This is something that peaked my curiosity, and I now seek the community's input on it.
Please list the three pathfinder character classes most often played by your gaming group. If you prefer, or if you don't have enough data to draw from, include your experiences from various editions of D&D.
This is unscientific, and I don't expect anyone to have exact numbers, so use your best estimation.
For myself, I would say cleric, rogue and ranger. Its tough to narrow that down!
Most common classes played in the 24 years I've been playing DnD/Pathfinder are:
1 - Fighter
2 - Wizard
3 - Rogue
I would say that roughly 80% of our campaigns never had a healer. Similarly, we all found that Fighter was a much more flexible class than Ranger, Barbarian, or Paladin and so often chose fighter over those subtypes even if the character persona was similar to one of them.
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1. Barbarian
2. Bard
3. Sorcerer
Yeah, that's a little weird looking at it. Barbarian is just a really fun way to do the frontline melee guy that every group needs, and thus gets picked a lot. Sorcerer ditto for Arcane casting. Bard...I really dunno, all the Bards in question have been very different both role-wise and thematically...it's just that the class (with Archetypes especially) can fill in for so many roles...
Rogues and Inquisitors are fairly common, too. Alchemists, Druids, Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, and Oracles all show up. Wizards, and Clerics are rare (my group seems to prefer Spontaneous Casters), but not unknown. Monks and Gunslingers are very rare (like, I think I've seen one of each).
Maguses, Cavaliers, Witches, Summoners, and the oriental classes all have yet to make an appearance.
1. Fighter
2. Rogue
3. Sorcerer
Someone usually takes a healer but only as last resort (Oracle as frequent as Cleric)
1 - cleric
2 - fighter (though to be fair, we did recently play a non-magical campaign)
3 -paladin/monk
4 - wizard
Its funny that we haven't seen many rogues at the table. Only one that I can think of in the last year. Although...
I played a ninja recently and found it to be a bit underwhelming in most situations, though the class's ability to simply not be around to get attacked was pretty boss. I traded him out for a wizard at level 4.
Wizard is probably my favorite way to play but in four or five campaigns we've had a plethora of clerics, even two at a time in a pair of games with none really dominating in combat or otherwise.
1. Rogue
2. Ranger
3. Cleric (generally with Domain choices that let them rip off the formerly traditional offensive spellslinging duties of the arcane casters)
1) Fighter
2) Cleric
3) Rogue
1) Cleric
2) Fighter
3) Wizard
I don't think we've had any class get played twice since we switched to Pathfinder!
Maybe fighter, ranger and rogue?
But only if you count one-shots.
Fighter
Rogue
Cleric
Undoubtedly fighter is top because so many characters take one level for the free feat and armour/weapon proficiency. Our character groups tend to be restricted to core classes and to contain 'one of each' plus hangers on.
If you don't take 'the odd level' into account for my current groups it's
1. Rogue (of these, 5/6 have at least one level of fighter and the other is a rogue/wizard).
2. Joint second Fighter, wizard, cleric and (to my surprise) druid.
Cleric, thief, magic user.
However, I can't remember not having a fighter type of some description as well, there's just more favors of fighter in our group.
Fighter
Cleric
Rogue
monk ,fighter ,gunslinger
We have a relatively big playgroup (a subset of which convenes for playing on any given weekend). The classes are skewed a bit because two of the players (me included) play monks the majority of the time. So:
Monk
Cleric
(too diverse for 3rd dominant class)
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1. Monk
2. Barbarian
3. Sorcerer
My group consists mostly of heavy melee oriented classes with a few arcane and divine casters. Though are overall played classes is those above with Monk at 20 fully rolled up and played, 19 barbarians fully stated up and played, with Sorcerer barely beating the fighter with 14 over the fighters' 13
1. Rogue/Thief
2. Magic User/Wizard
3. Bard
Been playing since 1979
1. Sorcerer (we came over from AD&D and never played spontaneous casters before and love the bloodline idea)
2. Bard (Been in the list or second choice for almost every campaign we've thought of doing)
3. Cavalier (out of all the new classes, this seems to be really popular as well)
Paladin, Cleric, Sorceror.
