Are dice perfectly balanced?

[Endur]

With six sided dice, if you are rolling only one dice at a time, it is possible to shade the odds slightly in your favor.

 

[DarkKestral]

Note, there are people who can significantly "de-balance" dice. The technique is called "forcing" and skilled users can prevent specific numbers from showing up 90% of the time or better.

That said, I can't roll above a 4 or below a 17 to save my life, and it's always the worse of the two for the given situation...

 

[Kularian]

All I can say is, test it scientifically.

Each of you, roll a d20 200 or so times. Record the results. See if you get significantly more or fewer than 10 results on each number.

Y'know, I probably should. I've seen my dice rolls enough to know the randomness, but the others have mainly been 'recollection' statistics. In the next game I'm running, I'll ask the players to tally all of their rolls, and we'll see what sort of numbers we get...

 

[Greylock]

I have one of those white D20s from the first DDM set that lives up to its reputation in the DnD community quite well. I call it my Dice (die) of Doom. It consistently rolls in the very high teens, or the very low singles.

I pretty much only use it for occasional Skill checks, or extremely dramatic moments. It never fails to bring either a "hot dang!" or a "fudge!"

Everyone in the group knows about its odd proclivities, including the DM. And everyone shudders when I trot it out.

 

[VoidAdept]

There was an article in Dragon, many years ago (I'd guess 1982 or 1983), about the topic. It contained a chi-squared statistical formula that you could use to test your dice, and see if they were truly random.

It was in issue 78, and reprinted in the Dragon Compendium (Appendix C, p. 231).

 

[Abisashi]

Just to hedge my bets, I like the d20s that have "20" surrounded by, say, 2, 4, and 7, so that even if, yeah, it's weighted a bit to one side or the other, it's still going to roll "low" versus "high" about the right percentage of the time. I don't mind a die that's a bit less likely to roll a 20 but more likely to roll a 19, 17, or 14.

D20s that have the 20 surrounded by other high numbers are called "spindown dice" in my experience, and are used to track life in games like Magic: The Gathering. They are much easier to cheat with (never use them to determine who goes first!).

You actually shouldn't be using dice to track life in a tournament of any size anyway (that is, REL > 0).

 

[Psion]

There was an article in Dragon, many years ago (I'd guess 1982 or 1983), about the topic. It contained a chi-squared statistical formula that you could use to test your dice, and see if they were truly random.

It was called "Be Thy Die Ill Wrought", and it was reprinted in the Dragon Compendium.