Humans, Fighters, and Life Domain Most Popular On D&D Beyond

Yet more stats published by D&D Beyond, the official licensed Dungeons & Dragons electronic tool. Recently they revealed the most commonly viewed adventures, and the most common classes by tier on their platform. This time they're looking at how often people create characters of each race, class and subclass!

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Humans are by far the most common choice, with a total of 22% of the character made on the platform. They're followd up by Half-Elves, Tieflings, and Dragonborn. Deep Gnomes are the least popular listed, with under 1%, although the developer confirms that a lot of other races hover around 0.8%, just below it.

This is followed up by a look at classes. Fighters come first, and druids last. The "traditional" core four - fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard - make up the top four. The developer mentions that warlocks got very popular just after Xanathar's Guide, but it has returned to normal now.

Next it's the turn of the subclasses. The lead of the cleric's Life Domain, sorcerer's Draconic Bloodline and The Fiend (despite being a less popular class) are fairly strong. They note that the Hexblade was the most popular last time they looked, but it's down to 2.8% now.

Of course, these are characters created on the platform, not necessarily played. Lots of people create multiple character builds for fun. According to the developer, that's 8.8 million characters in total.

 

[bedir than]

The variant human is almost equal to the standard human is telling to me.

It's a bit of an indication about how many people are spending money on Beyond. There's only 1 feat available for free.

 

[BadEye]

It's a bit of an indication about how many people are spending money on Beyond. There's only 1 feat available for free.

Not so. Out of users that have unlocked the entire PHB, we still see the non-variant human selected more or less as frequently as variant.

I posit this could mean a smaller percentage of the playerbase is concerned with mechanical "optimization" than those of us that comment on internet threads are.

 

[GlassJaw]

People are stupid.

 

[Morrus]

People are stupid.

Is there a reason you said that?

 

[guachi]

The subclass numbers are useless.

8.4% of active characters are clerics and 10.2% of active characters are life clerics. Do you see the problem here?

The subclass data should only include PCs of level 3 or higher in at least one class so all PCs have at least one subclass.

It's possible there is multiclassing going on here, but the data is useless without knowing that.

 

[Morrus]

The subclass numbers are useless.

8.4% of active characters are clerics and 10.2% of active characters are life clerics. Do you see the problem here?

No, 10.2% of subclasses are life clerics.

They're are useful as much use you can make of them. Which I assume is zero. But they can be interesting for discussion's sake.

the data is useless without knowing that.

What use do you have for the data?

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

No, 10.2% of subclasses are life clerics.

They're are useful as much use you can make of them. Which I assume is zero. But they can be interesting for discussion's sake.

I think what "useless" meant was "miscalculated." As in "how is it that the subclass percentage exceeds that of the base class given that all life clerics are, necessarily, clerics?" That's really, really... weird.

Part of it might be due to the fact that archetype is only chosen at particular levels that vary for the class in question. Clerics choose that at 1st level while many others don't choose until 3rd level. Also the class breakdowns are pretty much guaranteed to have multiple counting due to multiclass characters.

So, yeah, these data are misleading as presented, or at least confusing.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

at least those data justify the fact that wotc decided to publish just one splatbook up to now. and it is incidentally in agreement with the minuscule data I can gather from my dmsguild experience, where my PCs' options products sell less than my supplements aimed at DMs.

Not sure I agree there. At least when it comes to third party content, PC options are things that generally require DM permission, which necessarily limits the sales, whereas DMs often buy things they may or may not use. Xanathar's sold quite well. It was featured in the window at the Amazon store on 34th Street by my office in Midtown Manhattan for quite a while!

 

[FrogReaver]

The charts make no sense - Only 8.4% of all characters are clerics but 10.2% of all characters are life domain clerics? Say what??? (It's not possible to have more life domain clerics than you have clerics).

 

[ad_hoc]

It's a bit of an indication about how many people are spending money on Beyond. There's only 1 feat available for free.

Less than half of gaming groups use feats.