My wife just started playing a Halfling Bloodhunter, and it got me thinking about other interesting combinations. Is there a place where we can see what the most/least popular combinations of Races and Classes are?
For those interested, these combinations have the highest sum of deviations in race vs. class, and class vs. race. In other words, these are either extremely common class choices for a given race (Goliath? Of course you are a barbarian) or extremely common race choices for a given class (Ranger? Of course an elf) or some combination of the two.
Interesting. So not necessarily all that common (I sincerely doubt there are all that many Gnome Wizards out there for example), but the most stereotypical, as it were? I.e. given one half the equation, what's most likely to be the other half. Interesting that the only one of those in my current group is a Dwarf Cleric (though we do have a Goliath Fighter who considered going Barbarian).
I feel certain the numbers will have changed. Not least in that I suspect there will be more Aasimar as a percentage of the whole (whilst Volo's had been out a good six months or more I think it would still take time to filter through - Aarakocra will probably be down, too.
You've hit the nail on the head: lots of gnomes are wizards (about 3 in 10), but not that many wizards are gnomes (about 1 in 8). Conversely, many wizards are human (1 in 4), but not many humans are wizards (1 in 10). This difference is because there more than 5 times as many human characters in the database compared to gnomes.
In the data, there are three ways I have looked at occurence: relative to race, relative to class, or relative to all characters.
Top by race (i.e. stereotypes by race):
Goliath Barbarian
Half-Orc Barbarian
Halfling Thief
Gnome Wizard
Tiefling Warlock
Top by class (i.e. stereotypes for that class):
Human Fighter
Elf Ranger
Elf Druid
Elf Wizard
Human Paladin
Human Wizard
Human Cleric
Tiefling Warlock
Human Monk
Dwarf Cleric
Half-Elf Bard
Human Rogue
Relative to all characters (i.e. just really common in general):
Human Fighter
Elf Ranger
Elf Wizard
Human Wizard
Human Rogue
Human Cleric
Human Paladin
Elf Rogue
Dwarf Cleric
Tiefling Warlock
So we can see there are really two things: stereotypical combinations, and just big numbers because people (seem to) love Humans & Elves. I think the combined list I shared above synthesizes this information well, but I posted these three lists to give a more detailed view. Again, I'd love to update it based on current data.
That's kind of fascinating, looking at D&D long-term. The effective death of multi-classing in 3.XE and beyond profoundly changed what classes elves were associated with, I feel. In 2E, it seemed like virtually every Elf, and there were a lot of Elves, was F/M/T or F/M or R/C or slightly more rarely F/M/C. The idea of a single-classed Elf was practically alien - the only exceptions being Specialist Wizards and the odd Speciality Priest. So many Dwarves were F/C, too. I guess the death of race restrictions and level limits factored in too. Level limits were almost never actually enforced, but they did give you the feeling that a race was somehow "sub-par" at a class, if it was even allowed. But Elf Druids being more popular than Elf Wizards kind of blows my ancient (40, so not really that old) mind.
Of course so many rules have changed that there's less need for a lot of the old MC combinations but it is really odd to see them gone, and MC all usually 2 or 6 levels of this, and the rest another thing.
To be clear, that second table is stereotypes for each class, so in other words, a druid is more likely to be an elf than a wizard is likely to be an elf, not the other way around. Elves dominate the druid class, but there are still way more elf wizards in total.
My wife just started playing a Halfling Bloodhunter, and it got me thinking about other interesting combinations. Is there a place where we can see what the most/least popular combinations of Races and Classes are?
I've found the data that was posted here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare/ for August to September of last year, and I was just wondering if that data is still consistent with what people are creating.
Bump!
I have been crunching numbers on the old data, and I'd love to update the numbers.
