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]

Experienced players so they know about regen

But do their level 1 characters?

Balanced party so range of spells and decent combat
Playtest rules
AC 15 so 55% of PC attacks will likely hit.
Generally very poor troll saving throws so quite likely to have hideous laughter, vicious mockery etc on them
Troll is +7 to hit so just over half attacks should hit.
Bite does minor damage 5-9 hp a successful claw will likely kill but not guaranteed
debuffing further.
Healing word and cure can likely restore a character back most likely faster than they fall.

How big is this party?

There will also be two bystanders to get eviscerated in the first round of combat. Not too many just a couple to take a hit or two and build the effect and mean the PCs are taken out before they get chance to act.

That makes it more feasible, for sure.

CR 3 creature though. That would be a cake walk.

Depends on the creature.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sometimes the reason people don't give you what you want is because of the way you ask.

"Hey, can I please use <3PP product>?"
"No. No 3PP. At all."

Near-verbatim quotes from at least three different games I applied to join.

Without outright bribes, how exactly could I have asked in a more conciliatory manner?

Experienced players so they know about regen

Ah. I think we have the issue here.

I was the only person at the (virtual) table with prior TTRPG experience.

That would be far to restrictive to me. A goodly portion of the monsters and magic items in my games are 3PP, in that I create them myself.

Ah, but you see, that isn't 3PP. It's also somehow not homebrew, even though it is homebrew. Believe me, I stopped bothering trying to make an argument like that a long, long time ago. It doesn't work. Ever.

 

[CleverNickName]

Sometimes the reason people don't give you what you want is because of the way you ask.

This only happened once, but oof...it was memorable.

Our DM was starting a new homebrew campaign on FantasyGrounds. We were all meeting on Discord for the Session Zero (it was at the height of the pandemic lockdowns.) "Here's a link to the campaign's wiki," she said to everyone in the channel. "Use only the races and subclasses in there."

"Nah, I'm good," said one of the players. "I've already rolled up my character."

Things went downhill fast after that.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This only happened once, but oof...it was memorable.

Our DM was starting a new homebrew campaign on FantasyGrounds. We were all meeting on Discord for the Session Zero (it was at the height of the pandemic lockdowns.) "Here's a link to the campaign's wiki," she said to everyone in the channel. "Use only the races and subclasses in there."

"Nah, I'm good," said one of the players. "I've already rolled up my character."

Things went downhill fast after that.

Ooof, yeah, I can see how that would be a major red flag.

I've never had a character fully written up before session 0. I usually have at least an idea of the character beforehand, though, probably picking a couple of things that will help make that idea work.

 

[Von Ether]

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

Yeah, that was an odd twitter war last week about letting which species be in your game - especially bizarre as it was framed that a GM would be "weak" if they let a player squeeze in an additional "exotic" species. And of course additional framing disparaged anything beyond the classic four.

A lot of bravado, dudes, for a hobby where you roll dice, do math, and drink sodas/beer.

 

[TheSword]

"Hey, can I please use <3PP product>?"
"No. No 3PP. At all."

Near-verbatim quotes from at least three different games I applied to join.

Without outright bribes, how exactly could I have asked in a more conciliatory manner?


Ah. I think we have the issue here.

I was the only person at the (virtual) table with prior TTRPG experience.


Ah, but you see, that isn't 3PP. It's also somehow not homebrew, even though it is homebrew. Believe me, I stopped bothering trying to make an argument like that a long, long time ago. It doesn't work. Ever.

It’s not unusual when you’re playing with strangers to want to keep it simple to start with. The DM
Doesn’t know you. Has know idea what crazy combination you’ll come up with. Doesn’t know if you have been kicked out of every other game group you’ve joined. In essence there is no trust.

Once you’ve built that trust up you’ll be in a much better position to ask for expansion of rules into the Wild West that is 3pp.

 

[CleverNickName]

Yeah, that was an odd twitter war last week about letting which species be in your game - especially bizarre as it was framed that a GM would be "weak" if they let a player squeeze in an additional "exotic" species. And of course additional framing disparaged anything beyond the classic four.

