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.

 

[Morrus]

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

These statistics are interesting, but I wonder how representative they are to the hobby as a whole. I'm active in three different 5e gaming groups, and only one person uses D&D Beyond. He's the one who plays a human warlock of The Fiend.

The rest of our stats don't match this at all: we're all about elves and half-elves mostly, nobody is playing a fighter or wizard, the one rogue is a Swashbuckler, and the lone sorcerer is wild magic. So I have to take these graphs with a grain of salt.

While nothing is perfectly representative, I would say their 9 million characters might be more representative than your three gaming groups. I expect DDB takes your stars with a grain of salt.

I find it bizarre that in 2019 we still have to say “anecdotes are not data”. Their data isn’t perfect, of course. But it’s not an anecdote.

 

[FrogReaver]

While nothing is perfectly representative, I would say their 9 million characters might be more representative than your three gaming groups. I expect DDB takes your stars with a grain of salt.

I find it bizarre that in 2019 we still have to say “anecdotes are not data”. Their data isn’t perfect, of course. But it’s not an anecdote.

At least we know all the characters in the games he is stalking about are actually being played

 

[abirdcall]

While nothing is perfectly representative, I would say their 9 million characters might be more representative than your three gaming groups. I expect DDB takes your stars with a grain of salt.

I find it bizarre that in 2019 we still have to say “anecdotes are not data”. Their data isn’t perfect, of course. But it’s not an anecdote.

Yeah.

The only people who likely have better data are WotC.

I'd love to hear this sort of stuff from Mearls. Here and there he drops statistics if you pay attention.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

This data is presented as a high-level look at distribution of race, class, and subclass selection for active characters on D&D Beyond. It serves that purpose just fine.

It could certainly "confuse" or "amuse" those who want to read too much into it or think it is trying to achieve a different purpose than it is.

When you have a fairly numerate fan base, expect issues like the fact that the percentage of Life Clerics exceeds the percentage of Clerics to generate a WTF?!? reaction. This happened because comparing the one-way margin of subclasses is a strange thing to do. Not actually having your data, I'd look at the breakdown within class, for instance, of Clerics, which archetypes are chosen? Comparing Life Clerics to Champion Fighters is... odd. I also think that giving the breakdown as "Given what Class is chosen, which Archetype is then chosen?" really helps answer which is the most popular within a particular class. It's less bothered by multiclassing, too.

While you're right that back of the envelope calculations aren't as good as having the real data, they are often quite useful. For example, it turned out that assumptions about binning made threw off the mortality calculations that were part of what won Angus Deaton the Nobel Prize in economics a few years back. Later on, some statisticians, including the (in)famous Andrew Gelman, figured out there were mistakes made that made the story much less dramatic. These started from back of the envelope calculations.

As you said elsewhere I doubt the dominant trends of "humans, half elves, and elves are the most popular, along with fairly straightforward classes" would be undermined by any re-analysis.

Actual decisions could be (and are) made from this data. For instance, when looking at future subclass design, maybe the bar would be set at Life Domain and not at the least selected domain. It's a safe bet to say that draconic sorcerers "do well" in the community and other design should target that, or that perhaps people would want to know more about half-elf culture since they are so often chosen. The data never pretends to dig any deeper than that.

Oh I'm sure there's a lot of useful data in there. As I said, process data is indeed very valuable, though still limited.

 

[cbwjm]

Maybe I should rephrase. I didn't think you could use homebrew classes and subclasses.

You can use homebrew subclasses. Homebrew classes aren't available yet.

 

[Dausuul]

Less than half of gaming groups use feats.

No. Less than half of characters (on DDB) use feats. We have no idea how many gaming groups use them.

In a group which allows feats, not all of the characters will actually have feats; many players will choose the stat bump instead. By definition, in a group which does not allow feats, none of the characters will have feats. So the number of characters who have feats is almost certainly understating the number of groups that allow them.

 

[abirdcall]

No. Less than half of characters (on DDB) use feats. We have no idea how many gaming groups use them.

In a group which allows feats, not all of the characters will actually have feats; many players will choose the stat bump instead. By definition, in a group which does not allow feats, none of the characters will have feats. So the number of characters who have feats is almost certainly understating the number of groups that allow them.

Mearls stated that less than half of gaming groups use feats.

I trust the data he has.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is my point that no one here (except me) knows the actual dataset and many assumptions are being made. Multiclassing and homebrew subclasses are going to throw off any napkin math you all can do.

If we entirely removed multiclass characters, for instance, does this actually still give us the most accurate look at class popularity? Is a class still popular if it is chosen, even if for only a level or two?

We can absolutely remove multiclass characters (and we have before), but I can tell you the distribution doesn't actually change that much.

I'll have to take your word for it. I'm surprised that's the case, probably more so than I should be lol. That's very interesting.

I'm also really curious about whether there is anything you can tell us about how active characters are determined?

 

[Dausuul]

Mearls stated that less than half of gaming groups use feats.

I trust the data he has.

Where did Mike Mearls say this? The only place I have seen this assertion made is in a thread title here on ENWorld, and the data cited was showing that less than half of characters use feats - in other words, the person creating the thread misinterpreted the data.

 

[abirdcall]

Where did Mike Mearls say this?

It's in one of his Happy Fun Hours.

He tends to drop info like that here and there.