D&D (2024) Do you see Fighter players at your own table?

[Asisreo]

You mentioned the Fellowship

Gandalf (cleric or wizard or bard)
Frodo (rogue)
Samwise (rogue)
Aragorn (ranger)
Legolas (fighter)
Gimli (fighter)
Pippin (rogue)
Merry (rogue)
Boromir (fighter)

And ASOIAF

Every single adult male main character except 2 are fighters.

But we're choosing the list of characters based on popularity in all fantasy, not just LoTR, and the number of characters in the fellowship doesn't directly correlate to the likelihood of them being more popular.

So, while LoTR might have a higher percentage of fighters, Harry Potter is almost exclusively casters and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if someone exhausted all their favorite characters from there before even moving onto LoTR.

Not to mention, I've found it pretty rare that a player is trying to emulate a specific character. Most of the time, they want to be a character of their own. The only two times a player wanted to "be like [insert character]" is when one wanted to be like leonidas from 300 and another wanted to be like gandalf.

 

[Minigiant]

But we're choosing the list of characters based on popularity in all fantasy, not just LoTR, and the number of characters in the fellowship doesn't directly correlate to the likelihood of them being more popular.

So, while LoTR might have a higher percentage of fighters, Harry Potter is almost exclusively casters and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if someone exhausted all their favorite characters from there before even moving onto LoTR.

Not to mention, I've found it pretty rare that a player is trying to emulate a specific character. Most of the time, they want to be a character of their own. The only two times a player wanted to "be like [insert character]" is when one wanted to be like leonidas from 300 and another wanted to be like gandalf.

There are more fantasy settings with martial class lean than caster ones.

If the setting isn't about amagical soicety or magic school, the spell casters are outnumbered. And if the media is visual form and action packed it also leans hard to warriors.
And again most popular characters in fantasy and myth are warriors.
In religion and myth,it's like 90%. For David and Samson to Achilles and Hercules to Monkey King and Pig to all the Aesir... it's Foighting 'Round the World (russell crowe)
History is all warriors because we don't have magic until they lift the Masquerade.
And action movies are 90% warriors.

So most of the design inspiration for the rules and characters in D&D are warriors.
And all of these things are one single class: the Fighter.

 

[tetrasodium]

These are incredibly broad-stroke assumptions and they even have numbers attached. Is there any official way to get that information?

Because I just asked my sister to name the first fantasy character off the top of her head and she said Gandalf. I asked her for the next one and she said Frodo (which I assume isn't classed as a "warrior"). I asked her for something that wasn't from LoTR and she said Danaerys.

I don't have the numbers but I'm not entirely sure that any of these assumptions are necessarily correct.

Edit: FYI, her next answer was Geralt. It wasn't until the fifth question did she say Link.

On a whim I asked some friends over breakfast this morning while trying out a new place that recently opened. "Like Saphira & Eragon?". After asking for humanoid types rather than dragons, next were Harry Dresden, Kate Daniels, and Jade the cupcake wizard, "Olenna Tyrell and the dwarf umm... peter dinklege", Finally rudeus greyrat, Edward Elric , & Cecil with gerralt of rivia along with "the bald guy from hitman" & "did the guy in assassin's creed have a name?"

 

[Yaarel]

All well and good. However there’s been a move away from XP levelling to milestone. Which changes things around dramatically. When doing SKT (for example), I swear we wandered all over the place and probably spent way more time in between milestones than if we had been following the plot more efficiently.

Instead of counting xp or milestones to reach the next level, count the number of encounters.

For example, while level 6, I know that it will take about 15 encounters to reach level 7.

As DM, I can tweak the number of encounters at each level according to taste as well as convenience to level up between gaming sessions.

Counting encounters is simpler, more accurate, makes it easier to count noncombat encounters, and can happen on the fly for when players go off the railroad tracks.

If an encounter requires effort to overcome, it is an "encounter". It doesnt matter if it is a combat encounter, a social encounter, or whatever. If the encounter is trivially easy it counts as half an encounter, and if a difficult one it counts as one and half encounters. (If the encounter is near-tpk, it counts as two encounters, but I encourage my players to run away from encounters that look unwinnable.)

Counting encounters is more accurate. The difficulty of the encounter is decided AFTER the encounter is over. It is all hindsight. If I build an encounter that turns out to be unexpectedly easy to overcome, then it is only worth half an encounter. (Albeit if the encounter was made easy because one of the players thought of some brilliant solution then the creativity makes it worth the full challenge, maybe more.) Sometimes, an encounter that I assumed would be easy turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Such an encounter is worth the one-and-half of a difficult encounter.

Likewise, a social challenge might turn out to be easy, normal, or difficult.

The best part of counting encounters is how easy it is on the fly. As DM, I like to intentionally mix in easy encounters and difficult encounters for the sake verisimilitude. I also add about one out of four or five impossibly-difficult encounters that the players should run away from. So basically, as DM, I just throw encounters at the players. What could be easier?! Then I track if they turned out to be standard, easy or hard.

Also nice. Players can do whatever they want. Sometimes they get into a personal project, and I need to conjure encounters out of thin air as they pursue that project. No problem. I track how many encounters happen, and whether they turned out to be easy or hard.

Counting the encounters makes life so easy for the DM, so friendly to the players, so accurate as a leveling measure, and so easy to use in any adventure scenario including roleplaying social challenges. Encounter counting should be the default official method for character advancement.

Count the number of encounters that it takes to reach the next level.

 

[Yaarel]

The poll results are showing that the average group has more than one non-magical fighter. That's quite popular. Focusing on the 30% minority is really not the take away from these kind of poll results. When you have 50% answering 2 or more, and 20% answering 1, then the focus of this is not the vast minority but the overwhelming majority.

