Roll 6D6
Six ordinary six-sided dice, rolled together. The tool shows every face and the total. Totals run from 6 to 36, and they are nowhere near evenly spread across that range.
6d6 6
Press roll.
Lowest possible 6, highest 36, average 21.0.
What six dice actually produce
Six dice have 46,656 equally likely combinations. Each combination is as likely as any other, but the totals are not, because there are thousands of ways to make 21 and exactly one way to make 36.
21 is the most likely total. It turns up in 4,332 of the 46,656 combinations, which is 9.28%, or about one roll in eleven. The average total is also exactly 21.
| Total | Combinations | Chance |
|---|---|---|
| 6 or 36 | 1 each | 0.002% |
| 10 | 126 | 0.27% |
| 15 | 1,666 | 3.57% |
| 18 | 3,431 | 7.35% |
| 21 | 4,332 | 9.28% |
| 24 | 3,431 | 7.35% |
| 30 | 456 | 0.98% |
The middle is crowded and the ends are empty
Totals from 18 to 24 cover 58.8% of all rolls. A total of 12 or under happens 1.97% of the time, and a total of 30 or over happens the same 1.97% of the time. So a run of results in the low twenties is not the tool being lazy. That is where six dice live.
Matching faces and missing sixes
- All six dice showing the same face: once in 7,776 rolls.
- All six faces different, one of each: 720 combinations, or 1.54%.
- At least one 6 somewhere in the six: 66.5%, so a six is the normal case rather than luck.
What people roll 6d6 for
Fireball and similar spells in fifth edition, where 21 is the average the rules quote. Character generation in older systems that add several dice. Anything that should be bell-shaped, with a common middle and rare extremes.
If you want the opposite, a flat spread where every value is equally likely, take a number from 1 to 30 instead. For a narrower curve use 3d6, and the dice roller handles any other count.