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Not that this is necessarily proof of anything, but here are the number of pageviews for classes on d20pfsrd.com since August 2009:
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Class.............Pageviews
Sorcerer...........911,159
Wizard.............666,009
Rogue..............652,256
Fighter..............647,940
Monk.................639,021
Cleric................620,640
Ranger.............590,250
Oracle...............540,854
Alchemist..........478,024
Druid.................476,651
Barbarian..........439,009
Bard..................437,969
Magus................431,383
Paladin..............422,367
Summoner.........409,340
Witch................388,974
Inquisitor..........378,085
Cavalier............278,804
Gunslinger.........234,877
It's a toughie. In society where I am, It's a mix of
Rangers
Druids
Ninjas/Rogues
Wizards
Witches
And then I only know two people that play Magi (Me and our local CA).
And I think I'm the only gunslinger in our region (unless there was someone else.)
Yes, I know it wasn't top 3, but I couldn't decide, I see a lot of them equally (What was funny was at a beginner event, we made like 3 or 4 different witches.)
This is something that peaked my curiosity, and I now seek the community's input on it.
Please list the three pathfinder character classes most often played by your gaming group. If you prefer, or if you don't have enough data to draw from, include your experiences from various editions of D&D.
This is unscientific, and I don't expect anyone to have exact numbers, so use your best estimation.
For myself, I would say cleric, rogue and ranger. Its tough to narrow that down!
The group I play in has a Druid, a Cleric, a Wizard, a Fighter and two Monks... Kinda running the Gamut, except for a lack of Rogues.
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Jreyst, any chances for data on Ninja and Samurai?
Here is a bit more detailed view. Some of the numbers are a bit different because I had forgotten that the pagenames/paths on the site were changed over time so in the numbers above they did not include the pageviews for the same page but which previously had a different name or location on the site. The numbers below are corrected to include such (and include many more results). Note, as there are so many more rows I am not going to try to line up the results for easier viewing this time. That's kind of tedious lol
Page..........Pageviews
Sorcerer..........1,033,089
Wizard..........768,740
Rogue..........750,703
Cleric..........738,078
Fighter..........735,123
Monk..........730,726
Ranger..........682,046
Oracle..........540,854
Bard..........503,049
Barbarian..........502,044
Paladin..........494,138
Alchemist..........478,024
Druid..........476,651
Magus..........431,383
Summoner..........409,340
Witch..........388,974
Inquisitor..........378,085
Cavalier..........278,804
Gunslinger..........234,877
Ninja..........125,409
Dragon Disciple..........121,860
Shadowdancer..........113,996
Antipaladin..........106,941
Duelist..........103,590
Eldritch Knight..........97,824
Assassin..........93,684
Druid..........93,473
Arcane Archer..........89,872
Hellknight..........75,695
Arcane Trickster..........72,029
Artificer..........71,469
Samurai..........70,334
Diabolist..........69,642
Pathfinder Chronicler..........69,215
Mystic Theurge..........68,393
Holy Vindicator..........64,976
Loremaster..........57,979
Bloatmage..........53,911
Red Mantis Assassin..........52,143
Psion..........51,745
Battle Herald..........50,990
Chevalier..........48,857
Rage Prophet..........44,680
Stalwart Defender..........43,794
Master Chymist..........43,296
Soulknife..........42,826
Horizon Walker..........42,693
Master Spy..........41,794
Student Of War..........36,161
Psychic Warrior..........34,074
Agent Of The Grave..........33,314
Living Monolith..........31,853
Lion Blade..........31,247
Daivrat..........31,036
Steel Falcon..........29,640
Spherewalker..........29,514
Harrower..........27,593
Pathfinder Savant..........25,177
Pain Taster..........25,140
Justiciar..........24,747
Brightness Seeker..........24,002
Inheritors Crusader..........23,970
Divine Scion..........23,518
Low Templar..........23,222
Death Mage..........23,086
Balanced Scale Of Abadar..........22,421
Warlock..........21,880
Cyphermage..........21,872
Dragonrider..........21,662
Demoniac..........20,522
Liberator..........20,307
Nature Warden..........20,135
Pathfinder Delver..........19,807
Edit Added thousands separator (,) for easier readability.
