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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ruleslawyer" data-source="post: 4216322" data-attributes="member: 1757">I second what Ingolf said.To add: I think that too many folks have developed a "gotcha" response to 4e's terminology regarding "heroic," "paragon," and "epic" tiers. They're just shorthand; it doesn't mean that a 1st level PC is an Instant! Legendary! Hero!The examples of bildungsroman in the OP are actually quite telling, for a couple of reasons. First off, Bilbo is a poor example of a D&D PC in general precisely because he *is* an "everyman hero"; he doesn't really make Campbell's heroic journey and he doesn't particularly advance in skill and power (references to his accomplishments in The Hobbit refer to his already extant resourcefulness and stealthiness). There's also the fact that he actually *is* exceptional to begin with; there are plenty of references to "something queer" in Bilbo's Tookish side and to a hitherto-unknown dormant adventurous spirit inside him that awakens when the dwarves come knocking.Ged is an even less apposite example: He is *clearly,* at the start of AWoE, described as being of exceptional talent. As a young boy, he's capable of summoning a fog that blankets an entire island, and he uses magic even after only rudimentary instruction. Not to mention the fact that he has a destiny, as Ogion indicates. He's practically the prototype of a 4e PC!I'm also inclined to think that people who are bemoaning the loss of the modestly-powered hero are seriously overestimating how powered-up 4e level 1 PCs are. Really, the only thing that the changes to 4e PCs are accomplishing is to level out the power curve a bit, which if anything is *truer* to genre emulation than not. Fights will last a bit longer, is pretty much all. The fact that wizards can pull off a low-level magic missile effect in place of firing a crossbow strikes me as being *more* evocative of traditional literary wizards, not less. (Besides, how many low-level wizards *are* there in fantasy lit?)All of this is not to mention those characters in the fiction that influenced D&D who are pretty darn capable at the start of their careers. Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Cugel, and numerous others may get better as they go, but they're not wimps to start with.Then, of course, there is the other issue that complicates the bildungsroman discourse tremendously: Namely, the fact that D&D at least contemplates the possibility that any given PC will rise to the level of godlike power. "Everyman hero" stories don't really take characters along that dramatic an arc; for literary inspiration in that vein, you really have to look at stories like the Earthsea trilogy or the ancient legends (say, Heracles or Beowulf). In short, I think that the bildungsroman tradition encompasses a *lot* more than the "everyman hero" story the OP is citing, and I think that in fantasy at least, the heroes tend to resemble 4e 1st-level PCs at the start more often than they resemble 1e-3e 1st-level PCs... unless the concern is about a lack of easy mortality and low/dangerous magic, in which case one needs an entirely different system anyway.</blockquote>

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