D&D 5E D&D's Top 10 Fighter Subclasses Revealed!

In another of D&D Beyond's frequent data shares, here is a look at the most popular fighter subclasses currently in use. The Champion leads the pack, followed by Battlemaster, Eldritch Knight, Gunslinger, and Samurai.

 

[Coroc]

Whew so the stereotype of those player who "just want to play a plain fighter" (I got one at my table) is actually true. What I find amazing is that so many want to play a gunslinger or a samurai.

 

[a2ndchapter]

Seeing the top 3 be the ones that are in the PHB is hardly surprising. The Champion being most popular is possibly in part down to it being the only one in the Basic Rules.

 

[ccooke]

(Sorry, but) The thing that stands out to me most strongly is that... this is a Zipf distribution. I mean, I shouldn't be surprised since Zipf is everywhere, but still.

(For anyone who doesn't know, a simple explanation of Zipf's Law is that it's an observation that a huge number of real-world distributions of things follow a pattern where the second most common thing is about twice as common as the first, the third about a third as common, the fourth about a fourth and so on. It's in everything - rank the most used letters or words in most languages? Zipf. Rank the sizes of cities within a country? Zipf. It's fascinating. Zipf's law - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )

 

[Minigiant]

It does seem to be a ranking heavily influenced by date of release and how long the archetype is free on DNDBeyond.
That could explain the Gunslinger beating all the XGTE subclasses.

But the EK, Gunslinger,Samurai, AA block may suggest there is a huge block of people who want to play nontradional fighters.

 

[akr71]

Seeing the top 3 be the ones that are in the PHB is hardly surprising. The Champion being most popular is possibly in part down to it being the only one in the Basic Rules.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Whew so the stereotype of those player who "just want to play a plain fighter" (I got one at my table) is actually true. What I find amazing is that so many want to play a gunslinger or a samurai.

A lot of people playing Samurai are likely not playing actual "Japanese-style warrior" wearing O-Yoroi, carrying a katana and so on, but rather want to play a cultured Fighter who is still mechanically effective. Samurai works well for all sorts of cultured Fighters, despite the very specific name.

Gunslinger is interesting, because I wouldn't even let that into my game, yet clearly a lot of people would.

But the EK, Gunslinger,Samurai, AA block may suggest there is a huge block of people who want to play nontradional fighters.

You say the EK and AA are "non-traditional", but I think they're actually extremely traditional, and just the result of 5E having a multiclassing system that isn't very compatible with a lot of traditional D&D ideas, like the Fighter/Mage. Since D&D was fairly young, loads of people have wanted to play "gishes" and so on - characters who combine arcane magic and fighting. Some pre-AD&D versions had all Elves be that way, as a class, 1E and 2E had multi-classing (which worked really surprisingly well, looking back I'm shocked at how few balance problems it caused), 3E's MC system meant that it ended up having to develop specific classes and PrCs to allow this (because just stacking levels of Fighter and Wizard was pretty rubbish, mechanically). 4E had multiple specific classes which allowed it, including the totally wonderful Swordmage, perhaps the best incarnation of the "Fighter/Mage" in many ways. 5E saw the problem coming, and presumably after deciding to use a 3E-style MC system (booo! pretty sure there was a better one in one of the playtests), put in EK and AA to cover that issue.

So I think yes, they don't want to play a single-class Fighter, I dunno about your group, but in my many 2E groups, I'd say single-class Fighters were significantly outnumbered by MC Fighters (not that single-class ones were bad - they were good, particularly after Combat & Tactics), so I feel like that's pretty traditional.

The most interesting thing I see, personally, is that the Rune Knight, a UA class which is still playtest content, is about as popular as the Cavalier (a subclass that's been out much longer and is official) and way more popular than the Purple Dragon Knight, which has been out far, far longer and is official.

I wonder what proportion Brute was before they removed it. Higher than PDK I daresay.

