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.

 

[bedir than]

Then the solution is to take away wild shape. You can't give druids the ability to change into animals, though, and not give them the abilities of those animals. You can enhance the animals with spells. That's fine, but it's not okay to let a druid change into a bear with 10 strength, 10 dex and 10 con and no ability to attack with claws like that bear would.

Druid spells that are the way to Wild Shape! Sometimes it's a small change (level 1) and sometimes it's a big one (level 5).
So the pick-your-shape is that you are casting spell Y,Z,A on yourself.

 

[Minigiant]

Do they? Do you have a source for this, any evidence at all?

I am not sure this is true.

It tends to be small items that people want changed the most (certain spells nerfed, certain fighting styles buffed, Monks improved).

I don't see people asking for big changes to the game design or mechanics. Also the early feedback seems to indicate that people did not even want to change the levels where subclass improvements happen.

The 2023 playtests.

A lot of new ideas scored very favorable. Class Groups, spell groups, smoother ASI curves, new exhaustion rules.

HOWEVER

Once many fans realized that their old books pre Tasha's would not be backwards compatible, they flipped.

The edition change curse.
The community wants new rules but keep their old books.

"No Take! Only throw."

 

[bedir than]

The 2023 playtests.

A lot of new ideas scored very favorable. Class Groups, spell groups, smoother ASI curves, new exhaustion rules.

HOWEVER

Once many fans realized that their old books pre Tasha's would not be backwards compatible, they flipped.

The edition change curse.
The community wants new rules but keep their old books.

"No Take! Only throw."

This doesn't match my memory of events at all.

 

[Oofta]

The 2023 playtests.

A lot of new ideas scored very favorable. Class Groups, spell groups, smoother ASI curves, new exhaustion rules.

HOWEVER

Once many fans realized that their old books pre Tasha's would not be backwards compatible, they flipped.

The edition change curse.
The community wants new rules but keep their old books.

"No Take! Only throw."

Again, any evidence of this? Because I'm with @bedir than , I don't remember any. They threw out some ideas that weren't popular, that's all I remember.

 

[Minigiant]

This doesn't match my memory of events at all.

WOTC tested big changes in the class structure and it scored when. Then they did another playtest with it and it scored well.

Then they got to the casters.

Crawford said that some features had to change because of the new popular ideas.

Fans liked the new ideas. Those scored favorably. But the changes to old stuff needed to implement these ideas scored poorly.

So most of it was reverted. Anything that changed old products was reverted.

For example the Sorcerer getting the Arcane spell list, Great.
The Wizard getting the Arcane spell list instead of a big exclusive Wizard class list. BAD.
THE Sorcerer getting more features. Great.
The Dragon Sorcerer losing their wings because they subclass features at different levels. Heresy!

 

[Oofta]

WOTC tested big changes in the class structure and it scored when. Then they did another playtest with it and it scored well.

Then they got to the casters.

Crawford said that some features had to change because of the new popular ideas.

Fans liked the new ideas. Those scored favorably. But the changes to old stuff needed to implement these ideas scored poorly.

So most of it was reverted. Anything that changed old products was reverted.

For example the Sorcerer getting the Arcane spell list, Great.
The Wizard getting the Arcane spell list instead of a big exclusive Wizard class list. BAD.
THE Sorcerer getting more features. Great.
The Dragon Sorcerer losing their wings because they subclass features at different levels. Heresy!

Again, I don't remember any of these things scoring well. Maybe I missed it but since there were multiple major changes that scored well and then were rejected it should be easy for you to provide a link.

 

[Neonchameleon]

WOTC tested big changes in the class structure and it scored when. Then they did another playtest with it and it scored well.

To put things another way the community liked the pie in the sky ideals - but the details weren't there.

Then they got to the casters.

Crawford said that some features had to change because of the new popular ideas.

Fans liked the new ideas. Those scored favorably. But the changes to old stuff needed to implement these ideas scored poorly.

But there are plenty of changes that are liked. People like new in the abstract. They however prefer old and solid to new and bad.

So most of it was reverted. Anything that changed old products was reverted.

Not so. Anything that changed old products for the worse was downvoted. Weapon Mastery and level 1 feats for example were kept.

