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.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Perhaps. But there is decent chance that it would perma kill some characters via the mummy rot or just massive damage.

 

[bedir than]

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

This photo of a horse is about 30' away, the horse is in front of the tree that has no leaves and there's essentially zero cover.

It STILL isn't very obvious. Think about how much less obvious it would be if it was 8' further away behind the tree.

 

[TheSword]

Perhaps. But there is decent chance that it would perma kill some characters via the mummy rot or just massive damage.

The mummy rot doesn’t take effect until 24 hours later. The mummy is also speed 20.

Massive damage is a possibility but it’s unlikely that a character would be engaging from our group unless they were martial therefore 12+ hp.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. Just highly unlikely. TPK? Four PCs by a creature that can only attack in melee and has speed 20ft? Nah.

 

[Oofta]

This photo of a horse is about 30' away, the horse is in front of the tree that has no leaves and there's essentially zero cover.

It STILL isn't very obvious. Think about how much less obvious it would be if it was 8' further away behind the tree.

View attachment 344718

In addition, you can't see the troll a hundred feet away on the other side of that hill.

 

[Oofta]

The mummy rot doesn’t take effect until 24 hours later. The mummy is also speed 20.

Massive damage is a possibility but it’s unlikely that a character would be engaging from our group unless they were martial therefore 12+ hp.

All of these discussions depends on the circumstances and tactics on both sides. Only fight of the day? Fight after 3 tough combats? What's the environment? Are we in the ruins with limited line of sight that the mummy knows by heart or a salt flat? Are we talking TPK or just 1 PC?

CR will always be a general guideline, a monster with CR higher than the group has a decent chance of taking out 1 or more level PCs ... that's all it means.

 

[Clint_L]

I don't like putting significantly higher CR creatures against level 1 or 2 parties because there's so little room for error. With really experienced players it's more feasible, but even there you are often just one lucky damage roll or critical hit away from an insta-kill, which is no fun on someone's first game. I do all my combat rolls in the open, so there's no take-backsies.

An ogre, for instance, doesn't even need a critical hit to insta-kill most level 1 players from full health, just a strong damage roll. Experienced players will be suitably cautious about it, presumably, but a lot of my games are with newbies. So I tend to rely on fights with multiple weak foes for the first few levels. By level 3, there is enough resilience so that it's not as much of an issue.

 

[Clint_L]

All of these discussions depends on the circumstances and tactics on both sides. Only fight of the day? Fight after 3 tough combats? What's the environment? Are we in the ruins with limited line of sight that the mummy knows by heart or a salt flat? Are we talking TPK or just 1 PC?

CR will always be a general guideline, a monster with CR higher than the group has a decent chance of taking out 1 or more level PCs ... that's all it means.

For sure. Against the wrong party or with an advantageous environment a CR2 peryton can be a nightmare opponent.

 

[Oofta]

For sure. Against the wrong party or with an advantageous environment a CR2 peryton can be a nightmare opponent.

I've almost taken out 3rd level parties with a relative handful of goblins. They have decent range attacks, stealth, can hide as a bonus action. The fights can be annoying though so I rarely use them.

In general though, D&D solos have never worked particularly well. Legendary and lair action help, but only so much. Even with legendary monsters I tend to add at least another lower level monster or two.

 

[ECMO3]

This is a job for ECMO3.

Edit: the troll has 84 HP, and I figure that combo can keep the barbarian in the fight for 5 rounds. So we have to do a total DPR of 17, if we can keep it from regenerating.

Barbarian DPR 7, cleric DPR 4.5 x 2, wizard DPR 2 from bonfire, + 3 from firebolt after first round. So we should be able to do it if we get lucky - there's some wiggle room with being able to use the burning hands at the end if the barbarian is KOed and things are spinning out of control.

Ok I went ahead and Monte Carloed this. I used fixed initiative (Rogue, Wizard, Barbarian, Troll, Cleric) I varied all the other d20 rolls and all the damage through 1,000,000 iterations. I did this twice to ensure this was a large enough sample for consistent results. I included crits.

Party:
Elf Rogue - 8 Strength, 16 Dex, Longbow, AC14, 8hps, athletics +3, always gets sneak attack (unless grappling),
Elf Barbarian - 16 Strength, 14 dex, 16 Con, AC15, 15hps, athletics +5
Elf Cleric - 16 Strength, 16 Wisdom, AC18, 8hps, athletics +3, Sanctuary, Shield of Faith, Toll The Dead
Elf Wizard - 16 Dex, 16 Intelligence, 6hps, Create Bonfire, Firebolt, Catapult spell with 2 vials of oil

Ruleset:
Characters started 20 foot apart and Barbarian moved into melee on first turn. The PC strategy was to grapple the Troll and hold him on the campfire cast by Wizard. The Barbarian would start the grapple, if he died the Cleric would move up and grapple, if she died the Rogue would move up and grapple. If Rogue died the Wizard would just keep Firebolting. While the Cleric was alive, I put sanctuary on grappler if the Troll was grappled and Shield of Faith on grappler if target was not yet grappled (subject to spell slot availability).

Rogue: Rogue gets sneak attack with Longbow every turn (readying an action until Barb closed on the first turn) until Barbarian and Cleric went down, then tries to grapple.

Wizard: Wizard cast create Bonfire under Troll (save for damage) on first turn. On second and third round she catapulted a flask of oil. She uses Firebolt after 3rd round.

Barbarian: Barbarian goes into Rage on first turn and grapples (with advantage), once the grapple is in place Barbarian dodges on subsequent turns. When he is not sanctuaried he moves the Troll off and back on the fire for extra 1d8 damage on the Barbarian's turn. Once sanctuary is up he does not move Troll back and forth. When Rage goes down he restarts it once on the next turn

Troll: Troll is pretty stupid. He attacks the person trying to grapple him. If that person goes down he moves to the next person in line. He keeps attacking after successfully grappled until the grappler goes down and does not use an action to break the grapple. If he is in the grappled state at the end of his turn he takes campfire damage. If he is not in the grappled state he moves off of the fire.

Cleric: As long as barbarian is alive Cleric uses Toll the Dead as an action. If the Barbarian dies she takes on the grappler role. Like the Barbarian, she dodges as an action if she successfully grapples (and survives through the Troll's turn). She uses sanctuary on the Barbarian (or herself) if either of them successfully grapple the Troll while the Cleric still has spell slots. She uses SOF on the Barbarian or herself if the Troll is not yet grappled and she still has spell slots or if the Troll is grappled and the grappler is already is sanctuaried and she has spell slots.

Outcome - most likely to least likely
Party wins with no losses: 72%
Troll wins, TPK: 15%
Party wins, Barbarian dies, Cleric, Rogue and Wizard survive: 10%
Party wins, Barbarian and Cleric die, Rogue and Wizard survive: 2%
Party wins, Barbarian, Cleric and Rogue die, only Wizard survives: 1%

Average combat length
Median combat length: 4 rounds
Mean combat length: 4.6 rounds

 

[Scott Christian]

For those that are bothered by the weird scaling, I redid it using the same scale for the entire chart. Puts things in a little better perspective for me.

Thank you. That is so disingenuous to make the scale the original post had. It greatly skews the visual representation.