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.

 

[Clint_L]

I looked at the data from all the Critical Role campaigns, which is quite a lot, and martial classes are consistently the best damage dealers over time. But if you watch those games, I think it is clear that everyone has their moments. Mind you, those players are far from optimizers.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

How would they get the data on the second?

You ask them. I thought that was obvious.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is true for a vast majority of people who play the game. The story is why the pick what they play, not a 0.24 edge on DPR

It's very easy to make an argument when you trivialize the opposition rather than taking their argument seriously. If you're going to bring numbers in, you should justify them, rather than pretending that you know for sure that the difference is microscopic. There is a reason the only numbers I referenced in my original statement were the higher ability scores afforded by being a half-elf.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Also while I agree with your hypothesis here I am not convinced if they had the data it would indicate players did not like the design of most of the martials. I think it would actually indicate the opposite, except for Monk. IME most players are very happy with the martial design except for Monk (I am personally happy with Monk, but I'm probably the exception there).

Ranger, Fighter, Monk, and Barbarian were all classes needing reworks to up player satisfaction. Sometimes severely, with some of the worst subclasses in the whole game. The only full spellcaster that required any meaningful boost was Warlock, which WotC had already explicitly said was falling behind because players don't short rest often enough. Druid, by comparison, actually lost some power due to the changes to wild shape.

It would seem your experience is not entirely reflective of what WotC has already told us needed work in 5.5e.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I looked at the data from all the Critical Role campaigns, which is quite a lot, and martial classes are consistently the best damage dealers over time. But if you watch those games, I think it is clear that everyone has their moments. Mind you, those players are far from optimizers.

Enhh.. I'm not sure I'd agree that this is the story the Critical Role data tells, except in the most superficial of ways.

 

[Ancalagon]

I'm saying people choose things because they like the theme, concept, aesthetics, etc. but in some cases those things prove mechanically unsatisfactory. Again, as clearly demonstrated by the PHB dragonborn, a race WotC rebuilt not once but twice and which is getting significant reworks in 5.5e.

The dragonborn in the phb is definitely mechanically underwhelming. I remember seeing the race for the very first time, telling myself "omg this is going to be a powergamer's dream!" kept reading and went... huh. I have seen very few in my games, if any. Perhaps one or two one-shot types.

Except that that glosses over the key detail: they may enjoy only the theme/concept/aesthetic/etc., not the mechanical expression. This can, of course, also go the other way--the theme could be hated, but the mechanics too powerful/useful/versatile/etc. to ignore.

It is a mistake to assume that because someone uses something, they like every part of that thing. You have to know why they use it.

One thing about 5e I do like is that it can tolerate a fair amount of reflavoring and slight tweaking. I had a character who was a "fighting scholar" type - an old wizened scribe who had studied the sword. The only reason I didn't make him a kensei monk was because my previous character was a kensei monk (I really did enjoy it, but I was under the impression at the time that this campaign would be revived (it never was, alas)). But a Kensei monk would totally have worked.

So I made him a psi warrior - totally fit the theme too. Later in the game he died and was remade as a rune knight, which made sense because he was studying the giants intensely as we played through STK. Is a dex-build the best with rune knight? No! But it worked. Also, because he was playing sword and shield and the GM was generous with stats, I had a lot of feats to play around with so I took chef, which I refloored as alchemy - I would feed the other characters tonics and use poultices on their wounds, ritual caster (by level 10 I was quite the "wizard"), lucky (sooo good) and by the end of the game I had a sun sword. +11 to hit, 1d8+9 dmg for base damage (and various ways to add to it), runes to protect myself and the party...

It didn't really matter if my character wasn't super optimal damage dealer, he was flavorful, fun and very useful - he was a big "plot driver" because he would use his scholarship to understand what was really going on. We made an alliance with the Storm Giants and

Spoiler

kick dragon butt

. Small differences in power level don't matter that much IMO.

edit: typos

 

[bedir than]

It's very easy to make an argument when you trivialize the opposition rather than taking their argument seriously. If you're going to bring numbers in, you should justify them, rather than pretending that you know for sure that the difference is microscopic. There is a reason the only numbers I referenced in my original statement were the higher ability scores afforded by being a half-elf.

I'm unaware that I have an opposition. I'm not in a debate tournament. This isn't a battlefield.

The people who play the game are picking classes and races that optimizers wouldn't. A reasonable assumption is that means that players are focused on non-optimization.

That does not mean that I'm your enemy

 

[ECMO3]

You ask them. I thought that was obvious.

Well they did that in the original playtest and are doing it now in the current playtest.

Assuming that you trust that WOTC listened, this would indicate that players were happy with the class designs as of 2014.

 

[ECMO3]

That's why I said magicky.

Human is most customizable. And that customization allows for magic.
Dragonborn allow for many types of magicky blasts.

Every PC is customizable to allow for magic. I think that is one of the great things about 5E.

Magic has tons of options and scales.
Not-Magic has few options and 80% of them don't scale.

I know and I think this is generally positive and makes sense.

By having magic scale you can make a small investment in magic and have it be very impactful without playing a class designed to be magic.

For example my my strength-based, 8 dex Fighter can take Magic Initiate and it lets me throw around Eldritch Blast and be ok at long range right through tier 6. Not great, but ok, while also bumping melee damage with Hex as well. If I take a 2-level Warlock dip I can actually be great at ranged attacks while still being primarily a strength-based fighter.

That is one of the things that makes the game awesome IMO and I don't see the reason to do that with non-magic options. I mean if I am a Wizard and take the Weapon Master feat or take a 1 level in fighter dip, should I get 3 attacks a round with a weapon at 11th level? I just don't think that makes much sense thematically, would not be great fiction and would kind of screw up the game mechanics.

 

[mamba]

Well they did that in the original playtest and are doing it now in the current playtest.

Assuming that you trust that WOTC listened, this would indicate that players were happy with the class designs as of 2014.

not really, since they showed some subclasses that got ratings in the 20s and they ran out of time working on in 2014