The survey isnt about which segment of fans "wins". It is about how the 5e game can make as many players as possible as happy as possible.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This is a pretty narrow definition of ‘fighter’, so much so that although I voted ‘only 1’ I feel that the word ‘only’ is a bit incongruous. It’s a bit like saying I had ‘only 1’ orc wizard, or ‘only 1’ plasmoid bard of whispers!

Yeah but if you define something narrowly enough, and poll a sufficiently specific audience, eventually you will get “data” that supports your position.

 

[Reef]

Instead of counting xp or milestones to reach the next level, count the number of encounters.

For example, while level 6, I know that it will take about 15 encounters to reach level 7.

As DM, I can tweak the number of encounters at each level according to taste as well as convenience to level up between gaming sessions.

Counting encounters is simpler, more accurate, makes it easier to count noncombat encounters, and can happen on the fly for when players go off the railroad tracks.

If an encounter requires effort to overcome, it is an "encounter". It doesnt matter if it is a combat encounter, a social encounter, or whatever. If the encounter is trivially easy it counts as half an encounter, and if a difficult one it counts as one and half encounters. (If the encounter is near-tpk, it counts as two encounters, but I encourage my players to run away from encounters that look unwinnable.)

Counting encounters is more accurate. The difficulty of the encounter is decided AFTER the encounter is over. It is all hindsight. If I build an encounter that turns out to be unexpectedly easy to overcome, then it is only worth half an encounter. (Albeit if the encounter was made easy because one of the players thought of some brilliant solution then the creativity makes it worth the full challenge, maybe more.) Sometimes, an encounter that I assumed would be easy turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Such an encounter is worth the one-and-half of a difficult encounter.

Likewise, a social challenge might turn out to be easy, normal, or difficult.

The best part of counting encounters is how easy it is on the fly. As DM, I like to intentionally mix in easy encounters and difficult encounters for the sake verisimilitude. I also add about one out of four or five impossibly-difficult encounters that the players should run away from. So basically, as DM, I just throw encounters at the players. What could be easier?! Then I track if they turned out to be standard, easy or hard.

Also nice. Players can do whatever they want. Sometimes they get into a personal project, and I need to conjure encounters out of thin air as they pursue that project. No problem. I track how many encounters happen, and whether they turned out to be easy or hard.

Counting the encounters makes life so easy for the DM, so friendly to the players, so accurate as a leveling measure, and so easy to use in any adventure scenario including roleplaying social challenges. Encounter counting should be the default official method for character advancement.

Count the number of encounters that it takes to reach the next level.

That of course works, but it goes contrary to official adventure Milestone guidelines. They quite clearly state that the party gets to level up once they achieve a certain objective, or reach a specific moment in the story. The DM can of course add in as many encounters they want, and throw out the milestone guidelines. But then you end up with characters outleveling the adventure. Obviously if the DM is running complete homebrew adventures, it's not an issue.

Anyway, whether you prefer encounters, or milestones, or something in between, my point was that you can't hold every table to your precise definition of correct leveling speed. And this is way off topic for how many fighters show up in a year. I didn't mean to derail...just pointing that out by official recommendations not everyone counts encounters as the level up mechanism (and therefore longer campaigns are certainly possible).

 

[Yaarel]

That of course works, but it goes contrary to official adventure Milestone guidelines. They quite clearly state that the party gets to level up once they achieve a certain objective, or reach a specific moment in the story. The DM can of course add in as many encounters they want, and throw out the milestone guidelines. But then you end up with characters outleveling the adventure. Obviously if the DM is running complete homebrew adventures, it's not an issue.

Anyway, whether you prefer encounters, or milestones, or something in between, my point was that you can't hold every table to your precise definition of correct leveling speed. And this is way off topic for how many fighters show up in a year. I didn't mean to derail...just pointing that out by official recommendations not everyone counts encounters as the level up mechanism (and therefore longer campaigns are certainly possible).

I understand your main point about groups advancing at different rates in reallife.

My main point is, gaming groups can get a level 8 character within a half year, if going by the book. The survey allows for three half-years. For the most part, gaming groups will have seen level 8 characters during 2022 and 2023. Thus the survey reflects how people are playing D&D today.

 

[Reef]

I understand your main point about groups advancing at different rates in reallife.

My main point is, gaming groups can get a level 8 character within a half year, if going by the book. The survey allows for three half-years. For the most part, gaming groups will have seen level 8 characters during 2022 and 2023. Thus the survey reflects how people are playing D&D today.

It reflects how you are playing the game. I still maintain that if a group is using the official milestone rules in one of the published adventures, it's no guarantee. We might have been able to do it in SKT if we bee-lined for what turned out to be a milestone. But we ended up splitting our time on multiple branches. Milestone might match the speed of leveling with encounters if a group does it optimally. But who wants to do things optimally?

Our DM held strictly to the recommended milestones. Which means it took us about 18 months to hit level 11.

 

[Yaarel]

It reflects how you are playing the game. I still maintain that if a group is using the official milestone rules in one of the published adventures, it's no guarantee. We might have been able to do it in SKT if we bee-lined for what turned out to be a milestone. But we ended up splitting our time on multiple branches. Milestone might match the speed of leveling with encounters if a group does it optimally. But who wants to do things optimally?

Our DM held strictly to the recommended milestones. Which means it took us about 18 months to hit level 11.

Certainly there are exceptions to any statistic. My point is, most of the groups that are actively playing a long term campaign will have seen level 8 characters or higher, during 2022 and 2023.