Based on the previous data, these are the combinations the most disproportionately played (relative to race and class):
1. Goliath Barbarian
2. Half-Orc Barbarian
3. Tiefling Warlock
4. Human Fighter
5. Elf Ranger
6. Dwarf Cleric
7. Halfling Thief
8. Gnome Wizard
9. Elf Wizard
For those interested, these combinations have the highest sum of deviations in race vs. class, and class vs. race. In other words, these are either extremely common class choices for a given race (Goliath? Of course you are a barbarian) or extremely common race choices for a given class (Ranger? Of course an elf) or some combination of the two.
Interesting. So not necessarily all that common (I sincerely doubt there are all that many Gnome Wizards out there for example), but the most stereotypical, as it were? I.e. given one half the equation, what's most likely to be the other half. Interesting that the only one of those in my current group is a Dwarf Cleric (though we do have a Goliath Fighter who considered going Barbarian).
I feel certain the numbers will have changed. Not least in that I suspect there will be more Aasimar as a percentage of the whole (whilst Volo's had been out a good six months or more I think it would still take time to filter through - Aarakocra will probably be down, too.
You've hit the nail on the head: lots of gnomes are wizards (about 3 in 10), but not that many wizards are gnomes (about 1 in 8). Conversely, many wizards are human (1 in 4), but not many humans are wizards (1 in 10). This difference is because there more than 5 times as many human characters in the database compared to gnomes.
In the data, there are three ways I have looked at occurence: relative to race, relative to class, or relative to all characters.
Top by race (i.e. stereotypes by race):
Top by class (i.e. stereotypes for that class):
Relative to all characters (i.e. just really common in general):
So we can see there are really two things: stereotypical combinations, and just big numbers because people (seem to) love Humans & Elves. I think the combined list I shared above synthesizes this information well, but I posted these three lists to give a more detailed view. Again, I'd love to update it based on current data.
That's kind of fascinating, looking at D&D long-term. The effective death of multi-classing in 3.XE and beyond profoundly changed what classes elves were associated with, I feel. In 2E, it seemed like virtually every Elf, and there were a lot of Elves, was F/M/T or F/M or R/C or slightly more rarely F/M/C. The idea of a single-classed Elf was practically alien - the only exceptions being Specialist Wizards and the odd Speciality Priest. So many Dwarves were F/C, too. I guess the death of race restrictions and level limits factored in too. Level limits were almost never actually enforced, but they did give you the feeling that a race was somehow "sub-par" at a class, if it was even allowed. But Elf Druids being more popular than Elf Wizards kind of blows my ancient (40, so not really that old) mind.
Of course so many rules have changed that there's less need for a lot of the old MC combinations but it is really odd to see them gone, and MC all usually 2 or 6 levels of this, and the rest another thing.
Sorry, old person musing haha.
To be clear, that second table is stereotypes for each class, so in other words, a druid is more likely to be an elf than a wizard is likely to be an elf, not the other way around. Elves dominate the druid class, but there are still way more elf wizards in total.
Bump. Would love to see updated data, especially with monstrous races having had time to ‘cook’ for awhile...
The latest i remember was on one of dnd beyond dev update. youtube link
compared to https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare/ both warlock and sorcerer jump in ranks alot the rest stayed the same i think
I think only the races from GGR arent included since it wasn't released at that time yet.
Nox - Adult Oblex - The Trials
Jartrin Ephok - Dragonborn - Zanoliv
Bunol - Grim Angel - The Floating Lands of Goriate
Found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/9c8rwf/most_and_least_favoured_race_and_class/
Derived from this: https://imgur.com/a/iRI9EMh
The twitch stream in which it was presented is no longer available.
Now I'm off to make a Kenku Barbarian. CAW CAW !!!
How rare is a gnome Paladin
Kenku barbarian, can rage over how difficult it is to communicate with others.
list of my games/characters in the spoiler
Looking for a new game, if you need a player private message me.
Does DnD beyond regularly release those stats? I'd be curious to see how they've changed over the last few years.
Goliath Rogue and Halfling Barbarian should be more popular then they are 😀
Or an aarakocra ranger?
Hahaha the party I'm in has two tritons(1 monk, 1 forge cleric), one drow(warlock), one kobald(rogue), and two humans(1 fighter, 1 bard)