 

[Olrox17]

Two ways to look at these numbers:
1- the “simple” fighter is by far the single most popular subclass
2- 62% of fighter players wants to do more than just hit things with their sword over and over

 

[Minigiant]

You say the EK and AA are "non-traditional", but I think they're actually extremely traditional, and just the result of 5E having a multiclassing system that isn't very compatible with a lot of traditional D&D ideas, like the Fighter/Mage. Since D&D was fairly young, loads of people have wanted to play "gishes" and so on - characters who combine arcane magic and fighting. Some pre-AD&D versions had all Elves be that way, as a class, 1E and 2E had multi-classing (which worked really surprisingly well, looking back I'm shocked at how few balance problems it caused), 3E's MC system meant that it ended up having to develop specific classes and PrCs to allow this (because just stacking levels of Fighter and Wizard was pretty rubbish, mechanically). 4E had multiple specific classes which allowed it, including the totally wonderful Swordmage, perhaps the best incarnation of the "Fighter/Mage" in many ways. 5E saw the problem coming, and presumably after deciding to use a 3E-style MC system (booo! pretty sure there was a better one in one of the playtests), put in EK and AA to cover that issue.

You're probably right. "Traditional" is likely the wrong word. The "EK, AA, Gunslinger &,Samurai" have been passed down.

Maybe "quintessential" or "stereotypical" might be better.

The most interesting thing I see, personally, is that the Rune Knight, a UA class which is still playtest content, is about as popular as the Cavalier (a subclass that's been out much longer and is official) and way more popular than the Purple Dragon Knight, which has been out far, far longer and is official.

The rune knight has been up for free on DNDB whereas the other 2 are in physical and digital books which cost money legally.

The low rank of the two and the high rank of the champion and samurai shows that there is little leeway for error in "simple fighters". Sounds like when people want simple fighters they want specific things. Tweeked or specialized simple fighters are unwanted. The Samurai gives your simple fighter Persuassion without specialization.

I could see PDK and Cav kicked out the top 10 after 2 more books with fighter subclasses.

 

[Fenris-77]

Apparently 6% of players don't know that the Arcane Archer is a bag of Tarrasque droppings. I suspect they are playing it for concept and feel reasons, and not optimization. Sometimes it's hard to remember that not everyone white room's the ever-living crap out of the game.

 

[Mournblade94]

Where is Gunslinger even located? I'll be honest I didn't know that existed anywhere but Pathfinder. I can't find it in any of my books, But I don't have Eberron. It doesn't appear to be in there either from what i can tell about the Eberron book. Was it just created for D&D Beyond? I have full access to it but I can't figure out what source it is from.

 

[Fenris-77]

Where is Gunslinger even located? I'll be honest I didn't know that existed anywhere but Pathfinder. I can't find it in any of my books, But I don't have Eberron. It doesn't appear to be in there either from what i can tell about the Eberron book. Was it just created for D&D Beyond? I have full access to it but I can't figure out what source it is from.

It's on DDB, so that may be the reason.

Edit - that's the Mercer version.

 

[Weiley31]

Glad to see the Rune Knight is decently up there.
For me it's the Battlemaster, Rune Knight, Gunslinger, and Echo Knight that are my fave Fighter Subclasses.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Where is Gunslinger even located? I'll be honest I didn't know that existed anywhere but Pathfinder. I can't find it in any of my books, But I don't have Eberron. It doesn't appear to be in there either from what i can tell about the Eberron book. Was it just created for D&D Beyond? I have full access to it but I can't figure out what source it is from.

It's one of two slightly-annoying things that basically "came with" D&D Beyond (I don't think there are any others), which are both from Critical Role - The Blood Hunter class (which is a slightly sub-par Witcher rip-off, thanks Vin Diesel!), and the Gunslinger.

Luckily they're extremely easy to turn off - just get players to switch "Critical Role content" off.

