D&D 5E (2014) The Most Popular D&D Classes & Subclasses

D&D Beyond posted these stats on the most popular D&D subclasses by class based on the "high thirties" in millions of characters on the platform. This is a revisit from last year, with updated data, and only includes single-classed characters.

Fighter is the most-played class (as has always been the case with these stats), followed by rogues, warlocks, clerics, and wizards.

The 'free' (SRD) subclasses are the most popular subclasses on D&D Beyond, which is no surprise.

 

[Raduin711]

Drunken Master beat the Elemental Monk. Ouch.

 

[Hussar]

Is it just me, or is the spread between classes much closer now? I seem to remember that fighter used to be far more popular relative to the other classes. It's still most popular, but, not by a heck of a lot, and, if you take out fighter and rogue, everyone else is pretty much dead even.

 

[Morrus]

Is it just me, or is the spread between classes much closer now? I seem to remember that fighter used to be far more popular relative to the other classes. It's still most popular, but, not by a heck of a lot, and, if you take out fighter and rogue, everyone else is pretty much dead even.

This is Feb 2019:

 

[Hussar]

Ok, it's just me. Fair enough.

 

[WisdomOfWombats]

The subclasses that are part of the basic rules make up a sizeable portion of each class. It would be interesting to have some sort of separate statistics based on available rulesset.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Warlock is doing the best not in the SRD

 

[WisdomOfWombats]

The Fiend is in the Basic Rules.

 

[GM Lent]

Fiend is in the SRD too.

These numbers are always interesting, but I hesitate to draw too many conclusions from then. They only reflect D&D Beyond users, after all, and many of us have still never even used it.

 

[Morrus]

Fiend is in the SRD too.

These numbers are always interesting, but I hesitate to draw too many conclusions from then. They only reflect D&D Beyond users, after all, and many of us have still never even used it.

The weakness isn't the numbers -- you don't need that many to get a significant statistical sample, and this is 30M(!) -- it's more (a) the cutoff between free and paid items; and (b) which of these are being played and which are just experimental builds. For example, when they did a by-level comparison, there was a big bump in 20th level characters, which in all likelihood didn't mean that a large percentage were playing Tier 4 games, but that people liked to make experimental level 20 builds on the platform, partly to plan out their advancement.