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.

 

[ECMO3]

Ranger, Fighter, Monk, and Barbarian were all classes needing reworks to up player satisfaction.

I don't think this is true. I think it is true for Monk, and was true for Ranger serveral years ago before the Tasha's changes. But I don't think players are generally disatisfied at all with current Ranger, Barbarian and Fighter classes in 5E.

As a matter of fact I think they love Fighters and Rangers.

In terms of player sartisfaction I think these are two of the three classes players are most satisfied with. I think more players are dissatisfied with 5E Wizards, Sorcerers and Warlocks than they are with Fighters and Rangers right now.

This bring up another point though, there are A LOT of players who want Wizard to be objectively more powerful than other classes. So if satisfaction is important should we consider that position valid? In another words is player satisfaction more important than balance if a majority of players want more imbalance and want stronger classes to remain stronger or even more imbalanced than they are now?

Sometimes severely, with some of the worst subclasses in the whole game.

If we are basing this on player satisfaction I see no evidence at all of this and you have provided none to suggest it is true.

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.

Yes WOTC said this, and the early Warlock UA (playtest 5?) was buffed and changed to a long rest mechanic. WOTC changed it back in playtest 7 making it much more like the current Warlock with a short rest mechanic and few buffs at all. Presumably they did this because people were not satisfied with the buffed Warlock and wanted a weaker version.

Meanwhile, Wizards got a huge boost in the playtest 5 and the playtest 7 version is still significantly more powerful than the PHB Wizard.

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

Your position is Warlock should be boosted and Wizard shouldn't, but WOTC, who are actually reading the surveys are as of now doing the exact opposite.

I think your experience is not reflective of the larger community or what the playtest results so far would indicate.

 

[Hussar]

This is quite the stretch. Like all of it. Casters are limited to certain D&D fantasy tropes they can't bypass the game because the game is in large part built around their abilities. I have no idea why you have an issue with martial characters being popular but there is nothing whatsoever to reinforce one true way. You're reading something into this that simply isn't there.

Errr, what?

When did I even suggest that I had an issue with martials being popular? I LOVE the fact that martials are popular. I wish some of those players would saunter over to my table because I'd love to see a group that wasn't so caster heavy.

I think you may be reading in some sort of subtext here that doesn't exist.

Like I said, the primary issue with casters has nothing to do with popularity but because casters wind up making the game unfun (at least for me) because they can bypass challenges so easily. Meaning that the game must be designed around the casters in order to challenge the group. The whole "survival" debate focuses on what casters can do - there are just so many spells and so many classes with access to those spells - that make something like survival or exploration a non-challenge. Just as an example.

 

[Hussar]

Your experience is different than mine. Other than runecasters, which sort of use spells, most fighters don't cast spells. I've never seen an eldritch knight in play that I remember.

Heh. The first fighter I've seen played in about three years at my tables (as either a player or DM) took feats to allow him to use Shillelagh and Magic Stone which combined with another feat, allows him to push stuff back on a successful hit.

Is he a fighter or a caster? Well, he's not exactly a non-magic fighter is he? He's casting spells every single combat.

To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a single non-casting fighter in 5e. There might have been a fighter/rogue in there somewhere, that's sort of waving at the back of the crowd in my memory, but, by and large? Nope, I haven't seen them.

 

[ECMO3]

I LOVE the fact that martials are popular. I wish some of those players would saunter over to my table because I'd love to see a group that wasn't so caster heavy.

I am not sure what you mean by caster and martial here.

If you mean players that can cast spells then I agree completely, probably on the order of 90% of PCs I see can cast spells, including most Rogues, Fighters and Monks I see.

If you mean full-caster class I would disagree. Martials, including half-casters and non-casters (with lots of PCs who can cast), outnumber full casters about 2:1 in games I play.

I would say PCs that can not cast spells are not popular in tables I play, but most martial classes (Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, Rogue and Ranger) are very popular.

 

[Hussar]

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.

The only problem I have with that data is they look at the damage from AoE attacks as doing a single damage. IOW, a fireball that hits four targets for 20 points of damage each is counted as dealing 20 damage, not 80. Which of course is going to make fighters look like they do more damage.

 

[Clint_L]

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.

Okay, well my claim is pretty straightforward: martial classes consistently do more damage over time in all three of those campaigns, so do you have another interpretation of that data to offer, to justify calling my claim "superficial"? Anything? Feel free.

Because if my claim is superficial, yours is nonexistent. It amounts to "nuh-uh."

 

[Hussar]

I am not sure what you mean by caster and martial here.

If you mean players that can cast spells then I agree completely, probably on the order of 90% of PCs I see can cast spells, including most Rogues, Fighters and Monks I see.

If you mean full-caster class I would disagree. Martials, including half-casters and non-casters (with lots of PCs who can cast), outnumber full casters about 2:1 in games I play.

I would say PCs that can not cast spells are not popular in tables I play, but most martial classes (Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, Rogue and Ranger) are very popular.

Yeah, I have seen exactly one non-caster (as in a class with no spells) in the past two campaigns. Even before that, I almost never saw a non-caster. I'd LOVE to see a group with this sort of line up.

 

[Clint_L]

To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a single non-casting fighter in 5e. There might have been a fighter/rogue in there somewhere, that's sort of waving at the back of the crowd in my memory, but, by and large? Nope, I haven't seen them.

Okay. Well, I don't doubt your experience but it is certainly at odds with mine, with the data from DDB, with actual play shows. But given your opinions about martial classes, I can see why they might not be super popular at your table.

You have to admit that in the ten years of 5e, to never see a single non-casting fighter is a bit unusual, yeah? Turn on Critical Role.

Edit: here are the line-ups of my past 6 campaigns:

Artificer
Fighter (Eldritch Knight)
Rogue (assassin)
Bard
Cleric
Ranger

Monk
Barbarian/Fighter
Druid
Artificer
Fighter (Psy Knight)

Bard
Cleric
Artificer
Wizard
Paladin
Barbarian

Cleric
Wizard
Rogue (Arcane Trickster)
Warlock
Fighter (BM)
Monk
Paladin
Artificer

Warlock
Rogue (swashbuckler)
Fighter (gunslinger)
Bard
Wizard
Paladin

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Inferring how people feel about race and class choices based on popularity stats is like trying to infer how people think about something in the real world from economic data. It's tempting to do so, but it invariably leads to making wildly wrong guesses.

 

[Oofta]

Inferring how people feel about race and class choices based on popularity stats is like trying to infer real world behavior from economic data. It's tempting to do so, but it invariably leads to making wildly wrong guesses.

I don't see why it's a stretch to say that people enjoy playing fighters when there's no other reason to play them over a different class.