D&D 5E D&D Beyond Releases 2023 Character Creation Data

D&D Beyond released the 2023 Unrolled with data on the most popular character choices for D&D. The full article includes a wide variety of statistics for the beta test of Maps, charity donations, mobile app usage, and more. However, I’m just going to recap the big numbers.

The most common species chosen by players are Human, Elf, Dragonborn, Tiefling, and Half-Elf. This contrasts with the stats from Baldur’s Gate 3 released back in August 2023 where Half-Elves were the most popular with the rest of the top five also shuffling around.

Also, keep an eye on the scale of these charts as they’re not exactly even. It starts with just over 700,000 for Humans and 500,000 for Elf, but the next line down is 200,000 with the other three species taking up space in that range. This means the difference separating the highest line on the graph and the second highest is 200,000, then 300,000 between the next two, 100,000 between the next, and finally 10,000 separating all the others.

Top classes start off with the Fighter then move onto the Rogue, Barbarian, Wizard, and Paladin. The scale on this chart is just as uneven as the last, but the numbers are much closer with what appears to be about 350,000 Fighters at the top to just over 100,000 Monks in next-to-last with under 80,000 Artificers. This contrasts far more from the Baldur’s Gate 3 first weekend data as the top five classes for the game were Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlock, Rogue, and Bard.

And the most important choices for new characters, the names. Bob is still the top choice for names with Link, Saraphina, and Lyra seeing the most growth and Bruno, Eddie, and Rando seeing the biggest declines from last year.

Putting that together, it means the most commonly created character on D&D Beyond is Bob the Human Fighter. A joke going as far back as I can remember in RPGs is, in fact, reality proven by hard statistics.

 

[ECMO3]

deleted because I completely misunderstood the person I replied to.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Your new player who picks up the books and asks friends to play with him isn't going to be looking up general tropes and likely isn't looking at YouTube.

Maybe, but there are whole subreddits and YouTube channels built around giving advice to new players. And a lot of that time, the advice is "play a fighter for your first class."

This is an exceptionally silly thing to still be worrying about, in any case.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The whole game is skewed by what is free and what is not free. I don't know that DND Beyond is any more skewed than play in general and in that respect, while it is skewed towards free options, that does not mean that skew results in a bias.

Well I play fighters, I like playing fighters, I play other classes and I like playing other classes. I don't find fighters boring at all.

I don't think most players who play fighters find them boring. I think if they did find them boring, they would play something else instead.

Woah! Waitaminute! I did NOT say that Fighters were boring! I mostly play fighters (when I'm not playing Rogues)! I love fighters!

I said that I thought that the idea that "people like to play fighters" is the least interesting thing that we can attempt to learn when looking at these graphs! That's a WAY different thing!

It's no wonder we get into conflicts around here when a post can be misinterpreted that far!

 

[Oofta]

Yup.


I don't think that was claimed, but you're right that any single reason is probably NOT 1-in-4. Maybe ALL the alternate reasons account for more than that, though! Who knows?


Depends on why you didn't enjoy it? Subclass, for example, can make a HUGE difference. I (for one) wouldn't give up on the fighter after having one bad experience.


I think that's what you've been arguing against, though?


Well, they are what they are. They're DDB numbers. They're skewed by "what's Free" and "what's not" among many other factors. They're interesting to look at, but they don't mean much without context.


Here's the difference between you and me: I think that it's a GIVEN that "people like to play fighters" and therefore the least interesting thing that could be discussed about these statistics. That people like to play fighters has been true for 50 years. Boring!

What else can we learn here? Nothing, if we're shut down when we try to talk about the things that we can't know by looking at these charts.

"Yes, sir, there is no evidence that my neighbor is eating live parrots for breakfast every morning but there's no evidence they are not!" FitzTheRuke, maybe. Certainly no evidence they didn't make that accusation.

I have no idea what you're arguing any more. Do we know the exact reasons people play what they play? No! We never will. But when the gap is so significant I think it's self evident that people are playing characters they want to play and I see no reason to think otherwise. If the free version is skewing the results then it's even more interesting because that would mean a lot of people are playing champion fighters which according to this forum (and not my person experience or opinion) champion fighters are terrible.

 

[Oofta]

I think this is true in some places, but I think this is not overall good for the game.

In my groups I make it a point to tell people to play what they want. We got a new gamer in a game we started 3 weeks ago and he said he wanted to play a Paladin. The rest of us, who have been gaming together for years came in with - melee Fighter, Barbarian and Ranged Ranger. Then the new guy (who was the first to say what class he was playing) said, hey "we seem melee heavy, maybe I should play a Cleric or another casters"

I chimed in and said "play what you want, we will make it work". The entire rest of the group agreed "If you want to play a Paladin, play a Paladin".

We ended up adding a Druid later too, so we did have one full caster in the end, and my Drow Fighter has a ton of magic (for a fighter). The thing is though, players should try hard to make sure other players are not backed or pressured into playing something they don't want. The great thing about 5E is you have to work really hard to make a character or group that won't work. As I said before you can walk into most 5E campaigns with a party of 4 fighters and those same 4 fighters are going to walk out the other side.

Some might come in and say that party was not well built or balanced and they are probably right, but the thing with peer pressure is players need to worry about their character, not other people's character and if you think "the party needs X" then make sure YOUR player has X, don't pressure someone else to get X. There is no legitimate reason to pressure someone else into making a certain character.

Another side note - same gaming group a few years back the DM made fun of us because we were going through Acerak's dungeon in tomb of anihilation and had no one in the entire party proficient in Thieves tools (we had a Barbarian, Bard/Ranger (me), Fighter and Sorcerer). DM - "no one thought it was important to bring a Rogue or at least someone with a background proficiency in Thieves Tools to a Dungeon known for its traps". In the end we were probably challanged more at times than we would have otherwise been, but we made it through.

I just started a new campaign with my long running home game. Fighter, barbarian, rogue, cleric, monk. If they ever need wizardly help, I'll let them hire a cowardly wizard at some point.

 

[Minigiant]

People play classes for a wide variety of reasons. I just find it difficult to believe that 1 in every 4 people playing fighters would rather be playing a wizard or some other caster class. Because that's the size of the gap we're talking about

If 1 in 10 fighters are influenced by party members or DMs, fight is the most popular class.

10% of 200k is 20k.

 

[bedir than]

For examples of other possible reasons: It's FREE on DDB;

This supposition is unsupportable when actual evidence by DnDBeyond was presented.

 

[Oofta]

If 1 in 10 fighters are influenced by party members or DMs, fight is the most popular class.

10% of 200k is 20k.

The numbers show approximately 350k fighters and around 260k wizards. Even if 20k people playing fighters switched over to wizards, there would still be significantly more fighters than wizards. I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[Minigiant]

The numbers show approximately 350k fighters and around 260k wizards. Even if 20k people playing fighters switched over to wizards, there would still be significantly more fighters than wizards. I have no idea what you're talking about.

If 10% of those fighters were pushed to other classes, rogue becomes the most popular class.

 

[Oofta]

If 10% of those fighters were pushed to other classes, rogue becomes the most popular class.

If more people played a class than fighter that other class would be more popular? Shocking revelation.