D&D 5E (2024) The most popular spells in 2024 5e

[xyrad]

I've ranked all 410 of the 2024 5e spells into how popular they are. Have a look!

You can see fun things like Resistance being one of the least picked cantrips in the game, or Wish being the most picked level 9 spell.

So how does it work?

Well I've shared 5e Spellbook Builder here before and received so much great feedback, so I keep tinkering with it. One feature that came to mind was using it to determine the most popular spells in the game. Now I've worked hard to ensure this is a good website where it's not tracking you — no Google Analytics, no email addresses, no log ins, and all your data lives on your device. But I did decide to start counting what spells get added to spellbooks. The data has started rolling in and there's been tens of thousands of adds, so I added it to the website.

It's neat to see the most picked spells/most commonly found spells in the game. But low level spells that are accessible to the most classes will of course rise to the top so I wanted to figure out what spells people grab the most when they're available to them. So I used a bunch of math to come up with an Appeal ranking — how often a spell is chosen relative to the spells of its level, reduced by how many classes have access to it and how popular those classes are.

So in addition to sorting by popularity, you can take a look at the most appealing spells in the game. Misty Step leads the way in all of 5e, but you can look at things like the top spells for Wizards, or the most appealing damage spells in the game.

You can read about how it works in further detail in a blog post I wrote.

So let me know what you think! I also added some fun features where you can view a graph of your spellbook's roles and spell appeal too, I attached a screenshot. Thanks all.

 

[FrogReaver]

I've ranked all 410 of the 2024 5e spells into how popular they are. Have a look!

You can see fun things like Resistance being one of the least picked cantrips in the game, or Wish being the most picked level 9 spell.

So how does it work?

Well I've shared 5e Spellbook Builder here before and received so much great feedback, so I keep tinkering with it. One feature that came to mind was using it to determine the most popular spells in the game. Now I've worked hard to ensure this is a good website where it's not tracking you — no Google Analytics, no email addresses, no log ins, and all your data lives on your device. But I did decide to start counting what spells get added to spellbooks. The data has started rolling in and there's been tens of thousands of adds, so I added it to the website.

It's neat to see the most picked spells/most commonly found spells in the game. But low level spells that are accessible to the most classes will of course rise to the top so I wanted to figure out what spells people grab the most when they're available to them. So I used a bunch of math to come up with an Appeal ranking — how often a spell is chosen relative to the spells of its level, reduced by how many classes have access to it and how popular those classes are.

So in addition to sorting by popularity, you can take a look at the most appealing spells in the game. Misty Step leads the way in all of 5e, but you can look at things like the top spells for Wizards, or the most appealing damage spells in the game.

You can read about how it works in further detail in a blog post I wrote.

So let me know what you think! I also added some fun features where you can view a graph of your spellbook's roles and spell appeal too, I attached a screenshot. Thanks all.

Cool. Can you elaborate on the appeal ranking calculation. Maybe an example of it, even if contrived?

 

[xyrad]

For sure, and I mention it more in the blog.

Let's take Mage Hand and Misty Step as an example. Say Mage Hand has been added 400 times to spellbooks, and Misty Step has been added 200 times, Mage Hand is definitively the more popular spell. You will see it in the game more often.

But Mage Hand is a Cantrip and Misty Step is a Level 2 spell, which is rarer to get, so it's not a fair comparison. Let's even that out. If the average Cantrip is chosen 100 times and the average Level 2 spell is chosen 50 times then:

Misty Step: 200 / 50 = 4
Mage Hand: 400 / 200 = 4

The spells have equal appeal.

Except 4 classes have access to Mage Hand, whereas only 3 classes can access Misty Step. So it's also not a fair comparison. Let's remove that bonus:

Misty Step: 4 / 3 = 1.333
Mage Hand: 4 / 4 = 1

Misty Step has more appeal than Mage Hand.

Now the math in this example is oversimplified and assumes classes are equally as popular, which they are not (and there's also ways some classes can access spells not in their list, via certain backgrounds and feats). But I do apply a bunch of math to weight the frequency of the classes, and you can read more about that in the blog. Appeal will always be an educated guess from the numbers, but the results so far feel pretty good.

 

[Zardnaar]

For sure, and I mention it more in the blog.

Let's take Mage Hand and Misty Step as an example. Say Mage Hand has been added 400 times to spellbooks, and Misty Step has been added 200 times, Mage Hand is definitively the more popular spell. You will see it in the game more often.

