90% of D&D Games Stop By Level 10; Wizards More Popular At Higher Levels

D&D Beyond has released some more data mined from usage of its platform. A couple of weeks ago, it published some stats on the most viewed D&D adventures, from Dragon Heist and Strahd all the way down to Rise of Tiamat. This time, it's a look at player characters by tier of play.

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Tier 1 is levels 1-4, Tier 2 is levels 5-10, Tier 3 is levels 11-16, and Tier 4 is levels 17-20.

Tier 1 contains the most characters created on the platform (as you would expect), followed in order by Tiers 2-4. About 90% of games do not make it past the 10th level mark, as the developer notes.

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This chart shows that the fighter is the most common class at all tiers, followed by the rogue. At third place it switches up a bit - the wizard becomes more popular in Tiers 3-4 than in Tiers 1-2, while the cleric and ranger both have a strong presence at lower levels but drop off at higher levels.

You can find the report in the latest DDB development video below.

[video=youtube;4tuIrGLKSik]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tuIrGLKSik[/video]​

 

[Zardnaar]

That was my point.

Can't even explain it tbh. I blame zee French.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This Just In: Powerful classes are more liked at the levels where their powers become almost literally godlike, and players prefer to play the levels that always get the most adventure support and advice and rules, and which generally need to be played through before one can even attempt to play the higher levels.

 

[schm0]

Can we presume that they are not (and reasonably, can't) removing the vast amounts of low level characters created for campaigns outside of D&D Beyond or for expirmentation/fun from the data set? Of course most characters made on D&D Beyond are going to be low levels.

Also, it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy when the vast majority of published adventures stop at levels 10-12, save for a few that go to 15 and two that go to 20.

Lastly, the circle chart is about the worst representation of 12 classes I could imagine. An ordered list would have been much better.

 

[mamba]

This Just In: Powerful classes are more liked at the levels where their powers become almost literally godlike, and players prefer to play the levels that always get the most adventure support and advice and rules, and which generally need to be played through before one can even attempt to play the higher levels.

not sure that is accurate, according to the data in tier 4 Fighter is most popular, followed by Wizard and Rogue, and then Barbarian...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

not sure that is accurate, according to the data in tier 4 Fighter is most popular, followed by Wizard and Rogue, and then Barbarian...

I said nothing about any of those things. "Powerful classes are more liked at the levels where their powers [are at their peak]" says nothing about any of the others. I didn't even say that it became the most powerful, nor most well-liked, class. All I said was, in a snarky way, that it really isn't shocking that Wizards, who gain dramatically more power from reaching very high levels, would be more popular than they are at the earliest levels where they may run out of spells after two combats.

It really isn't particularly revelatory to learn that wizards gain in popularity at levels where they have phenomenal cosmic power.

 

[mamba]

I said nothing about any of those things. "Powerful classes are more liked at the levels where their powers [are at their peak]" says nothing about any of the others. I didn't even say that it became the most powerful, nor most well-liked, class. All I said was, in a snarky way, that it really isn't shocking that Wizards, who gain dramatically more power from reaching very high levels, would be more popular than they are at the earliest levels where they may run out of spells after two combats.

ok, then I misunderstood, I thought you meant the preferred classes rather than just more popular than the same class is at lower levels

 

[Scribe]

Hasn't it been shown several times that not only is Fighter one of the most popular, but Champion was the most popular sub?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Hasn't it been shown several times that not only is Fighter one of the most popular, but Champion was the most popular sub?

Ah, but that particular statistic is extremely complicated in a way that 5e fans do not like to discuss. (I would know; I've brought it up several times and it quickly either gets..."missed"...or downplayed/rejected.)

That is, Champion has shown up as being "the most popular" subclass of Fighter, as in the one taken most frequently, which likely (though not guaranteed) makes it "the most popular" subclass overall, again where we specifically define "the most popular" to mean "the option taken more often than anything else."

But then we have evidence from WotC itself--from an internal presentation leaked to the public, no less!--that Champion was one of the most disliked subclasses, where it had more or less equal like and dislike amongst fans. In other words, while it was "the most popular" in the sense of how often it was used, it was also the "the second least popular" in the sense of how much people like using it.

This causes no end of headaches for 5e boosters, because it's objective proof from WotC itself that players may play something they don't actually like very much--that something being widely-played is NOT actually sufficient evidence to show that it is widely-liked. That specific argument--it's widely-used, therefore it must be widely-liked--has been a key defense in any discussion of 5e game design, so its loss is problematic for quite a few people. Hence why most choose to just ignore any inconvenient evidence on this front.

TL;DR: Careful using the word "popular." It has at least two (probably three) distinct meanings, and a lot of fallacious arguments, arguments that we know are false because WotC's data said so, depend on the conflation of "users use it frequently" and "users really like it".

 

[Scribe]

Ah, but that particular statistic is extremely complicated in a way that 5e fans do not like to discuss. (I would know; I've brought it up several times and it quickly either gets..."missed"...or downplayed/rejected.)

That is, Champion has shown up as being "the most popular" subclass of Fighter, as in the one taken most frequently, which likely (though not guaranteed) makes it "the most popular" subclass overall, again where we specifically define "the most popular" to mean "the option taken more often than anything else."

But then we have evidence from WotC itself--from an internal presentation leaked to the public, no less!--that Champion was one of the most disliked subclasses, where it had more or less equal like and dislike amongst fans. In other words, while it was "the most popular" in the sense of how often it was used, it was also the "the second least popular" in the sense of how much people like using it.

This causes no end of headaches for 5e boosters, because it's objective proof from WotC itself that players may play something they don't actually like very much--that something being widely-played is NOT actually sufficient evidence to show that it is widely-liked. That specific argument--it's widely-used, therefore it must be widely-liked--has been a key defense in any discussion of 5e game design, so its loss is problematic for quite a few people. Hence why most choose to just ignore any inconvenient evidence on this front.

TL;DR: Careful using the word "popular." It has at least two (probably three) distinct meanings, and a lot of fallacious arguments, arguments that we know are false because WotC's data said so, depend on the conflation of "users use it frequently" and "users really like it".

Im a firm believer in the fact numbers can say anything if tortured enough.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ah, but that particular statistic is extremely complicated in a way that 5e fans do not like to discuss. (I would know; I've brought it up several times and it quickly either gets..."missed"...or downplayed/rejected.)

That is, Champion has shown up as being "the most popular" subclass of Fighter, as in the one taken most frequently, which likely (though not guaranteed) makes it "the most popular" subclass overall, again where we specifically define "the most popular" to mean "the option taken more often than anything else."

But then we have evidence from WotC itself--from an internal presentation leaked to the public, no less!--that Champion was one of the most disliked subclasses, where it had more or less equal like and dislike amongst fans. In other words, while it was "the most popular" in the sense of how often it was used, it was also the "the second least popular" in the sense of how much people like using it.

This causes no end of headaches for 5e boosters, because it's objective proof from WotC itself that players may play something they don't actually like very much--that something being widely-played is NOT actually sufficient evidence to show that it is widely-liked. That specific argument--it's widely-used, therefore it must be widely-liked--has been a key defense in any discussion of 5e game design, so its loss is problematic for quite a few people. Hence why most choose to just ignore any inconvenient evidence on this front.

TL;DR: Careful using the word "popular." It has at least two (probably three) distinct meanings, and a lot of fallacious arguments, arguments that we know are false because WotC's data said so, depend on the conflation of "users use it frequently" and "users really like it".

Champions really good now in 5.5.