Surprise surprise, but the most equipped weapon in Dungeons & Dragons by far is the humble dagger, according to D&D Beyond.
Every so often, D&D Beyond heads to Twitch to share a developer update. Sometimes it’s just to talk about new products and services, and sometimes it’s to dish on all the juicy statistics that having the largest D&D-related website on the web can produce. This is one of those times.
If you want to listen to Adam talk about all the cool stuff coming to D&D Beyond, check out the video below from the beginning, but if you want the fun stats, skip ahead to around the 17-minute mark where he busts out the charts.
Watch Dev Update 9am PT from DnDBeyond on www.twitch.tv
Starting with armor. Unsurprisingly, the most equipped armor is leather armor. Since leather can be worn by pretty much every class in the game and provides a useful bonus to AC, pretty much every character will wear it unless they can wear the next-best-thing, which is chainmail. Shields are number two on the list, which again provides a useful bonus to AC so long as you have a free hand in combat.
Leather, chainmail, and shields are also often in a character’s starter equipment, and since most games don’t reach the higher levels where better equipment becomes available, it makes sense that most characters on D&D Beyond are wearing these three types of armor.
When it comes to weapons, the humble dagger reigns supreme. As a simple weapon, anyone can wield a dagger and get an extra 1d4 on their melee attacks--a useful item for magic users when all else fails or for rogues who want something easily concealed. But every class should have a backup weapon, and the dagger is most often it.
Next on the list comes shortswords, handaxes, and the light crossbow. All of these weapons are considered simple and are therefore easily wielded by almost all classes. The handaxe is a strict upgrade to the dagger if you want a throwing weapon or just something you can dual-wield, while the light crossbow provides a reliable long-range damage option to melee fighters.
The rapier comes at number five on the list of most-used weapons as the quite simply the best damage option for a dexterity-based character.
Check out the video above to see what the most equipped magic item is. We’ll give you a hint: it makes inventory management a breeze.
Source: D&D Beyond on Twitch