Most popular class/race combos

Morrus · Apr 29, 2018

This chart was published back in October (we discussed it here then), but I thought I'd list the popular combos in order. These are those with 2000 or more.

Human Fighter 4888
Elf Ranger 3076
Elf Wizard 2744
Human Wizard 2568
Human Rogue 2542
Human Cleric 2339
Human Paladin 2326
Elf Rogue 2257
Dwarf Cleric 2199
Tiefling Warlock 2188
Dwarf Fighter 2009

And the least popular are:

Aasimar druid 65
Aasimar monk 87
... oh, wait. It's all aasimars and druids!

Yaarel · Apr 30, 2018

@Morrus

Did the top 10 list accidentally leave out the Elf Wizard?

The chart says there are 2744 Elf Wizards and 2568 Human Wizards.

This means, the Elf Wizard is a more popular combo than the Human Wizard.

aco175 · Apr 30, 2018

That says a lot, thank you.

I would have thought that humans were not that much more popular. I know that my father pretty much plays human fighters, but most of the rest of the groups I play with play other more standard races like elves and dwarves.

Blue · Apr 30, 2018

Well, from my FLGS my highly unscientific survey of race/class combos are:

variant Human + anything (sometimes multiclassed) [1-2+ per table]
Half-Orc Barbarian [usually 1 per table]
Half-Elf (Paladin|Sorcerer|Bard|Warlock or some combonation) [often 1 per table]
Everything else

Ancalagon · Apr 30, 2018

Two comments:

1: I note that the "spread" of classes is much less dramatic than the race spread. The most popular class is a bit more than twice as popular as the least popular class. That's a good thing IMO! Race wise however, the spread is what, 12-13 fold? That's huge. Even is we exclude the non PHB races, the spread remains about 5-fold.

I have to say that ... I'm ok with that. I would be far more concerned if the situation was reversed

2: [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] : this is very cool info, but I'm curious why you are re-posting it?

Morrus · Apr 30, 2018

Yaarel said:
@Morrus

Did the top 10 list accidentally leave out the Elf Wizard?

The chart says there are 2744 Elf Wizards and 2568 Human Wizards.

This means, the Elf Wizard is a more popular combo than the Human Wizard.

Good catch! I missed that. Added it in.

DEFCON 1 · Apr 30, 2018

I don't know if anyone posted a finding such as this on the previous thread that had this chart... but if we go down the line to find what this chart's recommendation for the "iconics" for each race and class based upon popularity we get the following. I basically took the highest vote-getter for a particular combo, and then removed that race and class from the chart to find the next highest vote-getter for a combo. Taking those two out we then find the next highest, etc. going down the line until each race and class was selected only once (minus the Aasimar, as there were 13 races and only 12 classes as the Aasimar did not get high enough on any remaining class list to get one) So according to this popularity chart the "iconics" would be as follows:

Human Fighter
Elf Ranger
Dwarf Cleric
Tiefling Warlock
Half-Elf Bard
Halfling Rogue
Goliath Barbarian
Dragonborn Paladin
Gnome Wizard
Aarakocra Monk
Genasi Sorcerer
Half-Orc Druid

Parmandur · Apr 30, 2018

DEFCON 1 said:
I don't know if anyone posted a finding such as this on the previous thread that had this chart... but if we go down the line to find what this chart's recommendation for the "iconics" for each race and class based upon popularity we get the following. I basically took the highest vote-getter for a particular combo, and then removed that race and class from the chart to find the next highest vote-getter for a combo. Taking those two out we then find the next highest, etc. going down the line until each race and class was selected only once (minus the Aasimar, as there were 13 races and only 12 classes as the Aasimar did not get high enough on any remaining class list to get one) So according to this popularity chart the "iconics" would be as follows:

Human Fighter
Elf Ranger
Dwarf Cleric
Tiefling Warlock
Half-Elf Bard
Halfling Rogue
Goliath Barbarian
Dragonborn Paladin
Gnome Wizard
Aarakocra Monk
Genasi Sorcerer
Half-Orc Druid

Seems legit, the Half-Orc Druid seems to be the oddity in that list, though why not?

Yaarel · Apr 30, 2018

For me, the heritage-class combos establish the flavors that are in play for the *culture* of each heritage.

The class suggests a social organization: wizard school, ranger military recruitment, cleric sacred tradition, rogue organized crime, or so on.

The prominence of such an organization within the culture says much about that culture.

The chart would benefit greatly from more granularity, such as distinguishing high elf from wood elf. Presumably, the high elf is the Harry-Potter-esque culture of wizard academies, while the wood elf is the militarized culture of nature warriors.

Maybe wood elf rogue is more like a special ops warrior, while a drow elf rogue is more the house mafia of urban crime.

Vymair · Apr 30, 2018

The high sample of humans aligns with the campaigns I've played in for 5e. In my larger circle, we've played about 80 characters in 5e at this point. Our least popular classes are Monk and Barbarian with 3 characters each. The most popular is Wizard with ~10, Clerics are #2 with ~8. We spread the tanking around between fighters and paladins. It's not uncommon for us to have a single fighter/paladin/barbarian in a party of 5 or even 6.