The Blood Hunter always gets my goat a bit because it's a third-party class, and not a particularly well-designed or well-balanced one (middle of the pack, it's not a disaster either), but it's the only third-party class on Beyond, and there's no way to add one yourself (only subclasses).

That said Beyond just did a big, and fairly fundamental update to how characters work on the back end, to allow for stuff modifying the main classes in a more fundamental way (including allowing the Class Feature Variants UA to work, but that wasn't actually what started them on it), so maybe there's hope in the future.

 

[Undrave]

It's telling how sub-par the Purple Dragon Knight is when a class that JUST CAME OUT is already on the verge of overcoming it and probably does past the first decimal.

The whole SCAG feels outdated.

Apparently 6% of players don't know that the Arcane Archer is a bag of Tarrasque droppings. I suspect they are playing it for concept and feel reasons, and not optimization. Sometimes it's hard to remember that not everyone white room's the ever-living crap out of the game.

Concept shconcept... if I want to play a magical archer I'd be pretty disappointed with mister "three fun shot and then I need a nap". Even as a concept it's disappointing so I don't know what the heck people are seeing in that class.

5e gishes are, on the whole, pretty underwhelming. They're not real merging of Arcane and Martial the way a 4e Swordmage was, they're most of the 'stab with one hand, magic missile with the other' variety. They're like dual wielding a gun and a sword. The Paladin and someone with the SCAG cantrip can feel much closer but the heavy armour flavour feel off.

Considering all the fun stuff you can do AT-WILL with an Eldritch Blast I don't know why the Arcane Archer is limited the way it is.

Maybe I should just homebrew a replacement?

 

[Fenris-77]

I really like the idea of an arcane archer. Just not the reality. I think you'd need to homebrew to get something that matches the concept that I (and I suspect you) are thinking about. I'd probably base it on Eldritch Knight and add something like the Paladin's smite to allow the archer to burn spell slots to gussy up his ranged attacks.

 

[Jester David]

But, clearly, we still need to fix the champion...

 

[Undrave]

I really like the idea of an arcane archer. Just not the reality. I think you'd need to homebrew to get something that matches the concept that I (and I suspect you) are thinking about. I'd probably base it on Eldritch Knight and add something like the Paladin's smite to allow the archer to burn spell slots to gussy up his ranged attacks.

I'd give them some solid at-will options with fun, but minor, effect and then a handful of limited use effects, mostly stealing arrow spells from the Ranger.

There's no reason a level 3 Arcane Archer can't just make all their arrows inflict fire damage. Not even adding any damage to them, just BOOM! Now its a magical attack instead of a plain one. Nothing fancy, just some elemental damage. Fire Arrow, Lightning Arrow, Frost Arrow, Light Arrow... they're not game breaking but they would sound COOL and be evocative.

 

[Fenris-77]

I'd give them some solid at-will options with fun, but minor, effect and then a handful of limited use effects, mostly stealing arrow spells from the Ranger.

There's no reason a level 3 Arcane Archer can't just make all their arrows inflict fire damage. Not even adding any damage to them, just BOOM! Now its a magical attack instead of a plain one. Nothing fancy, just some elemental damage. Fire Arrow, Lightning Arrow, Frost Arrow, Light Arrow... they're not game breaking but they would sound COOL and be evocative.

Yeah, I agree. Anytime you can put COOL and not game breaking together in the same sentence you're probably on to something.

 

[Undrave]

Yeah, I agree. Anytime you can put COOL and not game breaking together in the same sentence you're probably on to something.

When I hear 'Arcane Archer' I'm thinking I'd look like Hank from the old DnD cartoon, or Link and his elemental arrow. I'm not thinking of managing stuff like spell slots or Arcane Shots. At least not normally. A few special attacks? Sure! But I'm not a fan of subclasses where the character concept gets turned off most of the time. If I want to be an Arcane Archer, I want to ALWAYS be an Arcane Archer, not just twice in one fight when I can attack twice in one round.