Every face has a 1 in 10 chance — 10% each. Average roll: 5.5.
The d10 is the only die in the standard set that is not a Platonic solid. There are exactly five of those and none has ten faces, so the d10 had to be designed: a pentagonal trapezohedron, ten kite-shaped faces arranged in two offset rings of five.
That awkward geometry buys something valuable. Ten is the number our arithmetic is built on, so a d10 drops straight into percentages, and two of them cover 1 to 100 without anyone doing mental multiplication.
Most d10s are numbered 0 through 9 rather than 1 through 10, and most percentile d10s are numbered 00 through 90. On its own, a die showing 0 is read as 10 — that is the whole convention, and it is why the two dice are printed differently in the first place.
In a percentile pair the 0 genuinely means zero on the tens die. A 30 and a 4 is 34. A 00 and a 7 is 7. The only special case is double zero: 00 with 0 reads as 100, not 0, because the range runs 1 to 100 rather than 0 to 99.
Most people meet the d10 through percentile rolls, but an entire family of games uses it differently. In the Storyteller and Chronicles of Darkness systems you build a pool from your character’s traits, roll that many d10s at once, and count how many came up at or above a target number — usually 8. The total is irrelevant; only the count of successes matters.
This produces a very different feel from add-them-up systems. A bigger pool does not raise your ceiling so much as make failure rarer, and results arrive as degrees — one success is a scrape, five is a triumph — rather than as a single number compared to a difficulty.
Fifth edition uses the d10 for the heavier end of weapon damage: the two-handed grip on a versatile weapon, the heavy crossbow, the pike and the glaive. It is also the hit die for Fighters, Paladins and Rangers, the three classes expected to stand at the front and stay there.
Beyond that it does percentile duty for wild magic, treasure and encounter tables, which is where a matched pair earns its place in the dice bag.
Because the same die has to work alone and as half of a percentile pair. Rolled on its own, a 0 is read as 10. In a percentile pair it means a genuine zero — except for 00 alongside 0, which reads as 100.
Nominate one die as the tens and one as the units before you throw — percentile sets mark the tens die 00 to 90. Read them together: a 40 and a 2 is 42. Rolling 00 and 0 together is read as 100. This roller gives you the same 1–100 range from a single die.
A system where you roll several dice at once and count how many beat a target number instead of adding them up. Chronicles of Darkness rolls d10s and counts every 8 or higher as one success, so a bigger pool mostly means a more reliable outcome rather than a bigger number.
Seven dice come in the set and new players are told to buy them before anyone explains what they do. This is what each one is for.
The maths behind why some rolls feel reliable and others feel like coin flips — with the numbers you can actually use at the table.
Every rulebook writes rolls in the same compact shorthand. Here is how to read it, including the keep and drop notation that trips people up.
Last updated: August 20, 2026
