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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6793577" data-attributes="member: 996">There's a couple of understandable reasons. For one thing, the character may well be the archetype a class is based on.  The Grey Mouser isn't just a Thief, he inspired the class.  Gandalf is one of the first 'wizards' you think of when you hear the word - Merlin is the other.  It's intuitive for them to represent the full level range of the class, they embody.For another, literary characters have the author on their side, while RPG characters need to be able to survive the vagaries of random dice rolls and player contrariness.  One way to do that is jack up the levels.Maybe.  Or maybe not.  Such things are always relative.  In 3e you could have an Orc with just as many levels of barbarian or warrior or whatever as the DM felt like.  In 4e the DM could use MM3 formulae or the MB to easily stat out a monster to challenge a character or whole party of a given level - and, with a little experience & art a DM could do so in any other edition, as well.  The same observation about having the  author on your side comes to mind. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  A hero, even an 'everyman hero' might always succeed when the chips are down in a story (and the story calls for it), but in an RPG he needs to have the bonuses to do so consistently.Also, D&D classes tend to be pretty specialized, while heroes tend to be very broadly capable, and high stats can model broad competence in spite of the class system.'Noble' and 'Half Elf' Ranger.  Check.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  But having to 'worry' about orcs doesn't make you low level.  In 5e, a relatively small number of orcs, let alone an army, could whittle you down in short order if you don't have some sort of magical protection against a hail or rocks or arrows or whatever they're tossing at you, so that doesn't prevent him from being high-level. Similarly, in 4e, an Orc could be a minion able to similarly put a little hurt on even a high level character, or an arbitrarily high level Templated monster (empowered by a god or Pact or just as villainous as the PCs are heroic), or part of a 'mob' statted as a single much higher level creature.  Likewise in 3e you could just give the orc warrior or PC class levels, or in later 3.5, stick him in a swarm.  Prior to that, sure, needing to 'fear orcs' might've argued against being high level...  Of course, Aragorn 'feared orcs' in part because he was allied with much less capable halflings, and cared about nations and peoples that could be overrun by orc armies, no matter how many orcs he might personally be able to beat down in an afternoon.And he was a 5th-level magic user.  ;PGenerally true.  It is also a game, afterall, and a cooperative one.  Most genre heroes go it alone or with the odd side-kick, mentor, or victim their charged with helping.  D&D classes all need to contribute, and that can be hard to arrange without some heavy-handed mechanism like niche-protection.  Fictional heroes could certainly get very 'high-powered,' mapping to high-level, but even setting that aside, high levels being problematic wouldn't keep the game from being able to model genre w/in it's 'sweet spot.'</blockquote>

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