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]​

 

[OB1]

Just out of curiosity, how long did that take real time and how often a month do you play?

My primary campaign is at about the same point (18th level) started in the play test and expect to wrap up by May. We play about 10-12 hours a month, but had three different 6 month periods (one after each Tier)where we played another campaign over the last 4 years.

Tier IV has been the longest continuous Section, having started in Feb of last year, but I’m having so much fun running and the players playing that we’ve been stretching it.

Alas, the side quests are running out and the Prime Villain is on the move towards its ultimate goal so the end is now coming one way or another!

 

[lkj]

My primary campaign is at about the same point (18th level) started in the play test and expect to wrap up by May. We play about 10-12 hours a month, but had three different 6 month periods (one after each Tier)where we played another campaign over the last 4 years.

Tier IV has been the longest continuous Section, having started in Feb of last year, but I’m having so much fun running and the players playing that we’ve been stretching it.

Alas, the side quests are running out and the Prime Villain is on the move towards its ultimate goal so the end is now coming one way or another!

I think my favorite part of our current campaign is that it never had an overarching metaplot. Don't get me wrong. I love those big story campaigns too (ran a different campaign from 1 to 20 across several editions and many years that had a huge world ending story line). But in this game, I started it off by dropping plot hooks here and there, some based on character backgrounds. Some on the fly. Some where I had an inkling of what might happen.

And the party just went all over the place plot-wise (and geographically). We are now, finally, in a 'If you fail, demonic armies will be unleashed across the planes' scenario. But that situation is almost entirely of the party's own making. The big end of campaign climax is basically just them trying to fix something they broke.

I can't tell you how fun that is.

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[jimmytheccomic]

I just finished DMing my second 1-20 campaign! I'm actually really impressed with how well 5e runs at high levels- combat is more elaborate, but each round doesn't take an absurd amount of time. A good fight still just takes 45 minutes or so- I remember running third edition where a single high level fight would eat up the entire evening. I also liked that high level in 5e felt superheroic but the characters were still vulnerable. We've just started our third 5e campaign, I'm planning on pushing this one to 20 as well.

 

[OB1]

I think my favorite part of our current campaign is that it never had an overarching metaplot. Don't get me wrong. I love those big story campaigns too (ran a different campaign from 1 to 20 across several editions and many years that had a huge world ending story line). But in this game, I started it off by dropping plot hooks here and there, some based on character backgrounds. Some on the fly. Some where I had an inkling of what might happen.

And the party just went all over the place plot-wise (and geographically). We are now, finally, in a 'If you fail, demonic armies will be unleashed across the planes' scenario. But that situation is almost entirely of the party's own making. The big end of campaign climax is basically just them trying to fix something they broke.

I can't tell you how fun that is.

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Yeah, I had an overarching main quest for each Tier that drove the action but not for the whole campaign. The plot of the next tier grew out of what they did in the previous, which was one of the reasons I needed a 6 month break after each to figure out the next. The Prime Villain of Tier IV only became so because of choices they made in II and III, I’d have never imagined it way back when we started.

Will probably be a while before trying to do a 1-20 again. But up next I’ll give them the choice of what Tier they want to play in and build a story contained just to that. I’m guessing it will be either II or IV.

 

[dave2008]

The problem with this being, I suspect, that instead of playing levels 1-19, slower leveling would simply change the upper end of the range. So, it becomes levels 1-6, or whatever level it generally takes about a year of play to reach.

The issue has always been time. Even back in 1e, it was expected that you'd hit about 9th or 10th level after about a year of regular play. And then the DM would retire that campaign and you'd start anew.

Possibly, I feel like there has to be a sweet spot. You could of course keep the leveling the same form 1-10 and stop the core books there. Make everything else supplements.

Heck, I wonder, looking at the BECMI rules, what percentage of groups never got past E?

Crazy wasn't it!? We never got to C, but I did bring in some of the monsters from C into our B & E games.

 

[5ekyu]

Yes, it is possible, and in fact I think that is the most likely explanation for tier 4 being more popular than tier 3. These stats don't distinguish between characters being actively played and characters created as a thought exercise. I bet that if you took that chart and broke it out by level, you would find next to nothing from 17-19 and a huge spike at 20.

I did not view this broadcast, but before in other vids they clarified that (for better or worse) they separate test characters and play characters thru a variety of criteria including a pattern of leveling up over time, adjustments made in play like HP up down, rests triggered etc.

I cannot say that what they do is comprehensive or not, but they have at least made the claim to be weeding out test and trial non-played characters.

Unless they say differently in this video, I have to assume they continue thst practice here.

 

[AmerginLiath]

My initial question seeing this, having not used D&D Beyond, is whether this breakdown includes multiclassing. Fighter especially is a class where I could see characters with a few levels (amid another class) essentially double-counting classes used (with Fighter being so often discussed as the class most dipped).

I also wonder, given the platform in question, if the length of the campaigns here partly reflect different logistics between in-person and online games — are the sort of games played on this sort of platform often Howe which are played remotely by disconnected groups whose schedules might break down sooner than in-person groups (or simply coordinate playing times less often)?

 

[Hussar]

Huh? Neither of those is true in the vast majority of campaigns. Any campaign that it is true, would be considered an outlier IMHO.

I agree that gameplay needs to change as characters grow in power to keep things interesting. That is true in every RPG. Sometimes players aren't interested in empire building or world shaping and that makes higher D&D level adventuring pretty tough.

This I disagree with. By the time a group is mid to high double digit levels, there's pretty much nothing native to the plane, outside of some dragons, that could individually challenge them in any edition. By that time, you're dealing with major demons and devils on a fairly regular basis.

 

[5ekyu]

Except I have played in games where I made a PC in Beyond, printed it out and then never updated Beyond, and also have created a 'second' PC for another game to evaluate what I might have done in combat had I played a class I had not had a chance to play recently... a "phantom" character that experienced hp losses, rests, etc... but never hit the table.

They have no way to clearly identify what is rel and what is illusion, but they can estimate.

Yeah me too... but...

I got a ton of characters on my site both mine and campaigns from players etc and... if they looked at short rest use over time, hp up and down on multiple occasions, etc looking for a number of factors even just ssy 3 different clues out of a set of maybe ten I can think of right off ... they would divvy my characters into played and not played with like 90% accuracy - with one big exception case.

They would miss out on one-shots - where I run one shots and hand out printed chars to players at FLGS.

 

[5ekyu]

My initial question seeing this, having not used D&D Beyond, is whether this breakdown includes multiclassing. Fighter especially is a class where I could see characters with a few levels (amid another class) essentially double-counting classes used (with Fighter being so often discussed as the class most dipped).

I also wonder, given the platform in question, if the length of the campaigns here partly reflect different logistics between in-person and online games — are the sort of games played on this sort of platform often Howe which are played remotely by disconnected groups whose schedules might break down sooner than in-person groups (or simply coordinate playing times less often)?

This is also something I wonder - and have not seen an answer on - how do MC characters figure into this? Is a life cleric dip main druid gonna count as one of each? How many of the warlocks are from 1-3 level dips?

I think it would be very interesting to see the same data represented 4 ways...

All combined as it is now.
Single class only
Multi-class only
All combined but weighted by "levels in class"

Additionally I would love to see for each class and subclass how many are single vs multi-class.

I think those four-five slices on the same datasets of characters could be very informative.