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Also, note that the more recent/newer classes will obviously have far lower numbers since they've been up on the site less total time. Perhaps a better comparison would be the last 6 months if you want to see how some of the APG or other classes compare, but we've seen that as time passes and the newness of somethings wears off they settle back down.
Thanks for the info. Do you attribute the sorcerer's high ranking to the number of bloodline options or simply popularity of the class? I know that I have added a couple dozen hits to your barbarian page on my way to the rage power page.
Dragon Disciple is the most popular PrC page FTW!
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Quickly surveying the last few years of my gaming group, I was surprised to find that Rogue was #1.
The full list is:
1. Rogue
2. Ranger
3. Wizard
Everything else has had no more than one character playing that class since 2008.
Our games have a lot of puzzles and social situations, where versatile classes tend to win out. Surviving without either a long list of skills or spells has become difficult.
If there was a #4 it would be Fighter + Fighter variants (like ToB classes, or Fighter multiclasses with the first two on the list). We like Fighters, but usually multiclass because skills end up being a big deal.
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Also, note that the more recent/newer classes will obviously have far lower numbers since they've been up on the site less total time. Perhaps a better comparison would be the last 6 months if you want to see how some of the APG or other classes compare, but we've seen that as time passes and the newness of somethings wears off they settle back down.
Also certain classes need more referencing than others. Most fighter players dont need to look up their progression. Sorcs gotta check spells per day and spells known every level up.
My group top three
Cleric
Alchemist
Paladin
Bottom three
Druid
Inquisitor
Ranger
My favorite would be the ranger. ...though, I've also taken a shine to some of the artificer/engineer builds I've seen posted here. ':) So in order:
1. Ranger
2. Artificer/engineer/Alchemist
3. Witch
Well from the two groups I have played in most recently:
1. Paladin
2. Monk
3. Magus/Oracle
Paladin has been consistently chosen in all the groups/games. Monks are a class I have had players squabbling to choose, because they look so badass and thematic. Magus and Oracle have gained equal popularity.
From the last three groups:
Ranger
Cleric
Wizard/Witch (tie)
Me - Paladin
DM - Wizard
Guy 1 - Bard
Guy 2 - Barbarian or Warlock. We still haven't converted him from 3.5 :(
Thanks John for compiling all that info. Very interesting stuff.
1) Ranger
2) Wizard
3) Druid .... almost entirely from my picking the class in different variations.
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1) Wizard
2) Wizard
3) Sorcerer
4) Cleric
I love my casters. In the end though I'll try any class. With Pathfinder, the classes I haven't tried yet are Cavalier (and by extension Samurai), Ninja (have tried rogue), Barbarian.
I'm not a fan of mounts, haven't had a good opportunity to try a ninja, and I hate barbarians (despite one of my favorite characters played being one).
1) Alchemist
2) Witch
3) Rogue
Everyone in my party likes melee weapons over ranged weapons. Next to no one other then myself likes to stealth. Almost everyone in the party likes having a high ac and half of us like spell casters. Our Party right now consists of two fighters, a barbarian, a dervish dance magus, a witch, and a wildshape druid(myself). Needs more melee.
bard
summoner
oracle
counting up the 4 aps we run, and all the pfs i can remember in our local group
1. many fighter
2. several rogue, sorceror, cleric,
3. few wizards