D&D General Data from a million DnDBeyond character sheets?

[Hussar]

I mean I agree Barbarians are a smidge more complex than fighters. More on/off toggles to remember. But they aren't really complicated either.

I'm not phrasing it well.

It's not that barbarians are particularly more complex than fighters. But they are a lot more fiddly. Like I say, constantly having to divide your damage, and remembering which damage types apply, plus remembering that you damage changes if you are raging or not, plus remembering to reckless attack and then remembering if you have reckless attacked, and that sort of thing.

There's a lot of fiddly bits in playing a barbarian that don't exist in a fighter - certainly not a champion fighter anyway. I know watching the current player in my game play a barbarian and constantly having to remember all the bits - plus his subclass allows him to do extra fire damage on a hit (I forget the name of the subclass - Path of hte Giant? something like that - which changes his size when he rages), which is just incredibly fiddly.

 

[TwoSix]

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If anyone wants to look at a specific feat let me know.

I'm honestly surprised GWM isn't much higher on High level Fighters and Barbarians.

That sawtooth progression for GWM at high levels is really weird. Some sort of artifact from multiclassing patterns, possibly? I imagine a lot of the "starting class barbarians" only stayed in for 2 or 5 levels, and then went to something else.

Takes all types, of course, but I would think the %age of single-class teen level barbarians with GWM is higher than 25%.

 

[TwoSix]

That's making the assumption that people choose fighter because of it's simplicity. We have no idea how often that is the case. I know that for me, when I play fighters it's because I think I will enjoy playing them, I have no problem with playing any class.

It's not really that "a lot of fighter players want simplicity", it's more "players who have simplicity in play as a primary concern are more likely to choose/be directed towards fighters."

We can't PROVE that from the data, I know, as "are you concerned about simplicity" isn't a measured metric. But don't pretty much all of us experienced D&D players intuit that to be correct?

I mean, if you have an absolute novice at the table, aren't you going to at least give some indication that classes like fighter or rogue might be easier to start with, as opposed to a druid or a wizard? You're not going to stop them from playing a wizard if they like, but you might at least subtly dissuade them by explaining all the extra choices and rules they'll have to learn?

 

[FrogReaver]

That sawtooth progression for GWM at high levels is really weird. Some sort of artifact from multiclassing patterns, possibly? I imagine a lot of the "starting class barbarians" only stayed in for 2 or 5 levels, and then went to something else.

Takes all types, of course, but I would think the %age of single-class teen level barbarians with GWM is higher than 25%.

Possibly multiclassing but the proportion of multiclasses with starting class barbarian compared to the number of starting class barbarians was fairly small if I remember correctly.

I think more likely it’s that there’s a much smaller pool of higher level characters so random variance is at play. Like one level near max just had 38 starting class barbarians. And the ones near it were mostly under 100 as well. Also of note: 20th level has a lot more starting class barbarians nearly 1000.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm not phrasing it well.

It's not that barbarians are particularly more complex than fighters. But they are a lot more fiddly. Like I say, constantly having to divide your damage, and remembering which damage types apply, plus remembering that you damage changes if you are raging or not, plus remembering to reckless attack and then remembering if you have reckless attacked, and that sort of thing.

That totally makes sense (and I agree I've seen it in play). But it's probably not so apparent at character creation for a novice to cause a noticeable swing in character choice for those who have simplicity as a priority.

My assumption is that the popularity of fighter over barbarian is driven purely by the fact that barbarian appeals to a fairly limited trope space for character concepts over the broad canvas of the much more vanilla fighter. If barbarian and fighter were remixed and presented as a pair of "strong fighter" and "fast fighter", for example, you'd probably see more equal selection.

 

[Oofta]

It's not really that "a lot of fighter players want simplicity", it's more "players who have simplicity in play as a primary concern are more likely to choose/be directed towards fighters."

We can't PROVE that from the data, I know, as "are you concerned about simplicity" isn't a measured metric. But don't pretty much all of us experienced D&D players intuit that to be correct?

I mean, if you have an absolute novice at the table, aren't you going to at least give some indication that classes like fighter or rogue might be easier to start with, as opposed to a druid or a wizard? You're not going to stop them from playing a wizard if they like, but you might at least subtly dissuade them by explaining all the extra choices and rules they'll have to learn?

From what I've seen Warlock is the simplest class to play. Your turn in combat? Eldritch Blast. Can't open a door? Eldritch Blast. Starting negotiations with that orc war chief? Eldritch Blast.

 

[Oofta]

It's not really that "a lot of fighter players want simplicity", it's more "players who have simplicity in play as a primary concern are more likely to choose/be directed towards fighters."

We can't PROVE that from the data, I know, as "are you concerned about simplicity" isn't a measured metric. But don't pretty much all of us experienced D&D players intuit that to be correct?

