handful_ofdust

I guess the idea is that villains are supposed to be defeatable, so that the heroes can defeat them. But the point of Conan was that he often came up against people who were far more powerful than he was and still managed to either survive or defeat them, because they did what they were best at and he did what he was best at, and those things rarely tended to overlap. Low cunning and an iron will can, in fact, go up against dark magic; it's not necessary to stack the deck in order to have Conan get out alive, or Zym and Marique defeat themselves even IF they're bringing their "A" game. Howard managed it very well.