I've been thinking about creating a charcter thats maybe like a dragonborn sorcercere but, due to the scrutiny parents went through, his birth was hidden and he was raised by someone else. Then maybe he was given some sort of seal that hides his draconic features from everyone and himself and he grows up learning to be a wizard but he's actually a sorcerer. Does that make sense? Is that possible and has anyone attempted anything like this? 

This would be kept secret from the other players, only the DM would know, and throughout the story maybe the character starts to show a little of his real side and eventually finds out who he is. Just an idea I've been trying to develop. What do you guys think?

Im new to DnD as well, I've only played two short sessions.

I'm also super new so I don't know how much of this is feasible, but I like it. I think it would all depend on his class features and stuff like that. What a cool journey to self discovery though!

I have always felt it was difficult to deceive the other PCs without causing hard feelings.  Be careful how you manage this.

I think it is reasonable for the concept to make abilities obscure, but you would have to exercise a pretty high degree of DM involvement by establishing what you will allow and won't allow.  It can easily become a situation where this one player becomes the focus of the campaign and the other players become bystanders.

Ah, I can how that could happen. It would probably just be up to the dm to see how fast the character develops and when but I didnt consider that, thanks.

I'm having trouble making this work in my head.  You can easily deceive your party as to what your class is for a little while, but there are mechanical differences between all the classes that are going to come out in play.  Surely everyone is going to notice that your "spell book" is just doodles of wangs or something.  Or that you put all of your ASIs into CHA instead of INT?  You wouldn't want to eschew metamagic completely, but once you use it, you're revealing that you're not a wizard (and this doesn't touch on the differences between a dragonborn and whatever it is your character would be posing as).

I'd sit down with your DM and talk about the best way to handle this and I undersign all of MusicScout's reservations.  The game is built to accommodate a lot of weird ideas, but wrongfooting your fellow players is just going to lead to static.  I think you can write a guy who's on a journey of discovery about himself without misleading the other players.  Maybe revisit the idea down the road when you have more experience.

As a DM I'd allow it in the following way:

Use the dragonborn stats but while "sealed" you look human and cannot use the Dragonbreath or have the Damage Resistance. I allow some racial languages to be a blood-granted thing in some cases, so while "sealed" you wouldn't understand Draconic.

You would have the Wizard class. Your powers sealed and unused and you did actually learn the Wizard stuff. 

When you are ready to reveal your character's true nature: you gain full access to the racial traits and from then on you can multiclass into Sorcerer. 

I feel anything other than this isn't going to work in a way that is fair or makes sense. 

Ye

Yeah this should work I just couldnt find a way to explain it right since I'm new to the game, thanks for breaking it down for me that helos a lot.

I have had players hide race from the other players in a campaign - the presented as a half elf but were really and Asimar. We made a fake character sheet that they used until the reveal. It made a cool moment for the other characters and you get to have genuine surprise also avoiding meta gaming.

in the sand campaign due to the home-brew setting being a warlock is like the most illegal thing you could do - naturally a player wanted to be a warlock - but the PC pretends they are a wizard. In this instant the other PC’s know this, which ended up with one of the characters constantly trying to put them.

hiding things isn’t bad in an RP heavy group. It gives the players some real surprise to react to the reveal. 

But honestly you said you have only played 2 sessions, you can have cool story stuff happen without having to trick out your character sheet for suprises. Talk to your DM and tell them that’s what you want out of the game.

My only take on the concept is what's the point game play wise to have a "mystery" about your character that you the player already know the answer to, other than having a "secret" from the rest of the party?  I think the only time I saw this sort of thing done right is where everyone gets to join in on the act, so everyone has a "dark secret" a la the suggestions for character creation in Rime of the Frostmaiden.

The "best way" offered you in this thread is a bit much.  At some point down the line your character can gain its racial traits and multi class.  At that point in the game, because of the needs of the game you're actually playing, not your backstory, you may want to do something else (like take a feat in firearms, or become a Monk or Barbarian etc).  In other words don't marry your character to history.  Let them go forth into the story's future freely.

True story: in AD&D the supplement that attempted to introduce East Asian mytho-fantasy tropes (Samaurai, Ninja etc) in the game had the Ninja.  Ninja were never publicly "ninja".  Rather they were a split class where they had to take some other official class and tack on the Ninja.  Once I played in a campaign as a Assassin Acrobat (technically illegal in that edition as only Thieves could become acrobats, the Assassin was a separate class that couldn't take on the acrobat subclass) because my DM gave me a pass.  At one point in the game it turned out all the other characters were all secretly ninjas except me, that fact was why the DM gave me that pass.  It was fun, but also absurd and stupid and there are better ways of playing the game than hiding stuff from each other from session 0 on.  Your not playing Stratego against the other players, you're all in this together and a party should get an honest sense of everyone's capabilities.

I think this is a fantastic idea! :) I DM'd for a player who began as an elf and slowly morphed into a half-dragon through the dragon disciple prestige class in third edition. It wasn't about the "secret" - everyone at the table knew what his goal was. The excitement came from experiencing the story and the slow evolution of the character. Just because people know the goal doesn't mean the campaign can't still be interesting and fun.

I hope it goes well!!

It’s not about “ooh I have a secret” but in many ways it gives both the player and the party to facilitate RP. Like in a mechanics driven game about encounters and combat there is no point. equally if it was a sourcebook campaign. But in a narrative heavy RP it can be a cool thing. You as the player get to ask yourself “does my character want to reveal this yet”, the DM gets to set up encounters and interactions to drive you and test how you share.

If everyone knows everyone’s secrets then it can overly encourage meta gaming. Giving players hidden information is good and can be rewarding. It can drive narrative, story and give motivation to approach things in different ways.

There was a similar thread that went on quite a long time, about a character pretending to be a different class, but in that case, the character knew it.

Wizard is a learned skill, so the character could feasibly multiclaas in wizard and sorcerer. He would actually pick up some things at wizard school, although maybe his Int isn't especially high and he's a slow learner.

Most level 1 sorcerer spells are also on the wizard list, so you could imagine him cheating his way through wizard school by actually using his sorcerer abilities to achieve the same effect.