D&D 5E Here's The Most Common D&D Party Composition

D&D Beyond's latest data-output looks at the composition of the typical adventuring party. The 'traditional' party always used to be Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard; let's see how that stacks up these days!

These screenshots were compiled by SageAdvice.eu. DDB's developer said "I’m going to be honest: this was really hard to look at from a data perspective right, so what I mean by that is it’s hard to figure out exactly how to chop this data up for it to be the most meaningful that we can make it all right. These are all campaigns where party members and characters within that campaign are taking hit point adjustments, so that’s one of the best senses that we have that something is actually being played”.

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[doctorhook]

I’m curious about parties with duplicate classes too: two rogue, two wizards, that kind of thing.

 

[Blue]

I like that they disclosed their methodology about how they determined if ti was a live game or not. Not that it's a perfect methodology, but it is a completely reasonable one and we can judge for bias for ourselves.

I wish I had access to the raw data. As these really low percentages show, there are so many valid combos that even the most likely are around 1 in 200. I'd love to be able to play with the data to see "these classes are likely to be rather equivelent in roles because they commonly adventure with the same other classes (or their equivelents)", and things like that. For small parties are they more likely to lose a role or go for classes that cover more roles? For large parties what roles get added more? Are they some classes that are predominantly found in larger parties only (so are great once the roles have been covered).

With no pre-judgement about those roles, but rather what we discover from actual play.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think the pecentages are so low and have so little variation that they tell us exactly nothing.

 

[Parmandur]

Seems pretty close to perfectly random, really.

 

[aco175]

I'm curious who gets to play with 8 people in the party.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm curious who gets to play with 8 people in the party.

Matt Mercer & pals, fairly regularly. Possibly over-represented in D&DB, because tools are probably helpful for managing large groups. Possibly more common than it used to be, because large groups do seem common in online streaming games.

 

[Morrus]

I'm curious who gets to play with 8 people in the party.

There have been times when my group has had 8-9 people. It's been a few years though.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm curious who gets to play with 8 people in the party.

I'm curious about who wants to play with 8 people in the party.

 

[Parmandur]

In the stream, Adam notes that the smaller parties tend to be more classic combos (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard types), whereas larger parties tend to have quirkier combos with newer Classes (Sorcerers & Warlocks, etc.).

Indeed, at the larger party sizes, Matt MErcer's Blood Hunter starts showing up in party compositions, indicating that Critical Role might be an inspiration behind larger tables.