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.

 

[Oofta]

You said in your initial post it hit for 2 damage, but even if it missed she needs to back away from a Frightened Troll. Take one AOO is a lot better than taking 3 attacks.

I'm not going to answer nitpick questions, for an example I threw together in a hurry especially when I don't think it would matter.

 

[Oofta]

Welp, time to put my money where my mouth is, I guess.

I don't have time to run it right now, so, please bear with me. I banged out 5 1st level casters on my Fantasy Grounds, and picked a map. The map I picked was this one:

View attachment 344669

Now in the interests of openness, the reason I picked this particular map is that it was on the top of my feed on /r Battlemaps on Reddit. It's a gorgeous battlemap, IMO, and I'm very much going to use this in my game. I figured the set up is the 5 new adventurers have found a ruined town and are exploring. The troll hears the adventurers and comes to investigate. I'll plunk the encounter down somewhere near the center of that ruin, as the troll emerges from one of the ruined buildings and confronts the party, some 50 feet away.

The five characters I picked were mostly created using Tasha's Lineages, so, they do have feats.

View attachment 344670
Note, that human warlock is wrong, I used a custom lineage and made him a drow warlock. Why? Just because. All characters are made with standard arrays. The reason they have 18's in stats is because of feats from custom lineages. The dwarf cleric was specified earlier in the thread and does speak giant. I don't think a dwarf (forge priest, because, well, I played one of those a few years back) speaking giant is too much of a stretch. Starting equipment is the standard stuff and backgrounds were mostly chosen more or less at random, whatever caught my eye.

Is this an acceptable set up to folks before I go ahead and try to run this?

Looks fine to me, how do you plan on running it? I ran my example using DDB to do all the rolls thinking I could show the encounter log if people cared but can't find a way to share it. Just curious if there's a different option.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, running the encounter.

Round 1 - Initiative order: Wizard, Warlock, Cleric, Bard, Troll, Druid


Wizard tried Chill Touch: Miss
Warlock: Eldritch Blast: Miss
Cleric: Sacred Flame: Hits, for 3 damage
Bard: Vicious Mockery: Hits for 3 damage.
Note, all PC's move up, fire, then move back, keeping the cleric in the front
Troll: Regenerates all damage and double moves up to the dwarf.
Druid: Bonfire under the troll in front of the dwarf. Troll saves, no damage, but there is fire under the troll.
(note, I'm ignoring the owl familiar. Just can't be bothered to be honest.)

Round 2 - Things look dire for our party, what will they do?


Wizard: Moves back a few squares, then uses Misty Step to move to the level above. Cantrip Fire Bolt: Miss
Warlock: Tries for Cause Fear but the Troll makes it's save. Warlock falls back.
Dwarf Cleric: Command - Flee. Troll fails it's save.
Bard: Vicious Mockery Troll succeeds its save.
Troll: Runs. AO from Cleric misses. Troll is now 60 feet from the dwarf and ends it's turn.
Druid: Double moves back to the bridge leading up to the next level. Keeps concentrating on the bonfire.

Round 3

Wizard: fires with Fire Bolt: Hit for 5 damage
Warlock: Readies an Eldritch Blast if he can see the Troll
Cleric: Steps 15 feet around the Bonfire and fires with Sacred Flame: Troll fails save: 3 damage. Dwarf moves back behind the bonfire.
Bard: Bonus Action: Inspire on the Warlock. Readies a vicious Mockery if he can see the troll. Moves back beside the warlock.
Troll: ((now, here is a bit of a dilemma. The troll could go through the ruined buildings, bursting through the doors to the north of the dwarf - I gotta admit, as a DM, that's my most likely option. Or the troll could keep heading north to swing around to the upper level. I will roll this randomly to be fair. 1-4 bust through the doors and charge, 5-6, tactical movement.)) DM Rolls: 1 - Doors it is. Troll double moves through the building, smashing through the flimsy, rotted doors to the north of the cleric. Actually, counting out the squares, the Troll ends its turn inside the building, behind the closed door.
Druid: Moves the bonfire in front of the door. (for the pedantic, I cease concentrating and then cast it again.) Druid needed to move back down the bridge to see the door. Arguably, the door may now be on fire, I'm going to rule that it's starting to smoke and the troll knows there's fire there. By the end of the next round, if the fire is there, the door will be on fire.

Round 4


Wizard: Unable to see the troll, wizard falls back and readies a firebolt. Takes up position on the north side of the bridge.
Warlock: falls back and readies an Eldritch Blast. Makes it onto the bridge.
Cleric falls back and readies Sacred Flame
Bard falls back to the south end of the bridge and readies Vicious Mockery.
Troll: Regenerates damage. ((Again, I'm faced with a choice. But, I don't think trolls would willingly run through fire if they had the choice, so, troll backs around. Double move. Comes around the corner, and eats several attacks: Cleric's Sacred Flame deals 8 damage, the bard cannot attack, the range is 75 feet. A Nat 1 from the Warlock means he misses.
Druid: Moves 10 feet closer to change the Bonfire: Troll saves with a Nat 20. Sigh.

Round 5 - It's getting late boys and girls, so, this will be my last round for tonight. I'll pick this up later.



