Perhaps hiding their true strength, or hiding their true identity.  Perhaps they enter an area, where certain PC classes are not welcome?

A Thief, disguising themselves as a Fighter.

A Druid, disguising themselves as a Cleric.

A Wizard, disguising themselves as any other class.

What have you seen, at the table?

That's a tough one.

We have done lots of Mission Impossible style and James Bond style stuff in quite a few games.  It's easy when all it takes is imagination and a dice roll. 

A Jedi pretending to be a criminal getaway driver. 

A wizard pretending to be a cultist.

A bard pretending to be another cultist.  She did all the talking.

A dwarf cleric pretending to be a cultist, until righteous fury got the better of him.  At that point it was less sneaky and more explodey.

I suppose the greatest deception can be done by illusionists.  They routinely pretend to be a competent combat class. 

My Rogues usually present themselves as fighters. Why would you go around telling people you're a theif?  Once people know, it's just work, work, work.

Because we play under the setting assumption that class is mostly a game construct non-casters don't pass themselves off as anything; they're just warriors/adventurers (typically the former if they're good at fighting, the latter if they're not particularly good at fighting). In universe a thief is anyone, regardless of class, who steals from others.

Spellcasters are slightly more notable by their spell selection and casting style. The main "pass yourself off as another type of caster" that I've seen in play are Celestial Sorcerers and Warlocks passing themselves off as Clerics. Wizard spellbooks, Druidic restrictions, and Clerical devotion to deities tend to make them fairly recognizable... but to one who doesn't know them there's little to differentiate a Sorcerer from a Warlock from a Wizard not carrying their spellbook (and Tome Warlocks blur that line further).

In short, Divine spellcasting rarely passes itself off as anything but itself, Arcane casting often has which class they are unclear to non-arcane casters and with the right bloodline or patron can occasionally be confused for divine casters, and non-casters are just warriors/adventurers.

Oh, and Bards are... Bards. The music largely gives them away unless your GM is letting you pull off the Battle Orator... a bard whose 'instrument' is Warlord-esque Oratory to inspire the troops (which was explicitly an option in 3e, but requires some house-ruling/creative interpretation in 5e). If that's allowed then I've had Bards in late 4E (using the Skald subclass) and 5e who pass themselves off as charismatic and inspiring warriors and leaders of men.

I've regularly had wizards try their best not to look like wizards, because then they invite being attacked early by intelligent / tactical enemies who recognize wizards as glass cannons.

I seem to recall once in the 3E era having a monk dress up as a wizard, and the wizard dress up as a rogue. That way intelligent / tactical enemies targeted the monk who could dodge, and the wizard could get a good setup for spells.

I had a rule in Earthdawn where an Adept always displayed themselves as a follower of that Discipline unless they actually took effort to hide the fact.  The only exceptions were the Thief and the Illusionist.  Even the Sky Raider (air vikings) would be recognized as one when entering town.

It was fairly common in that game for them to hide their classes.

However there were some mechanical reasons in that game for why you'd want everyone to know your class due to the need to train with higher level Adepts in order to advance and also to help spread your Legend and get more experience.

I had an idea to play a D&D5e pact of the blade warlock that was convinced he was a paladin but never actually got the chance with the group unfortunately.

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 05, 2024, 03:22:39 PMBecause we play under the setting assumption that class is mostly a game construct non-casters don't pass themselves off as anything; they're just warriors/adventurers (typically the former if they're good at fighting, the latter if they're not particularly good at fighting). In universe a thief is anyone, regardless of class, who steals from others.

That's my take on it as well.  Characters in the game aren't aware of class; that would make for a really weird society and that's not the setting I want.

I played a sorcerer in one 3.5E game. I didn't want to multi-class him, but I wondered how decent a fighter he could be without being that class. I gave him a decent CHA but otherwise his best stats were STR, DEX and CON. And I only picked warrior-type feats for him (one that gave him extra HP, armour proficiency, two-handed sword proficiency and so on). He did pretty well in combat (even though HP was always his biggest problem). He passed himself off as a fighter.

That question popped up now and then on Reddit as a player idea.

The general advice was that it can work. But it can be tricky to pull off and the big reveal might end up a big "meh" depending on how it all played out.