Is Your D&D Character Rare?

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**reds8n**

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare/?ex_cid=story-facebook

Before a “Dungeons & Dragons” player joins a game, before she finds her first sword or slays her first gnoll, she must create a character who has a race and a class.1 Will she skulk in the shadows as a gnome2 rogue?3 Sally forth with her human paladin? Reave up and down the Sword Coast as a dwarven barbarian?

Since the tabletop role-playing game debuted in 1974, “Dungeons & Dragons” has grown to include so many different kinds of characters that there are two races of playable bird people.4 In August, the game’s publisher released an online tool called D&D Beyond that streamlines the process of setting up a new character. Players created hundreds of thousands of characters in the site’s first month, and Curse, the developer behind D&D Beyond, sent us users’ most popular picks for races and classes from the game’s Fifth Edition.

The most popular races and classes in ‘Dungeons & Dragons’
Class and race combinations per 100,000 characters that players created on D&D Beyond from Aug. 15 to Sept. 15, 2017

see link for stats -- no easy C & P

So what does this data say about players’ character preferences? At first blush it looks like characters are drawn from literature and everyday life, which seems surprisingly unimaginative considering that “Dungeons & Dragons” is the quintessential fantasy game. But some of the common character choices can be explained by the game’s structure of racial bonuses. Humans — the most popular race by far — get an extra point in all of their ability scores, which makes them a balanced pick for any class.

Other races dovetail nicely with particular classes. The wood elf5 gets a bonus to dexterity as well as proficiency in longbows, perfect for the ranger class. Halflings also have extra points in dexterity and may have access to the “naturally stealthy” trait, which makes them exceptional rogues. The appearance of both these archetypes in Lord of the Rings and other works of fantasy likely also plays a role in their popularity.

Some pairings you won’t find anywhere in Tolkien’s books, but might stand at the vanguard of a new fantasy canon. Apparently the lumbering, scaly dragonborn are frequently cast as paladins, a class traditionally inhabited by snooty white men. And remember the bird people? Players who pick the avian aarakocra are most likely to adventure as martial artist monks, filling the skies of the Forgotten Realms with Jet Li Big Birds.

When I started playing “Dungeons & Dragons” five years ago, I never would have chosen the game’s most popular match: the human fighter. There are already enough human fighters in movies, TV and books — my first character was an albino dragonborn sorcerer. But these days I can get behind the combo’s simplicity: It lets you focus on creating a good story rather than spending time flipping through rulebooks to look up spells. Players who are more interested in the action than the storytelling might relish the technicalities of more arcane race and class pairings, watching the dice fall and arguing over whether they have full or half cover. You can play “Dungeons & Dragons” as a pure combat simulator, a murder mystery or even a dating competition. For decades, that open-endedness has brought players back to the table to fill out one more character sheet.

**Voss**

Humans — the most popular race by far — get an extra point in all of their ability scores, which makes them a balanced pick for any class.

Funny. The default human (rather than the variant that gets the bonus feat) is actually one of the worst picks* for every class.

Other races get a huge pile of special abilities and, with +2 to 1 stat and +1 to another (or half elves/mountain dwarves, which are even better), are much better at building for a specific class.

The wood elf5 gets a bonus to dexterity as well as proficiency in longbows, perfect for the ranger class

Rangers get proficiency in longbows anyway, so wood elves are actually losing out by picking ranger.* They're better as clerics (the get a bonus to wisdom), standing back with a bunch of support spells and using the longbow which is now an actual bonus (with the right domain pick).

*it's also one of the worst 5e classes, the only one that's been unofficially revised by the developers, and still has problems.

At first blush it looks like characters are drawn from literature and everyday life, which seems surprisingly unimaginative considering that “Dungeons & Dragons” is the quintessential fantasy game.

It shouldn't be surprising. That people want to play a version of their heroes rather than bird boy or lizard girl should come as a shock to no one with even a vague awareness of human psychology. Which goes to explain the wood elf ranger- it's the association people make, regardless of character power or logic, wood elves run around with bows in the forests, so are more often rangers.

The writer for this should get get a rap on the knuckles, for not understand tropes or psychology and how they motivate people.

**str00dles1**

Perhaps its just certain groups, but for the most part, people would like to imagine their character is some special snowflake. They put into into it and its story.

The real hard facts are we draw story, character ideas, etc from real world examples like you said, but its mostly subconscious.

The point of the article is saying many people think they have a unique story/dnd character when really its all been done a million times before and this brings it to light for those players.

As for the ranger, the unofficial updated one has some pretty OP bonuses. Sensing where enemies are within 5 miles is....stupid. Just like the Lore Wizard that was throw out can shoot a fireball 1 mile away.... Wizards doesent understand how long a mile really is.

**Voss**

That isn't new to the update, that was part of the 5e PH ranger- Primeval Awareness- 1 mile or 6 if squatting in favored terrain.

The update just turns it around and links it to favored enemy instead.

Personally, I would have loved to see them ditch favored enemy entirely, as it's a problematic design area. A ranger either contributes more (revised), or it's completely useless if said creatures don't appear on a regular basis. (And quite likely to be worthless in any given fight, less than 1 in 7, as there are more than the seven creature types listed as options)