roll 3 diceRoll 3 dice

Roll 3 dice online

Three six-sided dice are on the table. Tap them, press Roll or hit the Space bar, and you get three faces and their total, from 3 to 18. The average is 10.5, and the totals near the middle come up far more often than the extremes: 10 and 11 are the most common, while 3 and 18 each need all three dice to cooperate.

Why 3d6 makes a bell curve

One die gives a flat result: every face is equally likely. Add a second and the middle starts to dominate. With three dice, the shape already looks like a bell. That is why 3d6 has long been used when a game wants “usually average, sometimes exceptional”: early role-playing games rolled 3d6 for each ability score, in order, and some systems still resolve every action by rolling 3d6 under a skill.

Galileo’s dice puzzle

In the early seventeenth century, gamblers in Tuscany noticed that a total of 10 came up more often than 9 with three dice, although both can be made in six different ways (for 9: 1-2-6, 1-3-5, 1-4-4, 2-2-5, 2-3-4, 3-3-3). Galileo explained why: the dice are distinct, so 1-2-6 can happen in six orders, while 3-3-3 happens in only one. Counted properly, 10 has 27 ways out of 216 and 9 has 25. The table below lists every total, counted the same way.

Tips for this roller

• Tap a die to keep it, then roll the others. Useful for games that let you re-roll some dice.
• Your recent totals stay in the history, so you can track a game or a set of ability scores.