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.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't know about that. Just because people are making practice PCs does not mean they are not playing PCs with those same classes.

It skews things. I may be playing a fighter, but if I go and make 12 different fighters to see which 1 I will play, I've upped the numbers by 12x.

What you allude to is possible, but it is equally as possible (and I would think more likely) that people who mess around creating Bards, also tend to play Bards.

Sure, but my point is that despite what they release, we can't really know much of anything, because all the numbers are suspect.

 

[Maxperson]

They've posted corrected data in the past, attempting to only share those characters who progress via rest usage and level advancement. There's not a significant difference when they do.

They can't have accurate numbers on those, though. My group for a while used it to make level 1 versions of our characters and then we leveled up via play off site, so when they post their numbers show how many of X level, the data is not accurate. I'm 100% positive we are not alone in that.

There's no way that they can know which ones are used for that purpose and which ones are just practice.

Their numbers are better than nothing, but they shouldn't be relied upon too strongly.

 

[Oofta]

Maybe the class was forced upon them

• You are new, play a fighter
• Group needs a healer, play a cleric
• Group wants an archer, play a fighter or ranger

Maybe the class don't match the tropes

• Monk is last for a reason
• Druid is near last for a reason
• D&D Wizard doesn't play like any wizard in fantasy
• Fighter and Barbarian are narrow and not heroic at the tables of many DMs
• Few iconic Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer, and Bard spells.

MAybe the class has baggage

1. Monk's Orientalism
2. Druid's magic holding their wildshape back
3. Ranger's weapons holding their beast back

Or maybe, just maybe, people play what they want. I know, radical.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm simply applying Occam's Razor. The simplest solution is that people like playing fighters, barbarians and rogues. The same way that they enjoy playing dragonborn. Meanwhile we don't see anyone saying people feel like they are being pushed into dragonborn. Unlike this post... Which to me heavily implies that people primarily play fighters because they feel pushed into it. So I assume the most likely reason people play fighters: they enjoy playing them.

Ah. Sure, it's quite likely that most people who play fighters are enjoying themselves most of the time. Sure, and that's good! But you assume that Wizbang was suggesting that most people could have been "pushed into it", when he was more likely suggesting that it's possible that some of them felt pushed into it. Which happens, for example, when you're the last person to roll up a character, and everyone else has made back-liners. (And, for Clerics, back before other characters could heal).

I do think that you're making one mistake. One that is made constantly, IMO. I get it, people like things to be simple (when they're not!). You are working under the assumption that A reason for a thing is THE reason of the thing. (I am not saying that you are making this mistake in your head but you are here, arguing in support of it).

Sure, absolutely: People play fighters because they like playing fighters. That's A reason. I'm one of those people! But it's hardly the only reason. While normally, I think we can safely say that it's probably the biggest reason, for whatever that's worth, on a D&D Beyond statistic, it's possible that a bigger reason is "because it's FREE".

 

[Maxperson]

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.

I've run 4 5e campaigns since my group started in late 2019. Out of those 16 characters we had 1 single classed fighter/battle master, 1 single classed fighter/champion, 1 single classed rogue/assassin, and 1 single classed monk/something. 25% of the PCs were purely non-magical martial PCs, though I personally don't stick monk into the martial category or caster category. It's sort of a thing unto itself.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Yeah. It seems silly to argue that the DDB numbers indicate that tons of people are forced to play a class that they don't like in order to avoid spellcasters. Those numbers are a VERY strong indication that despite arguments here over fighters and nice things, the base at large enjoys non-magical martials. One can enjoy a class and still want it to improve.

We here on this site are not the typical 5e player. What we argue about and think about classes shouldn't be taken for the norm.

 

[Maxperson]

Because we don't know how they feel about playing them.

See: decades of people grumpily playing clerics because they felt pushed into it.

False Equivalences are false. 5e is not 1e-3e where you needed magical healing from clerics unless the DM helped you out by making other methods readily available. There's nothing in 5e that "pushes" people to play martials. Nothing. They choose it willingly and do so in such large numbers because they like the martial classes.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

Dragonborns above tieflings is surprising for me. At least in my 5e groups I rarely see dragonborn PCs, but tiefling PCs are almost omnipresent.

 

[Oofta]

Ah. Sure, it's quite likely that most people who play fighters are enjoying themselves most of the time. Sure, and that's good! But you assume that Wizbang was suggesting that most people could have been "pushed into it", when he was more likely suggesting that it's possible that some of them felt pushed into it. Which happens, for example, when you're the last person to roll up a character, and everyone else has made back-liners. (And, for Clerics, back before other characters could heal).

I do think that you're making one mistake. One that is made constantly, IMO. I get it, people like things to be simple (when they're not!). You are working under the assumption that A reason for a thing is THE reason of the thing. (I am not saying that you are making this mistake in your head but you are here, arguing in support of it).

Sure, absolutely: People play fighters because they like playing fighters. That's A reason. I'm one of those people! But it's hardly the only reason. While normally, I think we can safely say that it's probably the biggest reason, for whatever that's worth, on a D&D Beyond statistic, it's possible that a bigger reason is "because it's FREE".

I suppose some small percentage of people feel "forced" into playing a specific class, whether that's fighter, cleric, rogue or wizard is another issue. I just don't think it's a significant number, nor is it biased towards any specific class except perhaps clerics and rogues. It's just as common to hear "We need a wizard" at the table when coming up with characters as anything else.

People repeatedly state that dragonborn are "underpowered" and yet they are quite popular as well. Do you believe a significant enough percentage of people are "forced" to play dragonborn instead of a race they would prefer? If not, then why does the logic apply to classes when it doesn't apply to species?

 

[Maxperson]

I don't think Wizbang is at all saying that people are forced into playing fighters. He's saying that we don't KNOW if they enjoy playing them.

And I think that's a silly position to take. We don't KNOW that the people making all of those martials and casters enjoy playing D&D at all. The sheer numbers of them is a really, freaking strong indicator that they do, enjoy playing them, though.

People rarely stick with something that they don't enjoy in an RPG and they don't go back and make more. If people didn't enjoy playing those martial PCs, even with the skewed numbers from practice PCs, etc., the numbers would be much lower as people didn't go back and make more fighters, rogues and barbarians.

All we can know from the DDB data is that people make a lot of Fighters on DDB. We don't know how much they enjoy playing them.

Sure, we can't know how much they enjoy playing them, but we can know with an amazing(though not 100%) degree of certainty that they do enjoy the classes in general.