Quote Originally Posted by Dark Matter View Post
Wait, what? When was he ever shown to be "weak"? When he showboated and got thrown into an epic gate by Roy?

Put yourself in Xykon's shoes for the first battle. The entire plan was to get the order to open the gate. Other than that... he's bored and has EVERY reason to make some grand show out of it. He's 15 levels above the Order and there's NO chance that he'll get any experience. He cast magic missile for a while to burn actions, and was always more concerned about his villain speech then the OOTS.

After that what do we have? His murder of Roy? He didn't take that fight very seriously either btw. Him curb stomping the entire Sapphire Guard? His loss to the seriously epic ghost of Soon? From SOD we know that the creation of a gate requires two epic spellcasters... both of whom he killed.

The Order of the Scribble hits the radar as seriously epic. Ditto Xykon. Him losing to them (or vise versa) doesn't give us a handle on either him nor them.

Xykon is the big bad and the PCs are so far below him there's no point in bothering to remember their names.

IMHO that's what bugs people. The PCs are basically insects to him, and we like Roy and the others. Xykon wasn't built to be a "fair" or even "win-able" encounter, not now and not when the PCs get a few more levels of experience.

Narratively fighting him is fighting a desperate, hopeless battle. The PCs are Frodo up against Sauron.
Very good points. This is one reason I discredit the "he didn't act like it" argument for 21+, along with its being very subjective.