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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ashrym" data-source="post: 7861816" data-attributes="member: 6750235">Heck, look at how much money Aquaman made.  Oh, wait, they replaced the mocked character with Aquamoa and then it made a lot of money.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Without the data to back that up it's just conjecture. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/64tysx/5e_what_is_your_favorite_class_results/" target="_blank">This</a> is a reddit survey result for 5e from 2 years ago with over 8000 responses.  8000 is a decent sample size.  It also included UA versions of the artificer and mystic from the time.  Here is the ranking of official classes from that poll.  Then.<table style='width: 100%'><tr><th>Rank</th><th>Class(%)</th></tr><tr><td>#1</td><td>Bard (12.25)%</td></tr><tr><td>#2</td><td>Warlock (12.12%)</td></tr><tr><td>#3</td><td>Wizard (11.95%)</td></tr><tr><td>#4</td><td>Rogue (9.11%)</td></tr><tr><td>#5</td><td>Paladin (8.8%)</td></tr><tr><td>#6</td><td>Monk (7.84%)</td></tr><tr><td>#7</td><td>Fighter (7.36%)</td></tr><tr><td>#8</td><td>Cleric (7.14%)</td></tr><tr><td>#9</td><td>Sorcerer (6.13%)</td></tr><tr><td>#10</td><td>Druid (5.23%)</td></tr><tr><td>#11</td><td>Barbarian (4.14%)</td></tr><tr><td>#12</td><td>Ranger (4.09%)</td></tr></table>Now (I just went back to the original poll results to see where it ended).[ATTACH=full]116115[/ATTACH]That is strictly a popularity vote.  Bards are popular.  That's still largely forum users, however.  In 2016, Mearls gave <a href="https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/dd-survey-results-summary" target="_blank">this</a> information.  It stated that the traditional classes were largely the most used, with paladins and warlocks trailing in 5th and 6th place while druids were in last.  Last place was still close to the 5th most popular race.  What we don't know is the number of surveys back.The WotC survey also indicated that the mystic class was hitting satisfaction but needed some mechanical work.<a href="https://strawpoll.com/cb3pcgzx" target="_blank">Here</a> is another poll with a few thousand votes to sample.  It's "what is your main character?"[ATTACH=full]116116[/ATTACH]<a href="https://strawpoll.de/964g7wy" target="_blank">Here</a> is another poll.  This one is also from a couple years ago and includes artificer.  Nearly 10,000 votes.[ATTACH=full]116117[/ATTACH]People have been making polls for some time.  Bards don't struggle on them.  What I struggle with is finding a good poll to demonstrate the popularity of psionicists or warlords.  I see people claim they are popular but looking [USER=15700]@Sacrosanct[/USER]'s poll <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/poll-which-classes-should-be-core.660462/" target="_blank">here</a> they don't look like they would make the cut as a core class according to Enworld.[ATTACH=full]116118[/ATTACH]That poll restricts to 6 classes for a core game so would not necessarily be strictly popularity.  Here is the poll from the <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-seven-classes-would-you-keep-and-why.668059/" target="_blank">7 classes to keep</a> thread.  [ATTACH=full]116121[/ATTACH]Warlords, psionicists/mystics, and artificers look like they wouldn't make the cut.  They would fall under "other" as write-ins.  This next poll is "<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/which-class-is-the-best-your-chance-to-vote.667903/" target="_blank">the best class</a>" poll.  It doesn't have a lot of votes but there is some consistency with the bigger polls made earlier.[ATTACH=full]116122[/ATTACH]Write-in's didn't make it far there either, but the point is bards are consistently rated well based on popularity.  Druids aren't the bottom either.  Before you mention "neo-Vancian casting" and "tiers" to explain those results I'm going to mention <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQK9WoCYz5l0IWv6a9kDJmy4X5-zQYd631t1CFxGA_68OKeKxKyM3prgvHqx1k7acRdTKO0ZR6XXLOp/pubhtml?gid=1830653425#" target="_blank">this detailed survey</a>.  The author of the survey also seemed to be following the presumptions of tiers, but some of the polled criteria included subject impressions about level of enjoyment playing.  It turned out that the 3 most fun options were battle master fighter, totem barbarian, and lore bard as subjectively responded.  College of Lore bards also came in second place on this <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdDnb5L6noks88Y9jSzPvthwkreIL-16fpLi-WdU14XhL-TCQ/viewanalytics" target="_blank">survey</a> where hex blades, lore bards, and battle masters topped the list.5e polls are easy to find and they support these classes.  I'm struggling to find support for lack of popularity for bards and druids.  They seemed middle to lower in the main pack to me.  The same with support for warlords and psionicists.  I've seen claims of popularity but I cannot seem to find evidence to support it.*Nods.  "My psychic powers change by reading a book" is very odd.</blockquote>

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