat most: a D&D attack, a damage roll, Craps, Yahtzee, a treasure table roll, and a chaos roll that throws the entire set at once. It's built for the moments a physical set isn't within reach — a remote session, a board game missing a die, a rules argument at the table — and because every roll is generated fresh rather than drawn from a sequence, there is no pattern to learn, which starts to matter once a campaign runs long enough for someone to try.
Which dice you actually need for D&D 5e
All seven of the dice here have a job in fifth edition, but they are not used evenly. The D20 does most of the work: attack rolls, saving throws and ability checks all run through it, which is why it is the die people mean when they say "roll for it".
The smaller dice mostly handle damage, and which one you reach for depends on the weapon. A dagger deals a D4, a longsword a D8, a greataxe a D12. A greatsword is 2D6 — two dice added together, not one twelve-sided die, and the difference matters more than it looks. Spells follow the same logic: a magic missile is a D4 plus a modifier, a fireball is 8D6.
The D100 is the odd one out. It is rolled against percentile tables — random loot, wild magic surges, whether the shopkeeper has the item you want — where the result is a percentage rather than a quantity. At a physical table you get it by rolling two D10s and reading one as tens; here it is a single die.
Reading dice notation
Tabletop rules are written in a shorthand that looks cryptic for about a minute and then never again. In 3D6+2, the first number is how many dice, the letter D means die, the second number is how many sides, and anything after the plus is a flat bonus added once to the total — not to each die.
So 3D6+2 is three six-sided dice, added together, plus two. 1D20 is a single twenty-sided die. 4D6 is four six-sided dice, which is the roll used for generating a character's ability scores.
This roller handles the dice part of that notation: pick the type, pick how many, throw them together. It does not add the modifier for you, so a +2 or a proficiency bonus is yours to add to the total it shows.
Why 2D6 is not the same as 1D12
They look interchangeable and they are not. A D12 is flat: every result from 1 to 12 is equally likely, each with a one-in-twelve chance. Two D6s produce a curve instead. There is only one way to roll a 2 (both dice show 1) and only one way to roll a 12, but six different ways to roll a 7 — so a 7 comes up six times as often as either extreme.
The practical effect is that 2D6 is predictable and a D12 is not. Both average around the same place, roughly 6.5 to 7, but 2D6 clusters tightly there while a D12 scatters evenly across its whole range. A greatsword rolling 2D6 delivers steady damage; a greataxe rolling 1D12 swings between disappointing and devastating.
This is worth knowing whenever a rule offers a choice between them, and it is worth knowing at a board game table too — it is the whole reason Monopoly and Catan feel the way they do, with 7 landing constantly and 12 almost never.
Rolling ability scores and handling advantage
The standard way to generate a character's stats is 4D6, drop the lowest die, repeated six times. Set the D6 count to four and throw: because each die is shown individually rather than only as a total, you can see which one to discard and add the remaining three yourself. The dropping is manual — the roller shows you the dice, it does not apply the rule.
Advantage and disadvantage work the same way. Both mean rolling two D20s and taking one of them: the higher result for advantage, the lower for disadvantage. Set the D20 count to two, throw once, and read whichever the situation calls for. There is no separate advantage button; there does not need to be, since the mechanic is just two dice and a choice.
When a digital roller beats a physical one
Physical dice are better at a table, and nothing here is trying to argue otherwise. What this replaces is the situation where the set is elsewhere: a game running over a call, a board game that shipped with one die and needs two, a rules discussion at lunch that needs a quick 1D20 to settle.
It also removes a specific argument. A die that rolls off the table, lands cocked against a book, or gets scooped up before everyone saw it has to be re-rolled, and someone always suspects the re-roll. On screen the result is there, visible to whoever is watching, and it stays in the list underneath.