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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4152391" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, the problem for the people I'm talking about is that if the game says the PC gets something extra just because they're the PC, and that the others don't have it, simply because they're not PCs, is that it sets up an inherent difference between the characters that the players control and every other character, rather than allowing that difference to come out of role-playing alone. Yeah, I could give the guards some more powers, but the real problem is that the 5th level PC fighter is DIFFERENT, in some way that the rest of the guards will recognize.I mean, think of Sam or Merry from LotR. Rather mundane examples of average people in their homes. They become heroes not because they can get beat up more than other hobbits, but because they choose to face the unknown with only the same abilities that every other hobbit has. Sam helps fight evil with the power of cooking and sewing and being vaguely homoerotic. Something I'm sure the rest of the hobbits do all the time, even when they're not in the shadow of Mount Doom. Or think of childhood fantasy, like Alice in Wonderland. Alice is a pretty normal girl who gets in way over her head. She's not heroic because she can kill more goblins, she's not more especially suited to thwarting the Queen of Hearts than any other little girl, but she's the main character because it's about her.D&D has never really tried to be "normal folks in fantastic situations," but people have used it for that, and 4e might very well make doing that harder.</blockquote>

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