A Dungeons & Dragons data story · Jake Biondolillo
The Spellcaster’s
Compendium
A character sheet is a small record of an imagined life. What patterns appear when we read thousands of them together?
In Dungeons & Dragons, a class gives a character a set of abilities. This story focuses on six classes closely associated with magic—from a Wizard’s study to a Warlock’s pact.
The spellcasting classes
Wizards and Clerics are the largest groups in this six-class archive. Each accounts for less than one in five character IDs. The rest of the picture is spread across four other ways of making magic.
Count and share of 223,284 character IDs across six starting classes
One latest record per character ID, with five unresolved IDs excluded before the class filter. Multiclass records stay under their starting class.
Spells on the character sheet
A cantrip is a spell of level 0. These are the most commonly listed cantrips for each of the six classes in the smaller sheet collection. Vicious Mockery and Eldritch Blast stand out within the lists we can read.
Here, the unit changes to sheet records. A spell counts once per sheet, even if it appears more than once in its list.
Cantrips (Spell Level 0)
Each denominator is that class’s sheets with at least one parseable spell at this level.
The denominator is sheets in that class with at least one parseable level-0 spell—not every class record. All-class rates and levels 1–2 are in the appendix.
A small decision
reverses the story.
The larger archive includes a note-length field. If we look only at records with positive lengths, Warlocks have the highest mean. Include valid recorded zeros, and Warlocks have the lowest.
That reversal says more about the measurement and its denominator than it can tell us about the people behind the sheets.
Highest of the six classes.
Lowest of the six classes.
Each line connects two summaries of the same class, not a change over time. Negative values are excluded. The exact construction and unit of notes_len are undocumented.
Interpreting zero values
Zero may mean no notes were recorded—or that the sheet was incomplete. The source does not resolve that ambiguity, so both policies stay visible.
All six medians are zero in the inclusive view. The precise source unit is unknown, and note length cannot measure storytelling effort or personality.
Distributions, exclusions & full table →Reflection
This project began as an exploration of D&D character creation. Working with the data revealed important limits: repeated rows are not new characters, levels are not a timeline, and a missing field is not a motive.
The data reveals several patterns. Some labels recur, some spells are common in recorded lists, and a simple filtering choice can reverse a ranking. Making those choices visible gives the reader a way to judge the evidence.
These are selected historical online records, not a representative survey of D&D players. Campaign context, content access and incomplete sheets remain outside the data.
Explore All Eight Visuals ↗Class · level · race · background · subclass · spell · gold · notes
Read the methodology and sources