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.

 

[Oofta]

I literally said it wasn't PVP.

For God's sake, at least read the first THREE WORDS.

The rules affect how the game is played? Of course!

How is it relevant or related in any way at all?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The rules affect how the game is played? Of course!

How is it relevant or related in any way at all?

The claim originally made was that the rules can lead to undesirable player behaviors. Rather more intense examples (e.g. Paladins being jerks) were cited, which led to a counter claim that amounted to, as referenced, rejecting as ridiculous the idea that the presence of an incentive or the absence of penalty could somehow mind control players into always doing some particular undesirable behavior, and thus rejecting the original claim as patently ridiculous.

I gave examples of well-known complaints about 5e player behavior rooted in the system's design, showing that the original claim is not ridiculous at its core. Whether or not this, or any other system's design, causes PVP was (explicitly) not my concern. The core claim—rules design shapes player behavior and can easily lead to players doing things that have detrimental effect on others' experiences, whether that be the other players or the DM, possibly requiring significant DM effort to address—is sound, contra @TheSword 's incredulity on the subject.

And, for the record, I don't see "whack-a-mole" healing as a problem. I do see the 5MWD as a problem. WotC happens to agree with me on these issues, though not on how to address the latter.

 

[Oofta]

The claim originally made was that the rules can lead to undesirable player behaviors. Rather more intense examples (e.g. Paladins being jerks) were cited, which led to a counter claim that amounted to, as referenced, rejecting as ridiculous the idea that the presence of an incentive or the absence of penalty could somehow mind control players into always doing some particular undesirable behavior, and thus rejecting the original claim as patently ridiculous.

I gave examples of well-known complaints about 5e player behavior rooted in the system's design, showing that the original claim is not ridiculous at its core. Whether or not this, or any other system's design, causes PVP was (explicitly) not my concern. The core claim—rules design shapes player behavior and can easily lead to players doing things that have detrimental effect on others' experiences, whether that be the other players or the DM, possibly requiring significant DM effort to address—is sound, contra @TheSword 's incredulity on the subject.

And, for the record, I don't see "whack-a-mole" healing as a problem. I do see the 5MWD as a problem. WotC happens to agree with me on these issues, though not on how to address the latter.

My main point was that I disagree that healing word leads to undesirable behavior. A cleric doing something on their turn other than healing. In my experience, people waited until someone was dying to heal them in 3.x as well. People complain about everything at one point or other.

But yes, game behavior is influenced by the rules.

 

[Gammadoodler]

My main point was that I disagree that healing word leads to undesirable behavior. A cleric doing something on their turn other than healing. In my experience, people waited until someone was dying to heal them in 3.x as well. People complain about everything at one point or other.

But yes, game behavior is influenced by the rules.

I don't believe, in this case, that anyone was talking to you. It was a conversation between Neonchameleon and TheSword about the approaches to troublesome rules-legal interactions between players and the game.

Neon's point was that, game rules should be changed to avoid incentivizing these troublesome behaviors. TheSword's position seems to have been that such things should be handled through the social contract.

Examples were exchanged. Disagreement on the validity of the example ensued..

EzekielRaiden joined in with an alternative (and fairly well documented) set of examples of game mechanics tied to troublesome player behaviors, with, I believe, the intent to show how altering the mechanics can be a healthy way to reduce or eliminate troublesome behaviors.

TheSword appears to agree with the validity of the tie between the mechanics and behaviors, though less so to the degree of troublesomeness of the behaviors described.

And you agree that mechanics influence player behaviors.

Think that's a reasonable summary of the exchange.

 

[TheSword]

I don't believe, in this case, that anyone was talking to you. It was a conversation between Neonchameleon and TheSword about the approaches to troublesome rules-legal interactions between players and the game.

Neon's point was that, game rules should be changed to avoid incentivizing these troublesome behaviors. TheSword's position seems to have been that such things should be handled through the social contract.

Examples were exchanged. Disagreement on the validity of the example ensued..

EzekielRaiden joined in with an alternative (and fairly well documented) set of examples of game mechanics tied to troublesome player behaviors, with, I believe, the intent to show how altering the mechanics can be a healthy way to reduce or eliminate troublesome behaviors.

TheSword appears to agree with the validity of the tie between the mechanics and behaviors, though less so to the degree of troublesomeness of the behaviors described.

And you agree that mechanics influence player behaviors.

Think that's a reasonable summary of the exchange.

Can you do that for the other 60 pages?

 

[Hussar]

For Manifest Mind, it can move through creatures, but not objects. Limits their movement more, although it's still pretty strong.

That was my ruling too. But it is intangible. Says so right in the description. So if it’s intangible, why can’t it walk through objects?

And to tie this in to the conversation about rules leading to undesirable player behaviour- I’d say that’s kinda the point. Because of the bajillion interactions between the spells and the rest of the game, there are just so many things that come up.

I guess what I’d prefer is a general tightening of the language in the game to clarify a lot of these things instead of just dumping it into my lap.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Can you do that for the other 60 pages?

Hmm..

DDB makes poor quality graphs

People disagree on what conclusions to draw from DDB data, if any.

People disagree on whether and how severely problematic spellcasting is in 5E.

I miss anything?

 

[Zubatcarteira]

That was my ruling too. But it is intangible. Says so right in the description. So if it’s intangible, why can’t it walk through objects?

And to tie this in to the conversation about rules leading to undesirable player behaviour- I’d say that’s kinda the point. Because of the bajillion interactions between the spells and the rest of the game, there are just so many things that come up.

I guess what I’d prefer is a general tightening of the language in the game to clarify a lot of these things instead of just dumping it into my lap.

You don't really need to rule anything, it says so explicitly:

As a bonus action, you can cause the spectral mind to hover up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space that you or it can see. It can pass through creatures but not objects.

Ironically, it worked pretty well in one of my games, the Wizard used it to save an ally that was knocked out and swallowed by a monster, just moved the mind inside the thing and Dimension Door out.

 

[Hussar]

Sonovabitch. I honestly did not see that line when I read it. And TWO different players “missed” it too.

God I hate casters.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sonovabitch. I honestly did not see that line when I read it. And TWO different players “missed” it too.

God I hate casters.

Are you sure that you just don't hate reading...