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Message: <blockquote data-quote="roguish" data-source="post: 9796316" data-attributes="member: 7046843">I'm honestly not sure if I'm an outlier here, but I very much like both, and at the same time. I like PCs to be protagonists, I find it a lot more satisfying than treating them as expendable and replaceable character sheets. (Not that I don't enjoy a good old mindless hack-and-slash dungeoncrawl from time to time, but usually as an one-shot. A long campaign needs a story, and a story needs protagonists, not necessarily in the sense of "their actions shape their world", but always in the sense of Points of View. And they can't be thoughtlessly expendable, when they die it's a Big Deal.)But I'm also very drawn to the idea that the protagonists, the story's PoV characters, ARE ordinary people in a fantastical world, at least at starting point. That's the whole narrative purpose of D&D's level progression. You begin running away from lowly goblins, and if you survive, you end facing down a big bad dragon. That's incredibly satisfying, isn't it? But to make it satisfying, you gotta start low, down to earth, not this super powerful extra special group of Heroes™, already destined to do great deeds. That said, I agree that the designers seem to see it that way. If you'll allow me to <a href="https://theoutcastrogue.tumblr.com/post/757818324343209984/the-art-of-the-2024-phb-is-gorgeous-but-everyone" target="_blank">quote myself</a>:"The art of the 2024 PHB is gorgeous, but I think something very important is missing: everyone appears to be Level 20, brimming with power, happy, hale, strong, pretty, and rich. There's no humble beginnings, no adversity to overcome. No society experiences scarcity, no city has an underbelly, no tavern is seedy, no village temple is humble.And I think this tone is extremely off for a game where you level up. You don't start like that. You start at level 1, with next to nothing in terms of resources and skill and power (at least in comparison with what you'll get later), fighting for scraps. I think it'd be nice to see the scraps. And to witness the progression that's such an integral part of the game, from ragtag band to world-saving heroes."There was only ONE picture showing humble beginnings, a Protagonist with enough patches on his clothes to count as "ragtag", and of course it was a Rogue. You're welcome. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />[SPOILER='"Cunning Rogue" by Bryan Sola, PHB 2024, WotC'][ATTACH=full]421666[/ATTACH][/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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