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.

 

[Mistwell]

Sigh.

Yes, of course, any problems are because of me. Couldn't ever possibly be an issue with the game. Good grief this refrain is tiresome.

Look, I dunno about you, but, generally, I don't force my preferences on my players. If they want to play casters, who am I to tell them no? And they want to play casters. Across multiple groups and multiple campaigns. Whether I DM or not.

But, sure, I should ram my preferences down their throats, hold the game hostage - either play the way I want to play or find a new DM. At no point should we simply adjust the game a bit to rein in the casters. That would be unheard of.

It's not you that is the problem, but it IS unusual what you're experiencing. We even had a game once that was all casters and we never had this problem. Tons of useful spells, nobody had. A whole lot of repetition of spells - if they could access fireball they had it. And not all the classes have access to all their spells with just a long rest. The warlock was never going to get a Knock spell with rest. With no magic shop to buy scrolls, and having not taken certain spells on levelling, there were just some situationally key useful spells nobody had.

Just because it's unusual doesn't make it your fault though. Its just a game issue which isn't seen by most people, so it's hard to see the game needs to change to fix a problem few see, even though it's a real problem. Fortunately WOTC does appear to be fixing most of the problem spells and I am happy about that. But it won't fix your particular group choosing all casters. That's a problem you will need to adapt to as it's your group doing that, not the game. Non casters are plenty popular in not just my game, but most games in general according to all the objective data.

 

[Minigiant]

I appreciate that's your experience. I encountered that while playing 1e I seem to recall. And we tried to cover different roles with 4e. But we have not had this issue with 5e. We've repeatedly had games with players playing the same class. We've had games of all spellcasters. And we've had games with almost no spellcasters. Most of our games have no cleric or druid. I am playing a cleric in one of our games, but not from external pressure just from having not played a Cleric yet in 5e and wanting to try one out.

I am sure that many don't feel that pressure.

However the designers have more or less stated that they designed the champion fighter and made it free for DMs to give it to new players. So fighter numbers might be inflated just with DMs shoving fighter character sheets on noobs.

And although healing doesn't require a cleric, the restoration spells within the levels people play are locked into 3 or 5 classes. So with all the bad house rules you see on YouTube, Spotify, Reddit, and elsewhere, I can see "Is no one playing a cleric, druid, or bard?"

Note: I am currently playing a sorcerer who has 2 curses on them. TWO!

 

[OB1]

I appreciate that's your experience. I encountered that while playing 1e I seem to recall. And we tried to cover different roles with 4e. But we have not had this issue with 5e. We've repeatedly had games with players playing the same class. We've had games of all spellcasters. And we've had games with almost no spellcasters. Most of our games have no cleric or druid. I am playing a cleric in one of our games, but not from external pressure just from having not played a Cleric yet in 5e and wanting to try one out.

This! The first campaign I ran in 5e had 2 full martials and a half-caster Ranger, went to level 20 with no issue, and I didn't have to pull any punches. The 2nd campaign I ran had 3 full casters (Cleric, Druid, Wizard) and 2 full martials, also went to level 20 and the party consistently sought out and took on higher level challenges because of their increased flexibility.

Party synergy, like magic items, is a flat bonus against baseline, not a requirement to succeed against level appropriate challenges. 5e is balanced against a baseline that does not require system mastery and it is expected that if you optimize players, groups, and magic items, that you will be able to take on higher level challenges.

This, IMO, is critical to the success of 5e in bringing in new players, who can simply pick what's interesting to them and have a great chance of success to be brave heroes facing deadly perils. As players (and the DM guiding them) gain more experience, both the players and DM gain system mastery that allows everyone to exceed baseline and continue to face challenging adventures.

 

[Clint_L]

Just for the record, many level 1 parties would confidently handle a single CR 3 boss monster. Using them is not strange. My next campaign starts with a CR 5 Troll.

