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Message: <blockquote data-quote="awesomeocalypse" data-source="post: 5167000" data-attributes="member: 85641">This pretty much gets it for me. In fantasy fiction, heroes generally overcome impossible odds, get insanely lucky, pull insane comebacks out of their ass, etc. This is part of why they're "heroes" and not chumps--it is understood that 99.9% percent of people, if faced with the odds the heroes face, would die. There are two basic approaches to handling this. One, which older editions take, is to simulate the world in which virtually impossible odds are just that, insane luck really is a remarkable appearance, and when faced with a million to one chance at surviving something, 999,999 people are gonna die in that situation. The "hero" who overcomes all that must do so naturalistically, i.e. he must actually be really lucky and whatnot. Heroism is determined after the fact--going into a dungeon, you have no idea whether your character will end up a chump or a hero, and odds are good you'll be a chump. Getting to play a character who functioned naturalistically the way that heroes do in fiction was a rare and extraordinary thing. Fourth edition instead steps back and looks at things from a much more "meta" perspective--the heroes in fiction aren't heroes because they get lucky, they get lucky because they're the heroes. If they were just chumps who'd die in random and unimportant ways, then they never would have been main characters in the first place. The very fact that the writer has designated them as the hero predestines them for greatness. In 4e, you play the designated heroes. it is assumed that you will get "impossibly" lucky, have miraculous comebacks, etc. In fact, the system is specifically designed to create those sorts of scenarios consistently. In other words, old editions say, "okay, you're a farmboy who wants to be a hero, let's see if you get lucky enough to actually be one" Fourth editions says "okay, you're a hero, and by virtue of that fact you WILL get lucky enough to function as such." I prefer the 4th edition approach because, well, I want to be the main character from day one. I don't want to roll up a guy and then play for a while to find out if he has what it takes/is lucky enough to be the legendary hero I want him to be. But I understand why, if you liked the idea of "earning" your heroism, the notion that any PC could just as easily be a faceless mook as a great hero, 4th edition would turn you off.</blockquote>

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