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 agree with this to a point, we don't actually know, but we can draw inferences.

I don't play Barbarians or Druids because I don't like playing those classes. If you go back through history you will find on the order of 30 characters I built (and played) in DND Beyond over the last 2 years and not a single one had a single level of Barbarian or Druid. I did not play with those characters because I do not like those classes.

With this in mind it is hard for me to believe people will continue to play classes they don't like playing when other classes are available. Why play a Wizard if you don't like playing a Wizard? Now if they don't like playing any class at all, then to me it feels like they just don't like playing D&D.

We can only use the data we have and I don't know of any other data with which to draw conclusions.

This is correct. Folks don't keep playing classes that they don't enjoy unless someone is forced to for some reason like healing(see 1e-3e clerics).

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Countless were the number of times in 1e-3e where I heard, "Hey, we don't have a wizard/arcane caster yet and need one." Far more often than I heard a request for a front line fighter.

 

[Minigiant]

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

you've never seen a class or race forced or suggested to someone that they ended up not liking. lucky

 

[FitzTheRuke]

This is the all-or-nothing attitude that I was attempting to allude to above. (Sorry for singling you out here, Bedir, it's not at all personal!)

If the survey data is that people are unsatisfied with a class (and the solve is mechanics) but people still play the class why are they doing that?

There are a LOT of options to play in D&D. So many, in fact, and you can play any given character for MONTHS. The chances that, at any given time, when you make a character, that you're so familiar with all the ins-and-outs of the class that you just picked (far or less its subclasses) is pretty low. Expand that across all the players...

You pick a class because you want to try that class. You think it will be a good fit for the character you have in mind. And you often do this fairly quickly (like during a session zero, while everyone else's picks are influencing your pick).

I would say that the #1 reason why anyone picks any class is that it fits the very vague character concept that they just came up with a few seconds ago. How it works out for them comes later.

ALSO: Being unsatisfied usually just means that you wish some things were better, not that you had no fun playing the character!

(As an example, I played a 2014 Dragonborn Fighter once. BOY was I disappointed to find that 90% of the time, it was NEVER WORTH using his Breath Weapon. Fizban's version is SO MUCH BETTER if you want to "feel" like a Dragon-man!

The fighter, in particular the Champion, is similar. It's fine. But it has some areas that are unsatisfying. The Berserker for the Barbarian is extremely disappointing, when you pick it because you assume that you're going to feel like an awesome crazy berserker dude and find that you're falling over tired all the time.

These unsatisfied with mechanics people are picking the class for something, almost certainly that something is story.

Yes! Exactly.

Unless there's some kind of mystical inference that tens of thousands of D&D players are being forced to play unsatisfying mechanical classes for reasons

I don't think that it was ever suggested that EVERYONE is being forced to play anything, or even a large percentage. It was a throw-away suggestion of one of the (many) other reasons that people could wind up playing a certain class, using the example of the Cleric from 3e. (Which very often, if you were the last to chose, were told to play a Cleric, because everyone felt that a Cleric was needed for every party, but often no-one wanted to play one). This was WIDELY discussed in the 3e days.

Wizbang, who brought it up, I don't think meant to suggest that it was definitely something that was happening today with the Fighter, but simply that this data didn't tell us either way.

 

[Oofta]

you've never seen a class or race forced or suggested to someone that they ended up not liking. lucky

I never said that it never happens. I don't remember the last time I saw it in 5E, it was more common back in older editions with clerics. I think it's logical to say that it's a small percentage that doesn't have an impact.

But keep making excuses why people make a different choice than you. Apparently they just don't know any better. Meanwhile as far as I'm concerned if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck and I'm going to assume it's a duck unless there's strong evidence otherwise.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

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

You know that it can be both, right? All of it? People play what they want, but aren't always satisfied with what they pick? Sometimes are given a character or pushed toward a character that they maybe didn't object to playing but weren't passionate about? Etc etc?

I know people like things to be simple, but real life is complicated.

No one here who has suggested reasons other than "Because they like Fighters" has ever said that liking fighters was NOT a reason that people make Fighters.

 

[Minigiant]

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.

People still think you'd want a cleric or priest as revival and restoration was only quick in these classes.

Your DM had to state that NPC healers who could restore eyes or life to ease that worry.

I played in a party where the wizard was blinded and one of the 2 rogues had to spend actions physically aiming the wizard's arm until we got back to the capital where the only high level clerics lived.

 

[Minigiant]

I never said that it never happens. I don't remember the last time I saw it in 5E, it was more common back in older editions with clerics. I think it's logical to say that it's a small percentage that doesn't have an impact.

But keep making excuses why people make a different choice than you. Apparently they just don't know any better. Meanwhile as far as I'm concerned if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck and I'm going to assume it's a duck unless there's strong evidence otherwise.

I'm not making excuses.

But if "Make the new player play a fighter" or "5e is too easy so I'm using grittyrules/woundtables/crittfumle" or "NO NEW CLASSES!" are all popular opiions in 5e, a lot of players will be pushed or even forced to play classes they might not have chosen. It won't be a rarty.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I never said that it never happens.

But you'll argue against anyone who suggests that it does.

I don't remember the last time I saw it in 5E, it was more common back in older editions with clerics.

But you'll argue against anyone who has seen it.

I think it's logical to say that it's a small percentage that doesn't have an impact.

I mean, maybe? Who's to know?

But keep making excuses why people make a different choice than you.

I don't think anyone has done this. You might be forcing that on others.

Apparently they just don't know any better.

DEFINITELY no one has suggested this.

Meanwhile as far as I'm concerned if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck and I'm going to assume it's a duck unless there's strong evidence otherwise.

It might be a Rabbit.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I never said that it never happens. I don't remember the last time I saw it in 5E, it was more common back in older editions with clerics. I think it's logical to say that it's a small percentage that doesn't have an impact.

But keep making excuses why people make a different choice than you. Apparently they just don't know any better. Meanwhile as far as I'm concerned if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck and I'm going to assume it's a duck unless there's strong evidence otherwise.

This is my stance. The only data suggests the game is popular and certain options are used a lot. There may be reasons this is so other than someone likes it/them but the burden of proof is on someone insisting it’s all a fluke. And it might be. But I have not seen any real reason to see that…yet.

If there is data to suggest it does not work or is not well liked, I am interested even if it’s not my personal biased experience. Cue maybe the surveys. But I personally don’t like classes due to flavor reasons…do I have to like ALL of them? I assume there are choices that will simply be enjoyed by a subset of players.

But when people are not happy they jump through a TON of hoops to contradict the extant data.

I think it makes more sense to say “I don’t like X” and here is why and how it happened in my games. I am intrigued and want to hear more about it! I respect people have other experiences…

Less so with statements that “everyone” knows X is broken, Y sucks, Z is unpopular. Why? Cuz “everyone” knows…