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.

 

[Stormonu]

It does seem that certain classes can get away with being more powerful if they are less popular. I seem to remember at the start of 3E most people didn't like playing clerics until they started to figure out Codzilla, for example.

Overall, I've seen every 5E class shine in the hands of players who dug into the class, and I've seen a few players utterly frustrated with building characters they thought were going to be awesome, and instead sucked because of poor player choices (and a refusal to believe/understand they made a bad choice). The big trick is not to fall into curtailing your own enjoyment by falling into a min/max trap every time and being happy with "good enough" - characters can be deceptively capable over the course of a campaign without being over-engineered.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I've seen a few players utterly frustrated with building characters they thought were going to be awesome, and instead sucked because of poor player choices (and a refusal to believe/understand they made a bad choice). The big trick is not to fall into curtailing your own enjoyment by falling into a min/max trap every time and being happy with "good enough"

I think the former issue shows how utterly unrealistic the latter demand is. You can't just make people be happy with mediocre characters. Some people just don't enjoy that, and they're not going to just because you'd like them to. It's not a "min-max trap" either, because if a character works well without min-maxing then you don't need anyone to be happy with "good enough". It's only characters where you can make bad choices and end up subpar, and particularly ones where those bad choices aren't obvious, where this becomes a problem.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There's a difference between having a curated list of species for a home campaign (which I do) and not liking specific races. I assume that they were alluding the people have have a limited list allowed for a home game as "not liking" those races. Liking or not liking a race has nothing to do with it.

No, there are definitely people out there who think dragonborn should never have been published at all, and that it was a black mark against 5e to include them in it.

I have interacted with multiple such people on both this and other forums. They were particularly tedious during the D&D Next playtest, because some of them even openly spoke of boycotting 5e if it included dragonborn. I'm fairly sure none of them actually made good on that claim.

You would think, but there are an non-zero number of people who don't like others playing any races at all.

In their defense, I think a lot of these people are players and don't want to play with those races. It is much easier to have a curated list of species as a DM than it is as player. As a DM you can say "No Tieflings or Dragonborn in my campaign" and you might lose a few players, but more than likely most will just play something else. It is much more difficult to sit down as a player and tell other players and the DM that you don't want Tieflings or Dragonborn.

Why--to say nothing of how--should a player get a "curated list of races"? There is some allowance for a DM to have creative license since D&D holds the DM up as an auteur. What could possibly justify such a thing? Are there really people so petty as to pitch a fit simply because they find out someone else plays a dragonborn at a table they've joined?

Are half-races confirmed to be removed from 5.5 or something?

During one of the earlier playtests, they officially deleted all half-race characters. A half-elf is now mechanically either human or elf, IIRC, with lifespan changes and (purely cosmetic) physical characteristics inherited from the other parent. Half-elf and half-orc in particular were specifically called out as being eliminated as playable options (albeit "still available in 2014 books"). Though apparently after the "controversy" (since, y'know, it amounts to biracial/polyracial erasure), they made an announcement that they were going to adjust their approach. AFAIK, no further statements have been made and we haven't seen any further playtest documents, so "half-race options are inherently racist and we're eliminating them" is the last thing we actually have concrete evidence for.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Another way to look at it?
Humans 7:1
Elf 5:1
Dragonborn 3.5:1
Tiefling 3:1
Half-elf 2:1
Dwarf 1.8:1
Halfling 1.5:1
Half-Orc 1:1
Genasi 1:1
Gnome .9:1
Goliath .9:1
Aasimar .8:1
Lineages .5:1
Custom .4:1

I am surprised Half-orcs are pretty much in the middle of the pack. Makes me happy to know they aren't on the bottom, forgotten heap of playable races.

Also, I call that 80% of the elves are Drow, with some variation on spelling "Drizzle".

An interesting perspective, though it probably would have been better to do ratios against a fixed population (e.g. 1000) rather than this.

Based on these numbers, in a world where population dynamics match player race choices, very roughly a ninth of any given sizable settlement (say, 20k+) should be dragonborn, a sixth should be elves, and a quarter should be humans. (Slightly over-estimating humans there.) Collectively they'd make up about half the town. Add in tieflings and half-elves, and you'd have a supermajority (more than 2/3). Sticking to the core four + half-elves (since they come from two core-four options), that'd be a bit over half (57.7%).

Simple everything on that list is free except for Aasimar, its all either SRD or EEPG races, except for Aasimar and sort of Custom Lineages (CL I believe is still free, dispite coming from Tasha's).

That said, several long-term trends remain. The most popular race (by a good margin) is human; elf is the second-most-common choice; dragonborn continues to grow in popularity; tiefling and half-elf round out the top 5.

The biggest winner here seems to be dwarf, which has reversed course from its previous downward trajectory and is in fact creeping up on top 5. Dragonborn is the second-biggest winner, having dethroned an extremely popular option (half-elf) and held place above tiefling for two or three surveys in a row. Half-elf seems to be the big loser, as it's fallen from a commanding 3rd place above dragonborn to well below even tiefling. Most of the others have stayed pretty much where they were before.

