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]​

 

[Mercule]

There's a Kickstarter where the guy takes out all the spells that are almost never picked and converts D&D to 12 levels. Great idea on my opinion. My group of over 40 years has never gone past 12th level in our campaigns.

Link? That sounds really interesting.

I've played higher levels, a couple times, but it was almost always as part of a "special story" or pulling established characters out of retirement to deal with a bigger threat -- I've let one PC ascend to god-hood and that happened at 12 level (and a ranger). I've just never found higher levels that interesting or fun, especially when the stupid-powerful spells come out (basically, 5th level+).

 

[AriochQ]

Often campaign self-destruct before players reach high levels, but for those that do make it that far, lack of high level play may have more to do with the DM than the players. Players seems always willing to take down the next baddie and tend to enjoy increasing in power, even to god-like levels. DM's, on the other hand, become increasing tasked attempting to challenge those players at higher levels. As players level, their circle of influence grows. It is easy run a campaign centered in a small town, city, or even a kingdom. At high levels, you usually start dealing with inter-kingdom and extraplanar stuff with world-affecting events. That is a real chore for the DM if they want to have any sense of continuity in their settings. In my experience, the DM is usually the one who initiates the "Why don't we start a new campaign?" conversations and the players tend not to feel strongly either way (They like the characters they have, but are also often itching to try a new character they have been mulling over).

 

[volanin]

There's a Kickstarter where the guy takes out all the spells that are almost never picked and converts D&D to 12 levels. Great idea on my opinion. My group of over 40 years has never gone past 12th level in our campaigns.

I'm also interested in this!
Closest thing I could find is the Low Fantasy Gaming kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lowfantasygaming/low-fantasy-gaming-deluxe-edition

Is this it?

 

[Matt S1]

Yep, that's it.

 

[Travis Henry]

Frankly, D&D is too complex at any level, especially beyond 10th. I'm new to 5E, and been running the Starter Set for about five sessions. It is fun. And yet...we lost one player due to complexity at 1st level. And even though I played 3e back in the day, my head swims to keep track of everything. It's fun, but still...

I implore "Mearls, Crawford, and team" to produce another kind of D&D which is still a RPG (not a boardgame or TCG), but which is super-streamlined. I call it "Simply D&D." It could perhaps be based on the Tails of Equestria system. Or it could be an even more streamlined distillation of the Basic Rules.

But the main thing is that a character only gets one Power per level. So by 10th level the character has 10 powers. And only 20 powers by 20th level.

Juveniles have one power (a Race power), Adults have a Background power, and Adventurers have one Class power. Literally, one. Like, the Wizard has one spell.

The first session of the game is run as a party of 2nd-level classless "commoner" adults. (For an even simpler start, could also run a game as children PCs...especially when running the game *for* children.)

Anyway, the first session is only about learning how to use the system: Initiative, Action + Move, Ability Checks, HP, AC. That's about it.

Here's an overview of SD&D:

https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/simple-rpg

 

[Matt S1]

I'm also interested in this!
Closest thing I could find is the Low Fantasy Gaming kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lowfantasygaming/low-fantasy-gaming-deluxe-edition

Is this it?

Yep, that's it.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm surprised by how many are playing in tier 4. 5.4% is a lot (even with DoMM out).

I'm not really sure how Beyond works, is it possible that people are creating level 20 characters as character building exercises? Maybe that plays into why classes are differently popular at different tiers.

They might go over it in the video linked above, but D&DB has ways to differentiate PCs being played and test cases when they analyze the data. This is likely already correcting for test characters.

 

[Parmandur]

I'd put two caveats on this data.

First, there's no separation between played characters and try-a-build characters, so we don't know this is the proper breakdown for campaigns. I wonder if they can remove characters that have never been given XP.

Second, this is rather self-selecting, for those who use DDBeyond.

For that, it's still an interesting insight that matches my own observations, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be aware of possible weaknesses in the data.

The results are congruent with what WotC has been saying about high level play for years, hence their focus on publishing Tier 1 & 2 AP material.

 

[DQDesign]

[MENTION=6985696]Travis Henry[/MENTION]

before someone in here answers to you that wotc does not owe nothing to you, as it has been done uncountable times with me, please consider my suggestion: stop imploring people who are just humans like you and me and simply change the game you use. I would strongly suggest Dungeon World

https://www.rpgnow.com/m/product/108028

https://www.dungeonworldsrd.com

 

[OB1]

My group has been having an absolute blast in Tier IV over the last year. It’s a different style for sure but the results are some of the best sessions we’ve ever played.
If you haven’t tried Tier IV in 5e yet I highly recommend it!