I mean, if you have an absolute novice at the table, aren't you going to at least give some indication that classes like fighter or rogue might be easier to start with, as opposed to a druid or a wizard? You're not going to stop them from playing a wizard if they like, but you might at least subtly dissuade them by explaining all the extra choices and rules they'll have to learn?

I'm just saying that it's not "just" simplicity. It's also relatability, emulating common tropes and themes and so on. Simplicity is part of it but even though I was joking about the warlock being simplest, when you tack on extra stuff fighter can be just as complex. You have multiple attacks, feats that change your attack bonus for extra damage, action surges, subclass features.

Meanwhile? A wizard has more options to choose from but once those options are chosen it's still a relatively limited choice of options for many people. I'm in a game now where I doubt I will ever be able to add more to my spellbook than the two spells I get when I level. In theory I have access to dozens of spells, in reality I have a handful that I know and actually prepare. The list of what I prepare is pretty static because I almost never know what we're going to hit next. In many ways, it's no more complex than my previous character that was a Rune Knight fighter.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's not really that "a lot of fighter players want simplicity", it's more "players who have simplicity in play as a primary concern are more likely to choose/be directed towards fighters."

We can't PROVE that from the data, I know, as "are you concerned about simplicity" isn't a measured metric. But don't pretty much all of us experienced D&D players intuit that to be correct?

I mean, if you have an absolute novice at the table, aren't you going to at least give some indication that classes like fighter or rogue might be easier to start with, as opposed to a druid or a wizard? You're not going to stop them from playing a wizard if they like, but you might at least subtly dissuade them by explaining all the extra choices and rules they'll have to learn?

I’ll add this as well. I worked on a support team for our operations. When we were sharing historical data and predictions it was always important that our operations team felt like what we were saying aligned to their current environment. If it didn’t it was a huge red flag that we probably missed something important and so lots of work checking, validating and looking for that proverbial needle in a haystack to explain the difference in our data/predictions and what they felt like on the ground level.

Point being if we have a bunch of new data and analysis it’s really helpful if it aligns with how we feel on the ground level - or at least there’s some reasonable explanations for why it differs from our initial expectations.

I feel like the initial analysis that d&d beyond did left a lot of us questioning the data and/or their analysis because the results didn’t align with our ground level feels - a huge red flag. After digging into this data I think it was mostly due to the skewed number of lower level characters compared to higher level ones - which was speculated as a potential reason at the time.

 

[TwoSix]

Simplicity is part of it but even though I was joking about the warlock being simplest, when you tack on extra stuff fighter can be just as complex.

I think "can be" is probably where we might be able to draw a distinction. Absolutely, a fighter can be complex if you engage with the right subclasses, feats, magic items, etc. (Although action surge is about as dirt-simple as a class feature can get.) But a spellcaster built using the extant rules CAN'T be built simply, because you have to analyze the (complex) spell list (and have a basic understanding of the magic rules) to make decisions impacting your character.

Sure, a player could pick randomly, but I think a lot of people would agree that making an uninformed/random decision feels worse than not having to make a decision at all.

I mean, I'm just reiterating what I said back on the first page. Warrior types are, on average, simpler than mage types because mage types have to understand the basic of the relatively complex spell system. It would be good for D&D as a whole if there was a mage-type class that didn't use the spell system at all (outside magic items/feats/etc, which are opt-in complexity), , to satisfy those who like mage-type tropes but prefer simplicity. And it would be good if there was a more complex martial type class that DID have to pick from a list of dozens of options to satisfy those who like warrior-type tropes and like complexity.

Does anyone actually have a serious disagreement with that idea?

 

[ichabod]

I’ll add this as well. I worked on a support team for our operations. When we were sharing historical data and predictions it was always important that our operations team felt like what we were saying aligned to their current environment. If it didn’t it was a huge red flag that we probably missed something important and so lots of work checking, validating and looking for that proverbial needle in a haystack to explain the difference in our data/predictions and what they felt like on the ground level.

Point being if we have a bunch of new data and analysis it’s really helpful if it aligns with how we feel on the ground level - or at least there’s some reasonable explanations for why it differs from our initial expectations.

I feel like the initial analysis that d&d beyond did left a lot of us questioning the data and/or their analysis because the results didn’t align with our ground level feels - a huge red flag. After digging into this data I think it was mostly due to the skewed number of lower level characters compared to higher level ones - which was speculated as a potential reason at the time.

I'm have to agree and disagree. When you have two teams which are basically working on the same domain, it can be a huge red flag when things don't align. But that's not the situation with the D&D Beyond data. Our feeling on the ground, what's going on in our games, is a very small piece of the gaming world. We shouldn't expect our gaming experience to necessarily line up with the broader gaming experience, and if it doesn't line up then it's not a huge red flag.

This doesn't mean that there aren't too many low level characters skewing the data. Half the characters in the data are first level. Even if all of those characters are legitimate, they are not speaking to games where characters are playing through several levels.