Hussar
Legend
No, unless the player specifically has that goal. Drizzt is built to be min/maxed, between double weapon spec and drow abilities; his core attributes are all about min/maxing. Not necessarily true with the others.
So, now anyone who plays a ranger is min/maxing? After all, rangers have had two weapons standard as a class ability since 1988.
This is just going to have to be a difference in anecdotal experiences then. I have people who play barbarians, but you don't know if it's supposed to be a conan clone, Krull clone, or Fafhrd clone. Most aren't clones, but general similarities. Drizzt is pretty specific. But either way, your anecdotal experience and my anecdotal experience don't really matter. What is objectively true when D&D is considered, is that Drizzt appears much more frequently than any of those you mention. And not by a small amount. I'd say do a google search, but I don't want to scar your brain by the sheer amount of fanfic that's out there for Drizzt that isn't out there for Conan, Gandalf, or Merlin.
So, Drizzt is an incredibly popular genre character that people love...
It's cool to hate on DRizzt! Wow, I never knew. I'm so glad I'm one of the cool kids now....
Or more likely, I'm tired of seeing him pop up everytime I turn around in D&D for the past 30 years. He's one of the worst Gary Stu's out there, and he's nearly unavoidable. One can't even escape him with current D&D products. In fact, WotC is doubling down on the DRizzt overload. Your statement makes no sense at all because there's literally 30 years of substance myself and others have been giving you as to reasons why we're sick and tired of him. Christ, he's been in over 30 novels, and that's not counting video games, magazines, or adventures. So either you're intentionally ignoring all of that, or you're being intellectually dishonest to make a jab at people who don't like him by saying there's no valid reason to be tired of him.
FWIW, I don't blame Salvatore at all. DRizzt was only supposed to be a sidekick to Wulfgar, but gamers fell in love with him (for reasons I mentioned earlier).
Really? Everywhere in the past 30 years? I've got a stack of Forgotten Realms material dating back to 2e that would like to disagree with you.
According to wikipedia, all 31 Drizzt novels have hit the NYT best seller list. Every single one. Why on earth would WOTC NOT double down on that? Obviously there's some reason that he's popular. You don't get to write that many successful novels about a character unless you're doing something right.
But as far as table top material goes? He rarely features. What module has Drizzt as an NPC? How many modules? What sourcebook talks about Drizzt? How many sourcebooks, out of the hundreds for Forgotten Realms, feature him? Magazines? You mean, comic books featuring him? Other than that, what magazines?
How hard is it to just ignore it? He's not really part of the Realms RPG material to any large extent. Other than recently, you almost never heard of Drizzt connected to the game. There are what, a couple of hundred FR novels out there? So, maybe 10% feature Drizzt? Big fat hairy deal.