But Mage Hand is a Cantrip and Misty Step is a Level 2 spell, which is rarer to get, so it's not a fair comparison. Let's even that out. If the average Cantrip is chosen 100 times and the average Level 2 spell is chosen 50 times then:

Misty Step: 200 / 50 = 4
Mage Hand: 400 / 200 = 4

The spells have equal appeal.

Except 4 classes have access to Mage Hand, whereas only 3 classes can access Misty Step. So it's also not a fair comparison. Let's remove that bonus:

Misty Step: 4 / 3 = 1.333
Mage Hand: 4 / 4 = 1

Misty Step has more appeal than Mage Hand.

Now the math in this example is oversimplified and assumes classes are equally as popular, which they are not (and there's also ways some classes can access spells not in their list, via certain backgrounds and feats). But I do apply a bunch of math to weight the frequency of the classes, and you can read more about that in the blog. Appeal will always be an educated guess from the numbers, but the results so far feel pretty good.

Are people getting misty step via race or feat?

 

[FrogReaver]

For sure, and I mention it more in the blog.

Let's take Mage Hand and Misty Step as an example. Say Mage Hand has been added 400 times to spellbooks, and Misty Step has been added 200 times, Mage Hand is definitively the more popular spell. You will see it in the game more often.

But Mage Hand is a Cantrip and Misty Step is a Level 2 spell, which is rarer to get, so it's not a fair comparison. Let's even that out. If the average Cantrip is chosen 100 times and the average Level 2 spell is chosen 50 times then:

Misty Step: 200 / 50 = 4
Mage Hand: 400 / 200 = 4

The spells have equal appeal.

Except 4 classes have access to Mage Hand, whereas only 3 classes can access Misty Step. So it's also not a fair comparison. Let's remove that bonus:

Misty Step: 4 / 3 = 1.333
Mage Hand: 4 / 4 = 1

Misty Step has more appeal than Mage Hand.

Now the math in this example is oversimplified and assumes classes are equally as popular, which they are not (and there's also ways some classes can access spells not in their list, via certain backgrounds and feats). But I do apply a bunch of math to weight the frequency of the classes, and you can read more about that in the blog. Appeal will always be an educated guess from the numbers, but the results so far feel pretty good.

One potential flaw is weighting each class spell list equally in that final division step despite the classes not being chosen equally. This I think could be controlled for and could really skew the results if it’s not. Say twice the casters are wizard and sorcerers vs cleric and Druid. Well, I think it’s obvious how that would skew things.

Another is that many spells are on subclass lists, gained via race or feat. I’m a bit less concerned with this as I don’t see a clear path to put that nuance meaningfully into a metric.

All in all great work though.

 

[xyrad]

One potential flaw is weighting each class spell list equally in that final division step despite the classes not being chosen equally. This I think could be controlled for and could really skew the results if it’s not. Say twice the casters are wizard and sorcerers vs cleric and Druid. Well, I think it’s obvious how that would skew things.

Another is that many spells are on subclass lists, gained via race or feat. I’m a bit less concerned with this as I don’t see a clear path to put that nuance meaningfully into a metric.

All in all great work though.

Sorry, I thought I mentioned it — the actual math on the site doesn't weight the classes equally, I just kept this example simple. You can read more about the class weighting on the blog article: The Most Popular Spells in 2024 5e

 

[Rabulias]

Just off the top of my head I would think that spells chosen via race or feat would indicate more appeal since the spell selection is so limited in those cases.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well crap. I had a really well typed post and lost it.

Summary version, 7/10 spells on the most appealing list are from single class lists so i think your class weighting is skewing things.

Extremely popular spells like healing word and shield not making the appealing list also points toward this IMO.

Though spells like divine smite aren’t listed there, so that’s a bit odd. Probably points to the non equal distribution of classes being at best an approximation as you mentioned.

Still, probably close to the best you can do with what you are tracking. With the data you have I don’t think these things can be accounted for just from the data.

 

[FrogReaver]

From your blog:

However, there are some fingerprints in the data. Every class has at least a few spells only available to it. To grab those spells you have to be the class (okay, there are exceptions to that thanks to some feats, but still). Analyzing the popularity of those class-specific spells relative to all spells and each other can allow me to make an informed guess as to the popularity of each class.

I get your doing something to try to account for classes not being distributed equally, but your methodology around what you are actually doing to accomplish that is never spelled out

 

[xyrad]

I love that you really want to get into it. So like mentioned, I analyze the popularity of how often class-specific spells are added relative to all spells to help come up with the weighting of the classes. It's a work in progress.