A lot of bravado, dudes, for a hobby where you roll dice, do math, and drink sodas/beer.

Twitter?
You've described a large number of EN World threads, too.

 

[Oofta]

Experienced players so they know about regen
Balanced party so range of spells and decent combat
Playtest rules
AC 15 so 55% of PC attacks will likely hit.
Generally very poor troll saving throws so quite likely to have hideous laughter, vicious mockery etc on them
Troll is +7 to hit so just over half attacks should hit.
Bite does minor damage 5-9 hp a successful claw will likely kill but not guaranteed
debuffing further.
Healing word and cure can likely restore a character back most likely faster than they fall.

There will also be two bystanders to get eviscerated in the first round of combat. Not too many just a couple to take a hit or two and build the effect and mean the PCs are taken out before they get chance to act.

CR 3 creature though. That would be a cake walk.

All of that assumes a lot of things. Like a caster with hideous laughter or vicious mockery, etc. and using one of their 2 spell slots to cast it and that it works. It likely assumes the PCs win initiative and the troll doesn't just eat the wizard first.

We just started a new campaign and, after a couple of intro sessions as kids they're going to be first level so I just verified a few things using average attack and damage. First, on average 1 PC drops per round likely with an attack left over. Even if they did all survive every round, it would still take 3 rounds to kill the troll even if it were not regenerating ... but they don't have a wizard so no fire bolt or any other flame based attack. Time for someone to break out a torch and do minimal damage I guess. Assuming a caster in the group has healing word (my group does not ), that can only be cast twice per long rest.

The only way I see a level 1 party surviving against a CR 5 monster is if they can ambush and have the right combination of PCs and get lucky. My current group of 4? it's basically a guaranteed TPK.

Spoiler: My current level 1 group

• barbarian AC 13, 14 HP, +5/11.5 damage (raging greataxe)
• monk AC 16, 10 HP, +5/14 damage (dwarf with warhammer and unarmed attack)
• rogue AC 13, 8 HP, +5/10 (assumes sneak attack)
• cleric AC 18, 12 HP, +5/7.5 (note: no healing spells)
• fighter AC 17, 12 HP, +5/14 (polearm master w/spear)

Troll, 3 attacks, AC 15, +7/7 + +7/11x2 (total dmg 29) HP 84

The group hits 55% of the time so if they're all alive they'll do on average around 30 points of damage, so it takes 3 rounds. However, in that 3 rounds ... oof.

Round 1: barbarian likely drops. If the troll attacks her with claws, in most cases, she drops. Most of the time the troll will still have an attack left over for a double tap.

Round 2: the barbarian is down, go after the monk or rogue. Rogue is practically guaranteed to go down and suffer another attack to kill.

Round 3: again, if the troll uses claws first, the next PC drops to 0.

And on we go. Every round, the troll on average takes out a PC. Even if the cleric had healing word (they don't) they only have 2 spell slots. The PCs don't have fire based attacks so someone will have to spend an action or two hitting with a torch. Unless there's an ambush, it's a TPK.

 

[Oofta]

This only happened once, but oof...it was memorable.

Our DM was starting a new homebrew campaign on FantasyGrounds. We were all meeting on Discord for the Session Zero (it was at the height of the pandemic lockdowns.) "Here's a link to the campaign's wiki," she said to everyone in the channel. "Use only the races and subclasses in there."

"Nah, I'm good," said one of the players. "I've already rolled up my character."

Things went downhill fast after that.

My response would likely be "Thanks for your time, you can leave now" followed by "Does anyone else know someone who wants to play before I open up another seat?"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It’s not unusual when you’re playing with strangers to want to keep it simple to start with. The DM
Doesn’t know you. Has know idea what crazy combination you’ll come up with. Doesn’t know if you have been kicked out of every other game group you’ve joined. In essence there is no trust.

Once you’ve built that trust up you’ll be in a much better position to ask for expansion of rules into the Wild West that is 3pp.

So, not very useful to suggest 3PP then, is it?

Because I'm not the one who was telling people to use 3PP to patch over the deficiencies of the base game.