For example the Sorcerer getting the Arcane spell list, Great.
The Wizard getting the Arcane spell list instead of a big exclusive Wizard class list. BAD.

I'd been downvoting the merged spell lists thanks to things like Smite spells on full casters and the turning the Bard into a collection of game mechanics using cookie cutter spells rather than having their own magical identity throughout.

THE Sorcerer getting more features. Great.
The Dragon Sorcerer losing their wings because they subclass features at different levels. Heresy!

Yeah, wingless D&D dragons ain't gonna fly.

Seriously when they were making abstract noises it sounded good. I want a brawler fighter - but the one we got was awful. I wanted a template druid - but the one we got couldn't differentiate a bear from an anaconda. And the Aardling was borderline in the first iteration for a great race for an enthusiastic teen girl - and the second iteration was a half-assed furry.

The community doesn't want new things when they are actively bad. The only bit of feedback I can think of where the community kicked something out other than for being badly done was the wizards wanting bigger spell lists than bards.

People liked the marketing in a lot of cases - but the end products not living up to the marketing doesn't mean what the marketing was offering was disliked. It means the test version of the product was not good. And people would rather have something familiar that works over something new that doesn't.

 

[Minigiant]

To put things another way the community liked the pie in the sky ideals - but the details weren't there

Exactly.

"Power source spell lists! Awesome. Paladins get access to the Cleric spells and Sorcerers get access to the Wizard spells. Cool"

"Wait. Bards lose their restoration spells. Clerics get Smites. Wizards don't have exclusive spells. Very dissatisfied."

Again, I don't remember any of these things scoring well. Maybe I missed it but since there were multiple major changes that scored well and then were rejected it should be easy for you to provide a link.

The post playtest interviews with the Arcane casters. And the divine casters.

People like the changes. But those changes required other changes. And fans hated those other changes because of backwards compatibility and like @Neonchameleon stated poor implementation.

 

[CleverNickName]

Here's how my own gaming table looks, looking back over all of the D&D campaigns I've been a part of since 5E was released (seven different D&D campaigns and three gaming groups, and I'm just one of four different DMs):

Races
██████████████ Human (14)
██████ Custom (6)*
---------------------------------------50%
█████ Lineage (5)*
███ Dragonborn (3)
███ Elf (3)
██ Half-Elf (2)
██ Half-Orc (2)
██ Halfling (2)
██ Tabaxi (2)
█ Dwarf (1)
Gnome (0)


Classes**
██████ Cleric (6)
█████ Fighter (5)
█████ Ranger (5)
████ Druid (4)
████ Rogue (4)
███ Monk (3)
███ Paladin (3)
███ Warlock (3)
██ Barbarian (2)
██ Bard (2)
██ Sorcerer (2)
██ Wizard (2)
█ Artificer (1)

*Custom Races are homebrew races that the DM created from scratch (a siren, a werewolf, two half-dryads, a faun, and a pixie, if you must know). The Lineage category is for characters that were created using the Custom Lineage framework provided in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.

**This includes multiclassed characters, i.e., a fighter/rogue would score a point for both Fighter and for Rogue.

 

[Oofta]

Exactly.

"Power source spell lists! Awesome. Paladins get access to the Cleric spells and Sorcerers get access to the Wizard spells. Cool"

"Wait. Bards lose their restoration spells. Clerics get Smites. Wizards don't have exclusive spells. Very dissatisfied."


The post playtest interviews with the Arcane casters. And the divine casters.

People like the changes. But those changes required other changes. And fans hated those other changes because of backwards compatibility and like @Neonchameleon stated poor implementation.

It's easy to get excited about generic concepts when everyone can fill in the gaps and imagine what could be. It's tougher when you have to actually implement something. I've done a lot of development (of software) over the years and worked with some top notch development teams. Frequently things that you think can be done simply don't work the way you want when final design comes down. It's part and parcel of development, the devil is in the details and the devil likes to f*** you over.

But again, you're just giving vague answers. For example I disliked the consolidated spell lists, the different classes lost a lot of their unique flavor for minimal benefit. So all I'm hearing is that they had what they thought was a cool idea and when they showed the details of how it would actually work it was rejected. If I'm hearing that wrong feel free to provide a link or any solid evidence other than assertions.