Dungeon Master’s Dice

This week’s Fiddler is a probability question about a dice-rolling game.

Two people are sitting at a table together, each with their own bag of six “DnD dice”: a d4, a d6, a d8, a d10, a d12, and a d20. Here, “dX” refers to a die with X faces, numbered from 1 to X, each with an equally likely probability of being rolled. Both people randomly pick one die from their respective bags and then roll them at the same time. For example, suppose the two dice selected are a d4 and a d12. The players roll them, and let’s further suppose that both rolls come up as 3. What luck! What’s the probability of something like this happening? That is, what is the probability that both players roll the same number, whether or not they happened to pick the same kind of die?

Extra Credit
Instead of two people sitting at the table, now suppose there are three. Again, all three randomly pick one die from their respective bags and roll them at the same time. For example, suppose the three dice selected are a d4, a d20, and a d12. The players roll them, and let’s further suppose that the d4 comes out as 4, the d20 comes out as 13, and the d12 comes out as 4. In this case, there are two distinct numbers (4 and 13) among the three rolls. On average, how many distinct numbers would you expect to see among the three rolls?

My solution:
[Show Solution]

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