D&D General Data from a million DnDBeyond character sheets?

[Clint_L]

Thank you for your reply; it speaks for itself.

Oof. Someone got lawyered.

 

[MockingBird]

Snarf has a way with words, I mean that in a good way.

 

[Lanefan]

True.

What version of DnD is that?

3e without feats. 1e (or early 2e) with a more elaborate tactics system.

 

[Hussar]

3e without feats. 1e (or early 2e) with a more elaborate tactics system.

3e has no hit location rules. It barely has any tactical rules at all - and those that it did were so baroque as to be mostly useless.

And neither 1e or 2e had an more elaborate tactics system. Which is THE POINT.

Everything you're talking about has never appeared in D&D, which is why some of us would love a nicely packaged module for adding tactical complexity, like, how we were told we were going to get ten years ago.

 

[FrogReaver]

I downloaded the data and am starting to do some analysis.

First bit is around feats. In the past we've seen overall percentage of characters with feats which skewed really low and that's because over 60% of characters are below level 4. As you can see, feats get quite popular especially with higher level PCs.

Character Level	% Characters with a Feat
1	6.12%​
2	5.71%​
3	6.82%​
4	24.13%​
5	24.84%​
6	29.32%​
7	31.81%​
8	41.01%​
9	46.10%​
10	43.59%​
11	50.83%​
12	55.44%​
13	58.16%​
14	59.95%​
15	58.19%​
16	64.71%​
17	64.48%​
18	62.35%​
19	65.31%​
20	54.76%​

 

[Hussar]

That makes sense. Below 4th level, most characters shouldn't have a feat at all. Unless people are giving bonus feats or playing Variant Humans. And, again, predictably, the big jumps are every 4 levels. And, by 12th level, about half of PC's have a feat - again, it's understandable, by that point you've had 2 ASI's already (or possibly more) so, you've already got that 20 stat. At a guess, I would say that a lot of the early feats would also be +1 Stat feats.

Is there any way to see if a character has 2 feats? I think that would be a lot more telling. With two feats, at a guess, I would say that very, very few single level characters have 2 feats.

 

[FrogReaver]

That makes sense. Below 4th level, most characters shouldn't have a feat at all. Unless people are giving bonus feats or playing Variant Humans. And, again, predictably, the big jumps are every 4 levels. And, by 12th level, about half of PC's have a feat - again, it's understandable, by that point you've had 2 ASI's already (or possibly more) so, you've already got that 20 stat. At a guess, I would say that a lot of the early feats would also be +1 Stat feats.

Is there any way to see if a character has 2 feats? I think that would be a lot more telling. With two feats, at a guess, I would say that very, very few single level characters have 2 feats.

Yes, can tell if they have 2 feats. Though I need to go back and redo those numbers, I've since discovered there are quite a few duplicate characters in the data file. I'll remove those duplicates and repost this analysis and some on multiclassing and multiple feats as well.

 

[darjr]

Yes, can tell if they have 2 feats. Though I need to go back and redo those numbers, I've since discovered there are quite a few duplicate characters in the data file. I'll remove those duplicates and repost this analysis and some on multiclassing and multiple feats as well.

Are some of the duplicates because they are the same character at different levels? Can you tell?

 

[ichabod]

Yes, can tell if they have 2 feats. Though I need to go back and redo those numbers, I've since discovered there are quite a few duplicate characters in the data file. I'll remove those duplicates and repost this analysis and some on multiclassing and multiple feats as well.

How are you removing duplicates? What about other data trimming, like the characters with all 0's for stats? I've come up with a subset of the data base with about 400,000 rows. The criteria I am currently using for subsetting is that a retained character must:

• Not have 'test', 'character', or 'npc' in it's name.
• Not have a blank name.
• Have a(n extended) point buy cost of greater than zero and no more than 55.
• Have a background
• Have a standard class (PHB + Artificer)
• Have an official sub-class
• Be at least level 2.

I put in the max on point buy cost because I found a bunch of characters with all 18s (and realize that the stats given are the starting stats without racial modifiers or ASI's). And I took out the first level characters because there's way too many of them. Over half the data is first level characters, and I don't think they were every played.

 

[FrogReaver]

How are you removing duplicates? What about other data trimming, like the characters with all 0's for stats? I've come up with a subset of the data base with about 400,000 rows. The criteria I am currently using for subsetting is that a retained character must:

• Not have 'test', 'character', or 'npc' in it's name.
• Not have a blank name.
• Have a(n extended) point buy cost of greater than zero and no more than 55.
• Have a background
• Have a standard class (PHB + Artificer)
• Have an official sub-class
• Be at least level 2.

I put in the max on point buy cost because I found a bunch of characters with all 18s (and realize that the stats given are the starting stats without racial modifiers or ASI's). And I took out the first level characters because there's way too many of them. Over half the data is first level characters, and I don't think they were every played.

I imported to database and using a query to select distinct. Takes me from about 1.2 mil records down to about 500,000. There’s minimal difference (a few hundred) in doing this on all rows and just doing this on character ids so it’s not like the cause is due to having multiple level instances of a single character or anything.

I do think the rest can be trimmed down a little, though I’m not sure I fully agree with your methodology but none will be perfect.

Also I wonder if it’s better not to just talk about characters created in beyond, as even if not played I’ve created alot of characters that I would play but don’t have a new campaign to use them in.