Everybody wants to be special, a desire that’s only exacerbated when people start sitting around a table, rolling dice, and coming up with brand new, potentially interesting folks to be. (Usually with some kind of magical powers or pointy ears attached.) But is your Dungeons & Dragons character actually as unique or rare as you think they are? Is Grimthok, Human Fighter, the special snowflake he always hoped he’d be?
Not according to a new statistical breakdown from FiveThirtyEight. The site recently approached Curse Inc, the company that developed the official D&D online character creation tool D&D Beyond, and asked them for the data on what (and who) users have been rolling up. The result is a table that breaks down 100,000 freshly made characters by race and class, showing which ones get the most love, and which ones are druids.
Indeed, it turns out that most players stick close to home (species-wise, anyway) with their fantasy creations, with a quarter of created characters coming up human. Elves and half-elves make up another quarter, with the poor, neglected aarakocra and aasimar (bird people and half-angels, respectively) down at the bottom. In terms of classes, meanwhile, fighter is the most common, followed closely by rogue, with nature-loving druids way down at the end. A lot of people seem to be going with tried-and-true race/class match-ups, too, presumably encouraged by statistical synergies; halflings tend to be Bilbo-esque rogues, while half-orcs are more likely than not to go the barbarian route.
Of course, a character in a tabletop RPG is way more than just a combination of pre-picked templates; we’re sure Grimthok has a rich inner life that sets him apart from the other 4,887 human fighters in his cohort. And if not? Well, maybe it’s time to re-roll; the trees will always need your love.