The four-sided die, or d4 for short, is an attractive little tetrahedron which doesn’t roll well but sits consistently on any table thanks largely to the geometry of its construction. As a right pyramid, it has a great deal of stability, yet that same stability makes it almost impossible to actually roll. Yet where it lands, it typically stays. This makes them a little more difficult to lose under furniture, in conjunction with their status as effective, if makeshift, caltrops which can punish those who leave them lying around underfoot.

Interestingly, unlike any other traditional dice type, the d4 can be read multiple ways (that is, depending on its labelling; each individual die can only be read one way but there are two ways a manufacturer might print its numbers). Most often, the result is the one viewed along the peak of the pyramidal structure as it sits—so a quick glance at the top of the d4 reveals the result, as in the attached picture. However, a variant exists which lists the result along the base of the d4 instead, which might likely be confusing to those who are used to what has since become the more common form of display. This doesn’t tend to be too much of a problem unless both types are used at the same table, however.

It is nevertheless an interesting quirk of the d4 that it is the only die among the usual set which uses an edge to display its results rather than a face. Mainly because it has no top-facing side, coming to a point instead. Hence, it is either the bottom edge, or each edge clustered around the point, which are used to display results, which in my experience can be temporarily confusing to the uninitiated.

The four-sided dice is, in my experience, among the least common types of dice. Perhaps because the range of its results is so low, it doesn’t really feel like there’s all that much hanging on the result. This is particularly so if it is paired with a system which does have otherwise quite large spreads of results—like the d20 base of Dungeons & Dragons—it can seem almost inconsequential. Unless multiple d4s are utilised, or the system’s numeric range is quite low, the d4 can quickly become extraneous.

Perhaps it’s also because each result has a 25% chance of appearing that no specific result seems particularly special. Add to that the limited range of those results, and it can seem pointless to add a d4 to a d20; the entire range of the d4 is swallowed up and made redundant by 20% of the d20’s own range, which means that about 80% of the time the result of the d4 would have no discernible impact at all.

And I certainly can’t think of any games which actually revolve around a d4 in the resolution of its core mechanics, not at the expense of some other kind of die. Most of the time, it appears as a means of adding a minor bonus—like D&D’s Bless spell, which isn’t beloved because of the d4 in particular, but because it’s a low level spell which affects multiple characters across multiple rolls, so it’s really the potential of the additive effect which is appealing. Or, it is included to negatively compensate for some other beneficial effect—such as D&D’s Magic Missile spell, which only uses d4s for damage because there is no to-hit roll; it’s the automatic hit that makes that spell so good. Again, it’s not the d4 itself.

Other than that, d4s do also appear in games—Dogs in the Vineyard jumps to mind—which utilise a spread of dice which players must either dole out sparingly, or increase in value over time depending on contextual cues or character investment. But, yet again, the d4 itself is not really a selling point here per se. It is, in fact, almost always merely representative of the lowest value die available. That is, it’s the worst amongst a set of options, which must be strategically deployed precisely because of its low range of results.

Despite its pleasing shape, the d4 is, as previously mentioned, almost impossible to ‘roll’ because of its hard edges—it suffers the opposite problem of the d20 and anything larger than that—which mean that the rolling really needs to happen mid-air. So despite its aesthetic appeal, the poor old d4 really doesn’t feel all that good to throw. They also seem to be the hardest die to come by, perhaps because almost any other type of dice can be procured in batches of their own type—it’s easy to get a bunch of d10s or d6s, for example, but who on earth would buy a complete set of the rarely-utilised d4s?

Nobody, that’s who. Except for those using them for their true purpose: punishment for barefoot intrusion.