SO FUCKING UGLY. But he has a fetching hat.

Dice (singular: die) are high-impact polyhedra, usually having four, six, eight, ten, twelve, twenty or one hundred faces. In role-playing games and tabletop war games, they are used as randomizers to inject an element of chance into the game. Non-gamers often only know about the six-sided die (hereafter referred to as the d6) thanks to the ubiquity of games like Monopoly and Yahtzee. Which dice are used tends to vary by system, Dungeons and Dragons makes use of all types. On the other hand White Wolf games and Classic Traveller use only ten- and six-sided dice, respectively. On the gripping hand, some games don't use dice at all! These tend to be relatively new games like Nobilis or Amber.

If you do not have dice for whatever reason, consider chits.

Dice are considered by most people to be impartial arbiters of random chance. Fa/tg/uys know better. Dice are controlled or at least influenced by the unseen force of Dice Mojo. It is believed that Dice Mojo can be influenced by players through manifold rituals, including:

Placing a die with the desired number upward, that it 'gets used to' that position and tends to return to it.

Placing a die with the desired number downward, that the die is tricked into thinking it has already made a bad roll and will produce a good outcome on the subsequent roll.

Rolling a die until a string of good rolls are achieved, tapping into a streak of 'good mojo' or 'rolling out' bad outcomes.

Various chants, prayers, threats, and curses made toward the die in order to entice or coerce it into producing favorable rolls.

Being careful not to drop dice or just roll them to pass the time till next turn, as when rolling a twenty, the critical ratio may be "used up" for the day.

Building dice towers as tribute to Dice Gods that they may bless one's dice with good Mojo.

Dice on /tg/

/tg/ has a dice-rolling function. Simply type dice+XdY+Z, dice+XdY+-Z (for subtraction) or dice XdY Z (the Z is optional) into the email field to roll X dice with Y sides and add a modifier Z. You can also type noko dice+XdY+Z, noko dice+XdY+-Z or noko dice XdY Z to use the site's noko feature. However, your input is not visible this way, which can lead to accusations of cheating.

Lou Zocchi always rolls 20's.

Types of Dice

d2

A D2. Careful not to spend it all in one place.

A d2 isn't a die - it's a coin. Your hate of it know no limit.

You flip the fucking thing. Heads count as 1, Tails count as 2.

You can, alternately, roll any other die - counting odds as 1 and evens as 2.

In Various Works

d2s are used with disturbing frequency in both CCGs and RPGs. They are used in Magic: The Gathering, and even Dungeons and Dragons because some faggot developer thinks it's fucking funny to have certain items and weapons do damage using d2s even to this fucking day.

The RPG Bean! is a d2-based game, and it's actually pretty good.

Also Currency

The d2 are the only dice you can put in a vending machine and spend for candy.

d3

Not much to say about it.

Warhammer 40k uses D3's every once in awhile - Rending, Manticores, & other cases such as +D3 attacks, 2 + D3 objectives, etc. Most of the time, they don't actually use a D3 - they just roll a d6, at which points two schools of thought engage in a holy war:

Some substract 3 from any result that's 4 or higher. So, for example, a 5 becomes a 2.
Others divide the result by two, rounding up. So, for example, a 5 becomes a 3.

The 40k rulebook explicitly proselytizes the latter, which means the former is heresy.

Actual D3's come in two major flavours: The weird triangular nublette things seen to the right which are largely used by people who think having weird dice makes you interesting, and D6es which had 1,2 and 3 written on them twice used by people who like to build things out of dice.

Since you can readily simulate a d3 result easily enough without obtaining extra dice why in the hell would you bother?

d4

A pyramidal die that has the second-sharpest points of any die (only the d8 is sharper), and, appropriately enough, has four sides. Used by Wizards, small weapons, and low-caliber firearms in d20 modern. At least it gets more love than the d12, which probably falls asleep every night in a pool of tears and melted butter.

There are two ways to print the numbers on a D4. On one, the numbers are arranged on the corners of each face, and so the number at the top (it will always be three of the same number) is what you actually rolled. On the other kind, the numbers are arranged in the middle of each side of the face, and so the number on the bottom (again, it will always be three of the same number) tells you what you rolled. Oldfags will insist the "numbers on the bottom" d4 is the one true way, despite the fact that they need the full power of their coke-bottle glasses to see the numbers. Don't argue with 'em, just keep using the d4s that you and everyone at the table can read.

Fucking Caltrops

Whilst the d4 isn't as sharp as a d8, it has one major bit of natural defense - no matter what way it lands, it will have a point face-up. Because it's the smallest die, care needs to be used - if one escapes its dice-box and into the wild, it will wait, with its natural weapon ready, for the exact moment someone walks into its vicinity barefoot to strike, whereupon it will inflict some surprisingly-vicious puncture wounds.

Somewhat related, in D&D Caltrops inflict 1d4 damage. Coincidence?

Gallery

Premium Dice!
Premium Dice cont.
A D2. Careful not to spend it all in one place.
D3.]]The D3...
A d4 in the wild, natural weapon readied. As you can see by the notch on the left edge, this one has already claimed a victim.