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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9500659" data-attributes="member: 6877472">Well, the comment that sparked this thread was someone saying that they miss the narrative of players starting off as inexperienced farmhands and whatnot.  I want to point out that when I was playing early D&D and AD&D, nowhere did I ever see any indication that this was what was expected, but there's a lot of self-identified "old skoolers" who claim that's how the game was.And that's what made me remember the picture of the old warrior in the CFH next to the Myrmidon Kit (the same picture is on the cover of Fighter's Challenge) and I wondered if this was the first time the game came out and said "no, actually, you're not Cowhand #5".  I'd forgotten about the old class titles, and "Veteran" is fairly telling.I do think Zero to Hero gets conflated a lot- there's the narrative aspect, which apparently was never proposed by the books, but just sort of manifested out of the aether (probably by DM's thinking of heroes who are assistant pig keepers, farmboys, or lowly squires who go off and have adventures), and the "start off super weak and get more powerful from there", which has changed over time.  In AD&D a 1st level character might be challenged by a thrown knife or a housecat. In 4e, they have enough hit points to face an ogre, and while 5e has scaled back from that, characters are much more likely to survive.  In fact, once they get to level 2 or 3, it becomes almost impossible to die outright, even from a critical hit!Either way, if the game did change the way some say it did, 2e apparently wasn't the moment where it happened.  Thanks for the replies, everyone!</blockquote>

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