Class and Level Geekery XVII - When you Wish upon a Stat...

[TooSoon]

It's not apples to apples, though; there is a viable ACF (Metamagic Specialist) which can explain a both good deal of Xykon's metamagic abilities as well as his noted lack of familiar. You're choosing to ignore that and focus only on the invisible metamagic rod, which I will completely agree is unlikely.

A.) Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has been assessed in this thread based on probabilities and assumptions. Kurald Galain may correct me on that, but assuming it is true, then you seem to be advocating for Xykon to get treatment that others don't, if you want probability to be a deciding factor.

Probably, since there is no ACF which would explain both that and another notable feature involving V.

I mentioned the balance of probabilities only because you yourself referred to it earlier.

It's just as possible for V to have an ACF which would explain him being able to use metamagic that he would otherwise need higher spell slots for. We haven't seen any evidence V has it, but we haven't seen any evidence Xykon has it either. He could be doing all his metamagic with higher slots like V has been assumed to. If we're going to treat them both the same, then Xykon should get considered to be level 27+ due to the extra spell slots by the same logic you'd be using to support V.