You use Bilbo as an example...Bilbo left the Shire as the Everyman hobbit (though, Gandalf saw in him something that made him more than the typical hobbit); when he returned, he was much more than the Everyman hobbit. Same with Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry as shown by the Scourging of the Shire in the Return of the King. The entire point of the chapter was to show how much both the Shire and the hobbits themselves had changed in the time they were gone. I always thought D&D did a good job of showing that growth. The PCs might be the Everyman when the adventure begins, but how can they go on grand adventures or lead others to glory (or even safety if danger comes for them) unless they go beyond being the Everyman and become a Hero? The PCs are the stars of their own story...by being a star, by being the focus of a story, any story, they are already taken to a level above everyone else who is not the focus of the story, a level no one else can achieve.
I ran an adventure in which the PCs started at 0th level, and each had an NPC level to represent what they did in their village. It was a low-magic home-brew campaign. All the starting characters began in the same barbarian-ish village in the wilderness, having known each other from birth, and all had aspirations and plans for their life in the village. When the adventure began, one was hunter (expert class), one was training with the town shaman (adept), one was training to join the barbarian lodge (warrior class). After the adventure began, they rose above the others in the village (who were mostly various NPC classes) and joined the more elite ranks of character classes, showing their rise above the Everyman status as their journey progressed.
And I see the increase in low-level hps as an advantage to this Everyman image. In 3e, that first goblin encounter, every hit from the goblin's sword is a scewer through the character's chest that could result in utter death. One hit. On a crit, sure, that very well could represent a chest-scewer. But a regular hit should only be a cut, a small gash across the arm that, while painful and a hinderance, shouldn't knock the wizard out.
By increasing the HP at first level, WotC is decreasing the huge jump resilience betwen 1st and 2nd, and even 2nd and 3rd. Going from 10 hp to 18 is a dramatic powering up of a character from 1st to 2nd level. Going from 32 to 40 isn't such a large discrepency; there is no longer a practical doubling of a character's power because he went from 1st to 2nd lvl.
