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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 6762571" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Can you tell me which 5E rulebook this is from? What page?Prestidigitation is your friend here. Or travellers from a far land... Nouveau riche merchants, obviously... Mercenaries, then. Holy men don't wear the same gear to go spelunking as they do in church on a Sunday. Unless you're the most powerful wizard in the world, best save the pointy hat for Hallowe'en. Unless you've chosen 'Oratory' as your instrument, speaking in Patrick Stewart's best Jean-Luc Picard voice to Inspire Courage consistent with his Soldier background, and the party's cleric has the Entertainer background...You must take your 'deductions' with a pinch of salt. The idea that players 'must' live up to childish stereotypes or they're playing the game 'wrong' and should 'find another system instead' seems ridiculous, and ridiculously limiting in a game which is meant to free your imagination. No, my turn now.The list above is a list of fantasy RPG cliches, and I hate cliches! They make me....sick as a parrot!But it is not required that the PCs first meet in a bar! You aren't playing the game 'wrong' if you don't stick to these cliches. In fact, the further you steer away from then, the more verisimilitude the game will have.Even the part about just looking at a person and knowing what game mechanics they must have based on how they dress is metagaming. Even though a person could, in-game, deduce certain things by dress, body language and so forth, creatures in-game are not aware of game mechanics, only what observable effects those mechanics might produce in the game world. Creatures may very well see a caster using VSM components, saying the magic words, wiggling the fingers, persuading the pet bat to produce the material component for a fireball ("I can't go when you're looking at me!") and see a spell come out. They may (on a successful Arcana check) recognise the spell. But there's no way they could observe a warrior attack twice and deduce that "They must be a fighter using Action Surge because we're not 5th level yet!"If you dress in such a way that you advertise your abilities (metagaming or legitimate deduction), then you have put yourself at a disadvantage. It is in your interest to conceal your abilities in a combat situation, even if you display them in a social one. IRL, army officers wear a different style of uniform than 'the men', but officers and radio operators soon learned to conceal that as soon as enemy snipers became a threat. If you show which of you is the wizard, which the fighter, cleric, rogue, then you allow your enemies to target each with the worst thing. If you can predict which of them has a low will save, low hit points, can cast spells, etc. then you have a huge advantage. Behavior will evolve to account for this.I play a lot of warrior-types. They usually wear light armour (mithral shirt under normal clothes, mithral breastplate) and could be any class. Fighter? Could be. Rogue? Possible. Elven wizards can use longswords. You could look at most of my PCs and not 'know' what class they are. Who guessed paladin? Well done. His holy symbol is behind his lapel, and I make sure that all my PCs wear a holy symbol anyway, regardless of whether or not they use divine magic.The cliches in your list above are much more common in actual play by players who haven't thought it through. Teenagers, older players more interested in comedy then realism....people who think that 'class' is a real thing in the game world....</blockquote>

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