Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Ive been wondering what class is the favorite of the bunch.
Mine is personally the Warlock
I do not necessarily have a favorite - different classes scratch different itches for me (and I mostly DM anyway, so I like to do a large mix for major NPCs).
That said, if you wanted an answer to your question, Wizards regularly has released information on what class is most played. As far as I can remember, it has always been Fighter.
Agreed. Anything I’ve ever seen, across editions, says fighter. And human fighter at that.
Most places I’ve seen chalk it up to that being the most common starter character.
Last few times the numbers have been run I recall the most popular class being Fighter and the most popular species being Human. If I remember correctly, the data was pulled from D&D Beyond. I think the speculation leaned toward human fighter being the easiest species and class combo to just jump into for new players. I'd be curious if that's still the case and more curious to see if there are different results based on number of years played.
For me personally, though? Paladin. I'm so lawful good I always return shopping carts.
I also usually DM but when I do play I pretty much always select an arcane caster class. Wizard is my preference though Sorcerer, Warlock, and Bard all have their appeal.
That’s interesting, as I would have guessed Warlock based on the number of posts in their forums. Warlock is my favorite too, specifically the Celestial Warlock for its unique healing combined with solid damage via eldritch blast.
As long as people are mentioning it, my favorite race/species is Verdan. I got into WoW late and mained a Goblin Warlock, but Goblins in DnD are much more feral. Then I happens to get Acquisitions Incorporated for free and it came with a new more mature version of the Goblin.
I’m going bqck and forth between Paladin 1/Celestial Warlock 19 and Paladin/Warlock/Sorcerer, as well as Verdan and Wood Elf for Elven Accuracy, but this is still currently my main’s character page:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/165040730
Ive always loved the Ranger class. They have a ton of potential as you level up despite their melee disadvantage.
The psion because it is the "ugly duckling" even among D&D heroes. I feel interest into artificier because it is a no-core class.
How to explain it? It is like you wear the fashion style from certain urban tribe to show you are different and with your own mark of identity, you aren't like the rest.
Bards are pretty great. Half proficiency in everything, proficiency and expertises to throw around. Good cha so can do social stuff. Bardic inspriation is handy. And theyr a full caster.
The downside is they start with a limited spell list, but if you get past level 10, they start unlocking all the juicy spells.
My artificer did not turn out the way i thought it would. Im rocking a 22 ac and mirror image and shield spell so i can tank like the tankiest tank. But i kinda thought the magic item building and the non mag crafting would show up more than it did. A bit weak at first but really powers up at level 11.
I love how any given player might pick a different favorite class. There’s an archetype for everyone! Personally, I chose sorcerer because I like a mage with fewer spells than they can cast creatively.
Giving this thread à bump. Let’s see more votes! It’s been a long time since that 538 statistics reveal.
Asking the people who post here, or the offical records kept by WotC. As you will find very differant answers.
Data was from DnDB a few years ago, the image was taken on one of the many news sites that covered the numbers when released.
The fascinating thing to me from that data is just how popular human PCs are. I'm a human every day all day long, I can't imagine having that as my favorite race to play in a high fantasy game. Clearly I'm way out of the mainstream.
One reason for this is likely that it includes the 5e "Variant Human", which was really popular with optimizers since it gave you a full-size feat right at first level.
pronouns: he/she/they
Possibly, but people do tend toward the default, and D&D worlds are largely human-centric as well. People playing their first game are likely to pick human for the same reason they pick fighter -- they think it'll be easier.
Also, those charts are very old, with the playtest artificer and blood hunter having statistical significance, it's basically got to be from 2020, probably early.
Almost definitely the reason the Artificer is so low down is you actually have to pay to play it, if it was part of the free rules you’d probably see more people at least experimenting with it
Also worth keeping in mind that this is "characters people have made on D&D Beyond", not "characters people have played".
pronouns: he/she/they
True enough, which is seriously sad to me. I totally get wanting to play a powerful character, but making your species pick (I realize 5.5E has somewhat de-emphasized species significance, but to me this is at least as core to a PC as their class) based on some small power increment buff you perceive - yikes.
You read my post with the chart I would expect, as I said it was a few years old at the time. The data was released when BG3 was in Beta, as it was part of the Marketing lead up to the Release of BG3. ie During that wierd period of Lockdown was just ending and OGL hadn't happened yet.
Which is a key point.
1. Both Human and Fighter are the "defaults". If you're just chucking a character together to explore the builder and character sheet, there's going to be a heavy bias for these as opposed to more exotic options like Fairy and Sorcerer.
2. When they showed the numbers for Subclasses, there was a heavy preference for the ones in the Basic Rules. Almost certainly not because they're more liked, but because people were experimenting with DDB, and those are free and available. The others require payment.
Which is to say, the most commonly made character does not translate to the most commonly played character, or more to the point, most commonly preferred character. I suspect that Human genuinely is the most commonly played species (even after accounting for the above effect and even that they're the most commonly acceptable species in campaigns). I wouldn't know about Classes - but I suspect Fighter would drop a rank or two.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.