D&D: Oh The Humanity – Popular Races According To The Data
Almost everyone’s playing a human, according to the numbers. That’s not surprising. What is surprising is just how many people are playing elves…
There are many different reasons to play a human in D&D. You might just want the familiarity of playing the kind of creature you are in real life; you could be creatively bankrupt, hello Hollywood executives; you might hate fun, welcome, rules lawyers; you could really just love that extra feat. Whatever the reason, the data is in, and in D&D, the most popular parties prove that vanilla isn’t just a flavor. It’s a lifestyle. Let’s take a look.
via D&D Beyond
The latest Dungeons and Data is in from D&D Beyond, who have been refining their data harvesting methods to ensure that you get the finest free-range data from their account holders who have characters in campaigns, with hit points that have recently been adjusted (and aren’t assigned to the DM). It’s not a perfect system, but it does help to give a snapshot of what a sizable chunk of the community is getting up to. And as a side note, it’s been real interesting watching them narrow their focus to look at what people are actually playing.
Turns out, most people are playing people. Human people specifically–but this is a trend that’s be true in D&D since the beforetimes. Humans have long been the most popular choice in D&D, and it’s as true now as it was in the year of our Lord 1974 when three booklets brought D&D to the world at large. The difference is now we can get a look at the variety of compositions in parties.
Even in five and six member parties, humans are the dominant choice, though it bears mentioning that you start to see significant variety once you escape the human dominant party–but humans take up so much space, especially given how small the percentages are.
Seven character parties break free, with half-elves and half-orcs seeing some significant representation (as well as Aarakocra, Dragonborns, Kenku, and Tritons). And it gets even weirder as you get to eight-person parties.
Aarakocra, Aasimar, even Feral Tieflings out of the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guild. Even Kobolds…but for all that, there’s been one selection that’s curiously absent from all of the selections we’ve seen.
Elves. Whether High Elves, Moon Elves, Wood Elves, Drow, or Shadar-Kai, it looks like people will pick a half-elf to an elf every day of the week. Which makes sense, we’ve seen a lot of data that shows casters like Sorcerers and Warlocks tend to edge out Wizards. But even so, it’s surprising to see Halflings and Elves lose out to Dwarves and Gnomes.
Also worth noting are the prevalence of unusual species from books like Volo’s or Xanathar’s Guide. To my mind, that says, “if you spent money on these options, you’re going to use them,” as they need to be unlocked on D&D Beyond separately, but it’s nice to see such variety. Once you move past the overwhelming prevalence of humanity, that is.
What does your party makeup look like? Let us know in the comments!