I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if the inclusion of dragonborn in Baldur's Gate 3--and the really high-quality animation work that went into them--is a big factor in their current surge. Having a physical model to take inspiration from can be a huge deal, and as a dragonborn fan, I was quite pleased with what Larian produced. It isn't perfect (nothing is!), but for the only truly "not human-faced" race you can play (without mods) in BG3, they did very well. (My only real gripes are that they seem a bit thin for how dragonborn are described, and their facial expressions seem inconsistent when representing their emotional state, usually with regard to mouth movements.)

If that's the case, then given how far dragonborn have grown, I wouldn't be surprised to see them fall back a bit in the next survey or two, as the BG3 bump expires.

It's too specific, and despite being a DnD base class for almost 40 years still doesn't fit under the "generic fantasy" umbrella.

Well, that and it's also not exactly the best-designed class in 5e. It isn't the worst either, but if I had to pick the ones that needed love most, Monk would be on the shortlist (behind Ranger and Sorcerer and ahead of Warlock.)

It does seem that certain classes can get away with being more powerful if they are less popular. I seem to remember at the start of 3E most people didn't like playing clerics until they started to figure out Codzilla, for example.

Yep. And people thought Monks were going to be crazy OP because they have so many class features, only to later realize that those features are a mix of chaff and anti-synergy (as in, you can't use feature X if you take action Y).

Overall, I've seen every 5E class shine in the hands of players who dug into the class, and I've seen a few players utterly frustrated with building characters they thought were going to be awesome, and instead sucked because of poor player choices (and a refusal to believe/understand they made a bad choice). The big trick is not to fall into curtailing your own enjoyment by falling into a min/max trap every time and being happy with "good enough" - characters can be deceptively capable over the course of a campaign without being over-engineered.

Here, though, I'm going to have to agree with @Ruin Explorer. It's not the search for an effective character that is the problem here. If the character is good enough without min-maxing, you won't have to tell them to accept anything--and if the character isn't good with min-maxing, how is it going to be better if you just make whatever choices you think sound fun?

 

[Hussar]

Look, @EzekielRaiden - I don't want to reopen the can of worms. But, can I just say, that as a parent of bi-racial children, for whom the term "half" is a VERY common epithet, I am perfectly comfortable with the notion of removing the idea that mixed race characters should be held up as completely distinct from both parents. This does not bother me at all. The idea that mixing races somehow creates some sort of "hybrid" that is, by definition in the game, held at arms length and not accepted by the races of the parents is something that some of us have to deal with on a regular basis.

So painting those who are perfectly comfortable with the notion of removing the distinct "half" races from the PHB as somehow erasing culture is rather insulting to be honest. I quite honestly have zero problem with D&D dropping the notion that being a "half" anything makes you a completely distinct individual, incapable of belonging to the cultures of either parent.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Look, @EzekielRaiden - I don't want to reopen the can of worms. But, can I just say, that as a parent of bi-racial children, for whom the term "half" is a VERY common epithet, I am perfectly comfortable with the notion of removing the idea that mixed race characters should be held up as completely distinct from both parents. This does not bother me at all. The idea that mixing races somehow creates some sort of "hybrid" that is, by definition in the game, held at arms length and not accepted by the races of the parents is something that some of us have to deal with on a regular basis.

So painting those who are perfectly comfortable with the notion of removing the distinct "half" races from the PHB as somehow erasing culture is rather insulting to be honest. I quite honestly have zero problem with D&D dropping the notion that being a "half" anything makes you a completely distinct individual, incapable of belonging to the cultures of either parent.

I believe your experience, and wish things had been different for you and your family. I just have also known quite a few biracial families, who dealt with their children being expected to belong wholly to only one side or only the other--one case where a friend was effectively given separate ultimatums by both sides of his family.

I sincerely doubt there is a clean answer to any of these things, and wish WotC the best of luck in navigating this minefield.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The popularity of dragonborn and tieflings must sting for some people.

What people? Never seen anyone bothered by them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

They change the scale when it gets below 100k, they kind of mashed two graphs with different scales together.

It is kinda like a logarithmic scale. But not really... as others have already noted.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The new Monk is arguably OP, but I don't think it is going to cause a big uptick in popularity as there is no evidence of correlation between popularity and being weak or strong class.

I am not sure about that. I don't think classes have to be strong from an optimizers point of view, but strong from a casual player's view. And can I play the class without a hazzle. Does it do what is on the lable?

Fighter? Wear armor. Chose a weapon. Deal damage. Survive in the frontline. Check.

Rogue? Be nimble and fragile, deal damage in the right circumstances? Be consistently good with skills, especially sbeaking around? Check.

Barbarian? Rage, tough, big axe? Check.

Monk: Jump around the battlefield. Be nimble. Be tough. Deal damage with fists. Check... for 2 rounds and then you are out. Also you can't do everything together. You struggle and opt for the bow. And at level 5? Stunning fist is all you do.

So even if the new monk gets nerfed (which is needed), as long as the current concept is upheld, the monk will find more popularity.

 

[Oofta]

It is kinda like a logarithmic scale. But not really... as others have already noted.

The species one is really bad, it changed the scale 4 times just so the could put the name in the bar. It's why I decided to redo them using 1 scale.