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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 6778518" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Was it a spell? What if it was a subtle spell cast by a sorcerer? What if it was a spell-like or supernatural ability? What if it was an NPC whose abilities don't map directly to a character class; there are infinitely more NPCs than PCs? What if it was a multiclass PC? What if you just didn't notice the components?And 'Law of Averages'? I've worked in casinos for over quarter of a century, and that little myth is what keeps us in business. The fact that more PCs than usual made their saves (how is that observable!) does not indicate that there must be an aura around which gives them a bonus to their saves, therefore there must be a paladin around! What about good or bad rolls? What about other abilities/spells which increase saves? What about magic items? There is absolutely no way for Orcus or anyone else to reason that because four out of five targets made their save that therefore there must be a paladin about!But class abilities are not always concrete. 'Saving throw bonuses' are not observable, and frequency of saves being made/failed is not only difficult to observe (if at all) but impossible to pin down to the bonus. When dealing roulette, I know that there is an equal chance of a red number or a black number, but if I didn't know that but tried to work out the odds by simply tallying the results, you might expect that there would be an equal number of red and black, but you'd be a fool to believe that. I've spun 17 black numbers in a row before now, and it was just a mild curiosity because we have an electronic board which shows the last 17 numbers and they were all black. For any period of time short of infinity, your mere observations are extremely unlikely to see an equal number of reds and blacks, therefore you could not reach the conclusion that there must be an equal chance for each result.The only reason we know that the chances are equal is that we can see the numbers in the wheel! 18 red and 18 black. The point is that although the game rules can tell us that there is a definite +2 to this save, the creatures in the world cannot know the game mechanics, only observe the results, and the results do not reveal the game mechanics with any certainty.In real life, physics is what it is, but even we cannot know what it really is for a certainty, only to have our guesses get closer and closer.Rubbish! Rolling a 1 on damage is as much about the target trying to twist out of the way as the force of the blow. Luck and unpredictable chaos is such a huge factor that the game never said that weapons do, say, 7 damage; they made it a random number to account for this. The orc isn't swinging with random strength or skill, but the result is random anyway. You cannot observe a single swing and know the game mechanics behind it, and therefore you cannot know them even by observing multiple swings. Even if you get a set of results which seem to prove a point, what point? You can say that these swings did more damage on average (although that is unreliable; you just might have rolled well lots of times), but you cannot say that the increased damage must be because he is raging, therefore he must be a barbarian! There are many, many ways to increase damage!If the 10 hp fireball kills 5 people but the 40 point one only scorches 5 others, how can the creatures in game know which fireball was more deadly? How do you know that only evoker wizards can do this? What about NPCs? Magic items? multiclass PCs? Classes, spells yet to be written? Don't sorcerers have a metamagic ability to do this? If not yet, they might in a future supplement.And all this doubt, even when you have the PHB in your hand! The creatures in game cannot know any of that!No they don't! Champions have more chance of critting, but this does not mean that they actually get more crits! And as you pointed out, crits are not observable.I acknowledge that some class abilities are observable, but I'm saying that those observations cannot allow the creatures in game to know what 'class' a person is, because they can never be certain that what they are observing is the result of a class ability, because 'class' is a game mechanic and they cannot know about game mechanics.First, 'bonus actions' are not observable as being 'bonus actions'! Next, although wizards/sorcerers/bards/druids in some ways (but not all ways) approach magic differently, so does each individual wizard/sorcerer/bard/druid! Every character is an individual, and an observer cannot know that the differences he observes are because they are different 'classes' (a game mechanic) or just different styles. Sure, a guy might say he is a Druid, and 'Druid' might very well be an in game title, but the guy may be lying? He may be pretending to be a Druid by using similar abilities and be skilled in Deception. He may legitimately have the in game title without actually having any druid class levels.Since PCs can multiclass, can acquire magic items, fluff their abilities in many different ways, and since NPCs are not limited to the class system and vastly outnumber PCs, there is no way for an in game observer to assemble the observations into 'class' that matches the info in the PHB. He can't even tell if a person he meets is a PC or an NPC. And my rebuttal is that so many things affect the game world in similar ways is it not possible for an observer to observe the game mechanic of 'class' through observing what happens in his world.</blockquote>

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