Wizard: Moves to get line of sight on the troll and fires away: hits for 1 damage.
Warlock: Eldritch Blast Hits for 8 damage. Warlock pulls back to the north side of the bridge.
Cleric: Sacred Flame: Troll saves. Cleric falls back.
Bard: Switches to light crossbow. Nat 1. falls back.
Troll: The party made a mistake. The druid forgot to fall back. Troll rushes forward to eat that tasty druid. Double Move.
Druid: HA! Cries the druid and Misty Step's away, moving the Bonfire to beneath the Troll yet again. Troll fails saving throw. Takes 3 damage.

Round 6 - The troll has taken 20 damage. So far the party has cast 1 spell and a couple of Misty Steps. The troll has currently taken fire damage and will not regenerate again this round. What will happen? Stay tuned.

 

[Hussar]

Looks fine to me, how do you plan on running it? I ran my example using DDB to do all the rolls thinking I could show the encounter log if people cared but can't find a way to share it. Just curious if there's a different option.

I'm a Fantasy Grounds schmuck. So, I'll do it. I've got the chatlog, so, all the rolls are there. Heck, I could export the encounter and let other people run it if they like.

 

[J-H]

Are any of them carrying caltrops or ball bearings? If this is shaping up to be a hide/seek/disengage encounter, those might be worth using to slow the troll down.

 

[Oofta]

I did some math in my head yesterday, and six barbarians just straight up pummelling the roll in melee have a somewhat reasonable chance of taking it down before they are all killed. With five it would be tougher, but they still could win with some luck. Not saying this is any way optimal.

Point of it being bad encounter is not that it is unwinnable. It is that it can super easily swing to TPK if key spells fail, the troll hits well in the early rounds etc. To most people very high chance of that happening (especially as this probably is not some pivotal end boss as we are at the first level) just isn't fun.

Also, with casters we are using their meagre first level spell selection to optimise them for this one encounter; one should hope this would give them some edge, as it means they will be suboptimal against many other encounters!

Assumes the group has all their resources, the troll doesn't get to a barbarian that isn't raging yet, the troll needs to double move to get to the group, the barbarians can surround the troll and/or everyone has sentinel feat and so on. There are other rulings that will affect it. For example I've been known to have a troll take someone to 0, which is possible for the troll to do in 1 round even if the barbarian is raging, pick up the PC and run away with lunch. Again, if a PC with the sentinel feat hits the troll is stopped of course, but I've only see 1 person take the feat over the years.

So the easiest? Have a group of human fighters with the sentinel feat and polearms. Start the fight so that the troll has to double move to get to the PCs. As the PCs go in initiative order, have them form up with PCs that have an action falling back 75 feet away from the troll. When the troll gets within 10 feet, the fighters get an opportunity attack. If it hits the troll can't close to be adjacent to the fighter. If the opportunity attack misses and the troll is able to get to the PC but still can't attack. Any PC that ends up adjacent to the troll disengages and backs up 15 feet, if they can't disengage they will still survive a single blow from the troll if an opportunity attack hits. Basically repeat this maneuver, closing to attack if necessary but always ending the PC turn 15 feet away. Surround the troll as soon as possible.

Therefore, the most common race and class, human fighter, is the most powerful combination for this scenario.

 

[MPA2000]

It all makes sense. Just goes to show after nearly 50 years interest in the Fighter and Thief continue to be the most popular and easiest classes. While the Monk continues to lag behind, despite being one of the original core classes in Basic D&D.

I had thought Human would no longer be at the top because of so many Youtube videos telling everyone to optimize their classes with non-humans (Tieflings, Elves etc.)

 

[Ancalagon]

It all makes sense. Just goes to show after nearly 50 years interest in the Fighter and Thief continue to be the most popular and easiest classes. While the Monk continues to lag behind, despite being one of the original core classes in Basic D&D.

I had thought Human would no longer be at the top because of so many Youtube videos telling everyone to optimize their classes with non-humans (Tieflings, Elves etc.)

In my experience, a lot of those videos recommend the human variant for the free feat...

there is a fascinating video about the interaction between optimizing and gaming culture - it's about WoW, not D&D, but there are a lot of parallels.

 

[TheSword]

Troll wars lol.

To be honest when I made the innocuous comment about throwing a troll as a first encounter I never said it was a cake walk. The Troll was going to spend its first turn attacking bystanders so there players would potentially have two rounds of actions.

When it comes to casters and martials I can’t see a scenario where it isn’t better to have both. A high AC character with the ability to reduce the trolls impact - A barbarian with rage, a fighter with a shield, a Paladin with shield of faith, fighting defensively, shield spells from magic initiate, sanctuary, parry feat, or a combination of multiples would seriously blunt the trolls effects. Even if that tank is KO’d a simple bonus action healing word gets them back up fighting at 100%.

In combination with casters using fire and debuffing the troll further it seems like a pretty straightforward encounter.

I did make the cakewalk comments regarding CR 3 encounters. For our group and I am only talking about our group. There is no way a CR 3 mummy would lead to a TPK. It would be at most KO’ing one person every other round less if debuffed or the person in contact had higher AC.

Every party is different.

I also think levels 1-2 are a lot of fun. They’re the set up, the introduction, the beginning. And I think beginnings are really good fun and exciting. It’s not about power guys and gals it’s about getting into the game.

 

[bedir than]

100 foot sight lines, even in forest, is not unreasonable.

This is in fact very unreasonable.
That's why soldiers hide in forests. It's why deer hide in forests.