Yeah, but it's still strange that the hero often acquires huge amounts of power in a few weeks or months where it took the bad guy a long time, often hundreds or even thousands of years. Same is true in RPG's on the computer: non-player characters in AD&D are extremely powerful at level 18, and often very old, while the 'adventurer' can reach level 18 in a few weeks of game time. For example, in Icewind Dale, you can go from level 1 to 21 or so in under 70 game days
