Who's Multiclassing With Who? More D&D Beyond Stats!

D&D Beyond has released yet more stats! We've already seen the most common adventures, classes by tier, and subclasses. This time it's a look at popular multiclass combinations! They use "active characters" which are those not deleted or suspended, and which there is "some reasonable sense that maybe they're played". There was a LOT of data whizzing by very fast in the Twitch stream, so here it is broken down.

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It turns out that 11% of level 2+ characters are multiclass and 27% of level 20 characters are multiclass. This varies by class, of course, with the fighter being the most common, with 33% multiclassed at levels 2+ and nearly 40% at level 20.

In the graphics here, the light blue is characters of level 2+, the dark blue is characters of level 20. The fact that you can take more than just two classes means that these won't add up to exactly 100%.

Fighter/Rogue is the most popular combo, followed by Barbarian/Fighter. Warlock/Bard is the least popular.

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Up at level 20, the figures differ a little.

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Zooming in at the bard, you can see it broken down by level. Level 1 is a popular level as are 3 and 10. The most popular choices for a bard's multi class are the rogue and the warlock.

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And here's the cleric by level. The most popular cleric combinations are fighter, wizard, and rogue.

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Here are druids, one of the least popular multiclasses, with only 8% multiclass druids. There's a peak at 10th level. Barbarians, rangers, and clerics are popular combos.

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Paladins. Levels 2 and 6 are popular. Popular combos are with warlock, fighter, and sorcerer.

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Next up is the ranger. Popular multiclasses are rogue, fighter, and druid.

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Monk is next. Level 17 is a milestone, and it multiclasses with rogue, fighter, and barbarian most.

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Sorcerer. Warlock, paladin, and fighters are common multiclasses.

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And then we have the warlock. A very popular choice for muliticlassing, with 23-25% of warlock characters doing so. Sorcerer, fighter, rogue are the popular multiclasses.

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The wizard has a peak at 10th level. They tend to multiclass with warlocks, paladins, and fighters.

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For the barbarian, we have mainly a low level dip, and lots of fighter multiclasses, followed by druid, rogue and monk.

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This one is the fighter. Very popular for multiclassers, with 33% of characters, and nearly 40% at level 20. Warlock, paladin and... fighter? are popular multiclasses.

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And then we have the rogue! Almost as popular as the fighter (32%). The popular mutliclass choices here are warlock, paladin, and fighter.

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[TwoSix]

Yup. There's apparently more than one bard/druid out there, a combination that would never occur to me.

Maybe they are fighter/rogue/druid/bards, for the 1E fans.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

If I understand that chart right, that's out of all multiclass characters. So the fact that there are FAR more fighters and rogues than warlocks and bards overall, would cause those to rise up quite a bit.

Also, honestly, I really like bards and a I really like warlocks, but thematically, that's a combo that has never occurred to me. Mechanically, it makes sense, and I'm sure there are plenty of interesting concepts. But even as someone who plays those two classes, it wouldn't occur to me to combine them conceptually at all. I was actually surprised that it was that high! But it just goes to show that the game is rich enough for people to have very different experiences of them.

I think of the bard/warlock as the D&D version of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" (Johnny does get the golden fiddle at the end) or the many stories of a blues musician who sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads to become the best blues musician (going to Hell after you die seems like good inspiration to have the blues). I have noticed in recent years a fair number of stories of fey offering to make a musician excellent (and then forcing them to play until they die), and of course, weird pipe music is a staple of Lovecraftian Horror; I have often wondered why they haven't added a musical instrument pact implement to the warlock.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Considering the first graph doesn't even have a title I don't know how you would have a clue what it is showing without reading the paragraph explaining what that graph is showing. Once you've done that it's perfectly clear.

Given one of the very first comments was "these graphs are so good" I felt it perfectly pertinent to say "well, actually, the first one is really not so great."

Also pie graphs are pretty much strictly inferior to bar graphs for most visualization purposes, but that's a more technical complaint as opposed to "this visually says something other than what it actually means."

 

[FrogReaver]

Given one of the very first comments was "these graphs are so good" I felt it perfectly pertinent to say "well, actually, the first one is really not so great."

Would it have been more technically correct if they made it something like:
Fighter (all character > lvl 2) = ……%
Fighter (lvl 20 only) = ……%

I agree that it the above example would have been technically correct. However, I also understand that they needed to create a graph that could appear on a single screen and doubling the number of horizontal bars showing to do it the technically correct way would have likely made it too horizontally long to display on a single screen. In light of that limitation I think they did an awesome job providing a visualization of the info. I think that makes it a great graph.

In addition I personally liked how I could easily like down the left side of that graph and know I was looking at data for 1 population and then look down the right side and know I was looking at the data for the other. It made it really easy to reference and dig into for me.

So while not technically correct their graph provided a nice usability feature as well as was the only practical way to fit a horizontal bar graph of 12 characters and 2 different populations on a single screen. Couple that with the notion that the info being displayed was really nice to have and it equals "great graph".