Dice 101

So get this: there was a time none of you knew what dungeons and dragons was. Most people only know that it involved both dungeons, and dragons, as well as it utilizing a 20 sided die, called a d20. This d20 is what the entire system revolves around and is probably what you’ll be rolling the most to be honest. This little piece of plastic determines all of your successes and failures in the game, with 20 being the best and 1 usually being a bad time. Depending on your DM of course

## When do I roll?

Now, a lot of beginners may ask “How do I know when to roll.” Well here's the thing: most of the time you don’t even have to. You just focus more on what your character wants to do and how you want to do it. The DM is the one that decides whether you roll for a given action. Now picture this: You're running for your life. Having picked the wrong pocket, you are now being chased by some shady guys up to a roof. There's not too many options before you. You could hold your ground and fight, or jump across to another roof. Let's say you chose to run, in which case you would probably roll for athletics to see if you make it across the roof or fall to the street below. Or if your character is a tough brawler you'll likely want to roll for strength to see if you're successful in grappling the enemy to the ground. The roll of the die is what truly determines the outcome. You could end up getting away from your persuers or become their prisoner. It all depends on the roll of the die.

However that doesn’t have to be the end all be all. Afterall, you’re characters are the heroes or villains of the story. There’s plenty you’re good and bad at and that is based around your 6 ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. These scores give you modifiers, be it bonuses or penalties, that help determines if your Barbarian slices the head off an enemies shoulders or loses their grip and sends their axe flying across the room.

## Wait, there's more Dice!?

Now there’s more than just a d20. You have a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and last but not least the d100. These dice are used mostly for healing and damage and usually correspond with what weapon you're using or how powerful and effective a spell might be. The number of dice you roll is determined by the number in front of the letter d. Say you got a 2d8. You would roll 2 d8 die. So most people don’t have a physical d100 die, as they tend to look like golf balls and often roll a bit further than you’d like, but typically you’d roll 2 d10. One taking the ones places, the other taking the tens place. Say you roll a 3 and a 8. That’s a 38. Pretty straight forward. Typically d100 are percentile die used to determine save rolls for spells to hit, sorcerer or wild magic tables, random encounters or even loot tables.

## Advantage VS Disadvantage

Now this talk of die brings me into my text topic, something not many actually understand, advantage vs disadvantage. Essentially, an advantage allows you to roll 2d20, taking the higher roll result, whilst a disadvantage requires you to roll 2d20, taking the lower result. You never roll more than two dice because multiple advantage/disadvantage conditions don’t stack unfortunately. Also, if you happen to have conditions that give you both advantage and disadvantage, they'll actually cancel each other out and you get neither. An example of advantage would be to roll an attack against a blinded creature, while disadvantage would be the blinded creature attempting to roll an attack.

## Critical hit vs Critical fail

Congratulations, you managed to rolled a natural 20! When you do so you automatically hit your target, regardless of their armor class and you double the number of damage dice you roll. Add the two rolls together and you get dritical damage! Then add your relevant modifiers accordingly.

However, should you roll a natural 1 any number of things could happen(oh boy). Critical fails/misses work the same way as critical hits, but in reverse. Rolling a natural 1 means you miss automatically, regardless of how high your modifier is. Do note though that outside of combat it is a different story. Even with a critical miss you could still add your modifiers to an ability check or saving throw for an attempt at succeeding where you failed. Unless of course you're rolling a death saving throw, in which case a natural 1 makes you fail twice instead of the normal once

In terms of homebrew, according to the DM, a critical fail or success can be altered so that the player would have to roll on a chart for a specified result, often resulting in more than just the player dropping their weapon or missing a swing. The player might end up breaking their sword, getting it stuck, or even have it flying out of their hands and landing halfway across the room.

## Rolling For Stats

Now, when starting to roll your character you have the option of a standard array or a manual array. For standard array you are given a set number of stats that you can allocate accordingly. For manual you can opt to do two options, both of which would preferably be done with the DM present. Option one is to take a regular d20 and roll for each stat, with the option of re-rolling stats you dont like. However for the 2nd roll you must take that number, regardless of whether or not it is better or worse than the previous number. For the 2nd option, which is the standard, you roll four 6-sided dice (or 4d6 for short). Afterward, add the 3 highest dice to get your stat. You can still have the option of rerolling specific stats, however again you must take the 2nd option no matter what.