I'm having trouble seeing how a level 1 party handles a troll unless they are intended to run away from it or have significant advantages built into the encounter! And do they know about its regeneration? In a straight-up fight the troll should KO at least one party member each round, probably two!

 

[Clint_L]

This! The first campaign I ran in 5e had 2 full martials and a half-caster Ranger, went to level 20 with no issue, and I didn't have to pull any punches. The 2nd campaign I ran had 3 full casters (Cleric, Druid, Wizard) and 2 full martials, also went to level 20 and the party consistently sought out and took on higher level challenges because of their increased flexibility.

Party synergy, like magic items, is a flat bonus against baseline, not a requirement to succeed against level appropriate challenges. 5e is balanced against a baseline that does not require system mastery and it is expected that if you optimize players, groups, and magic items, that you will be able to take on higher level challenges.

This, IMO, is critical to the success of 5e in bringing in new players, who can simply pick what's interesting to them and have a great chance of success to be brave heroes facing deadly perils. As players (and the DM guiding them) gain more experience, both the players and DM gain system mastery that allows everyone to exceed baseline and continue to face challenging adventures.

Same. Most parties naturally have a spread of character classes because that's just what people want to play (as this data shows) but any party composition can get by. For sure some combinations are trickier to manage than others. One of the first long campaigns that I ran for 5e had a monk, rogue, wizard, and ranger, and they consistently ran into trouble because no one could tank or force open a door.

 

[Oofta]

I'm having trouble seeing how a level 1 party handles a troll unless they are intended to run away from it or have significant advantages built into the encounter! And do they know about its regeneration? In a straight-up fight the troll should KO at least one party member each round, probably two!

One claw hit would drop many level 1 PCs, a troll could easily take out a PC or 2 in a single round.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Okay. My experience differs. Greatly.

Especially because as far as I've seen, DMs actively hate 3PP for 5e. None of the games I've applied for used any, any attempt to ask for it was either immediately shut down or (on rare occasion) given an "I'll consider it" before being inevitably told "no, sorry, not doing that."

3PP is cold comfort when it's effectively never available.

Sometimes the reason people don't give you what you want is because of the way you ask.

 

[Clint_L]

In general, I don't use 3PP for character classes, magic items, rules, etc. unless they are integrated to DnDBeyond, and then I'll look at each case and decide if I think it's balanced. A lot of 3PP stuff isn't. I think expecting a DM to integrate specific 3PP is a significant request; DMing already involves a lot of prep.

Edit: On the other hand, I've purchased all of the 3PP currently available on DDB and look forward to more!

 

[TheSword]

I'm having trouble seeing how a level 1 party handles a troll unless they are intended to run away from it or have significant advantages built into the encounter! And do they know about its regeneration? In a straight-up fight the troll should KO at least one party member each round, probably two!

Experienced players so they know about regen
Balanced party so range of spells and decent combat
Playtest rules
AC 15 so 55% of PC attacks will likely hit.
Generally very poor troll saving throws so quite likely to have hideous laughter, vicious mockery etc on them
Troll is +7 to hit so just over half attacks should hit.
Bite does minor damage 5-9 hp a successful claw will likely kill but not guaranteed
debuffing further.
Healing word and cure can likely restore a character back most likely faster than they fall.

There will also be two bystanders to get eviscerated in the first round of combat. Not too many just a couple to take a hit or two and build the effect and mean the PCs are taken out before they get chance to act.

CR 3 creature though. That would be a cake walk.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In general, I don't use 3PP for character classes, magic items, rules, etc. unless they are integrated to DnDBeyond, and then I'll look at each case and decide if I think it's balanced. A lot of 3PP stuff isn't. I think expecting a DM to integrate specific 3PP is a significant request; DMing already involves a lot of prep.

Edit: On the other hand, I've purchased all of the 3PP currently available on DDB and look forward to more!

That would be far to restrictive to me. A goodly portion of the monsters and magic items in my games are 3PP, in that I create them myself.