If you’re anything like us, you’re probably always looking for new ways to surprise, delight, entertain or cause chaos whenever you play DnD. Getting creative with dice rolls is one of the best ways DMs and players can add more depth and more fun to their storytelling. Inspired by the Dungeon Masters of Reddit and a host of our favorite creators, we put together a list of 10 dice roll ideas for DnD you need to try at your next session.
1. New cooking gear equals new foraging opportunities
Whenever a player finds, loots or buys a piece of cooking equipment, use the next rest opportunity to guide your party through preparing a meal together. You can either have them decide what to cook, or roll to determine the success of finding all the ingredients they need to fill their bellies with a meal they’ve been craving.
Alternatively, you could have a D100 table of both strange and ordinary foraged finds prepared. Each player rolls for one item and once they’re done, they have to find a way to make a meal from their randomized ‘mystery box’ of ingredients.
Companion dice: Delicious in Dungeon 7-Piece Iconic Dice Set
2. Weather with consequences
In the real world, weather events can have the most devastating, annoying, amusing and inspiring consequences. Why not add some of the flavor to your D&D campaigns too? You can roll for the weather every in-game morning to determine its effects from the night before or the day ahead.
Download or make your own random weather table, including the effects it will have on your players. For example, a massive hailstorm in the night could result in every character incurring a small amount of damage. An unseasonably hot day could cause harvested crafting materials in your inventory to degrade. They see a rainbow or experience a beautiful light drizzle, and everyone’s spirit is lifted. Or maybe, it’s just an average temperate day that doesn’t have an effect on their adventure, but is still nice to know.
Companion dice: Stormcloud 7-Piece Polyhedral Dice Set
3. Really weird curses
We recommend going through the curses in all your D&D or 5e books, random tables, free resources and Reddit; select the most diabolical options to compile your own D100 table and use it for future games. Be sure to include how long the curse holds for, or how it can be broken.
Some examples we love is that cursed characters must become temporarily aquatic, perceive monsters as adorable, constantly get pooped on by birds, be unable to see horses, only use their feet. These curses can do anything from causing differing levels of damage to reducing charisma until characters can find a bath. Jazz hands is also a great curse to experiment with.
4. Tension relief for morally-gray combat
Many players are made uncomfortable by combat that is morally gray, and some players don’t want to take part in conflict at all. If this sounds like you, you can try to avoid violence for your character by relieving tension during combat. When it comes to your turn, tell the DM you’d like to perform an interpretive dance, remove all your clothes, make tea for the whole party and their enemies, or anything else that could stump your friends and enemies.
The DM will roll to determine whether you were successful at lightening the mood enough for your party and adversaries to go their separate ways, talk through the conflict, or fight harder and more fiercely than before.
5. Epic item names
Every good weapon needs a good name! Set up three D20 tables side by side. In the first table, provide a list of adjectives. The second and third tables are used together to create a compound noun.
Whenever a character buys, finds or loots a new weapon, use your three tables to give it an epic name. For example, a new sword could become The Infamous (adjective) Light (noun) Splitter (noun). A wand could become The Wondrous Power Jabber. Even a trusty frying pan can become The Wretched Pride Puncher in the right circumstances.
Companion dice: Frazetta x Dispel Death Dealer 4-Piece Iconic D6 Dice Set
6. Unusual charisma markers
Charisma is one of the best places to have some fun with your character, during both the creation process and actual gameplay. When your party is creating their characters, instead of having everyone simply roll for a general charisma score, you could look at rolling for interesting attributes that contribute to charisma in a way that can add to the story later on.
For example, Dwarves could roll for beard length. The longer the beard, the easier their dealings will be with other Dwarven characters and NPCs. One DM on Reddit sometimes has his players roll for a score on how cool they look smoking. More coolness adds more charisma, but only when smoking a pipe.
7. Crazy cantrips
Since cantrips are smaller spells that require no resources, they’re a great way for players to have fun without it costing their characters anything, initially. Be prepared with a selection of weird and wonderful cantrip tables players can call upon during the game. You could have different tables for combat, exploring, looting, crafting, chatting, anything your players might be getting up to. You could also introduce a signature cantrip for each player during character creation. Will it be useful to them at all during the game? Probably not, unless they find ways to get really creative.
Some of the most entertaining examples we dug up from the community include being able to summon a single fly that you can’t control, giving another player or enemy a literal bad taste in their mouth, give yourself a creepy smile, conjure poop to lay in someone’s path or be able to gently stir any small body of liquid without any tools.
Companion dice: Summoner's Circle 7-Piece Iridescent Iconic Dice Set
8. Can I get a discount?
Players, this one’s also just for you, and it’s pretty self explanatory. The next time you're at the market or in the middle of a bargain and your charisma is on fire (your beard is long and luxurious, and you look great smoking that pipe!), tell your DM you’d like to roll for a discount. The higher your roll, the better your discount.
Even if the odds are not in your favor, you never know what could happen at a toss of the dice. Maybe you haven’t had time to wash the bird poop out of your hair yet and the shopkeeper gives you a discount to get you out of their store as quickly as possible.
9. Potentially useful found items
Every party has one player that has to open every door, lift every lid, dig under every tree, and scratch in every cupboard or drawer. Since they’re already holding the game up, why not make it more interesting for everyone at the table? If you haven’t hidden anything there, you can still allow them to succeed in finding something. Have them roll a D100 that corresponds to a useless item table. These items will start to fill up their inventories, forcing them to either find creative uses for them, and hopefully they’ll start poking around less frequently as well.
A few curious items we found online include a book on professional dungeon maintenance and cleanliness, a porcelain doll, an orange cat, cheap earrings, house paint, a jar of teeth, an MLM pamphlet, and a pair of satin-lined black opera gloves.
10. Most likely to…
If your players’ characters went to high school, how would this sentence be completed in their year books? Don’t know? Roll to find out during your character creation session! You’d have to homebrew a table for this, and maybe even ask your players to contribute suggestions. We really enjoy options like most likely to become a crazy cat lady, eat off the ground, attack first in any fight, lose track of time talking to strangers at every inn, fall for an obvious scam, impulse buy trinkets, get seriously into skincare, stop wearing shoes, steal fireworks and we’ll leave the rest to you.
Once every character has their most likely to, they must try to use this prompt in the game whenever they get the chance. It is a core part of their personality, after all, and a great way for new players to break the ice and veteran players to improve their improv skills.
More dice rolls obviously means you need more dice, and all this dice chat will have hopefully got you ready and excited to try something new in your next campaign. We’ve got you covered with everything from chonk D20s for your most exciting high-stakes rolls to full seven-piece themed dice sets for DnD.
And don’t forget, if you plan on doing a lot of rolling, be sure to use a rolling tray during the game and store them in a soft dice box afterwards to prolong their longevity. For more tips on how to look after your premium DnD dice, click here.
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