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“At last the work of generations is complete. The great error is corrected. The day of victory is at hand. The day of revenge. The day of the Downgrade!”
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This thread will argue for downgrading important aspects of the Disney Canon of the Star Wars franchise. Different topics will be covered, which are:
- Downgrade of Palpatine and those who scale to him
- Force Users' Combat Speed downgrade
- Durability downgrade
- Lightsaber revision
Part 1: The Fall of Sheev
Galactic Emperor Palpatine might have fallen to the Dark Side, but this doesn't stop him from falling a few tiers. This has been a long time coming.The context is that once upon a time, before a certain movie that shall remain unnamed, Palpatine was scaled to Large Town level due to crashing a shuttle with the Force which made it explode. Then that movie came and Palpatine literally shocked a fleet of +100,000 ships, without harming his tens of thousands of giant planet-busting ships.
A perfectly wasted opportunity for a dramatic ship-battle double-KO if you ask me; with so many ships on the winning side being unable to tell up from down in that weather.
It has been pointed out that Palpatine was amped by something called "Force Dyad", but it has been argued that we should assume that Palpatine just used that Dyad thing to heal himself, and that this was his normal power all along. Not anymore! As this has been thoroughly refuted by the novelization.
Interestingly enough, this also led to Darth Vader getting a possibly Mountain level tier supported by speculation that he blocked a proton torpedo after he has already veered it off-course, this was previously rejected as an outlier.
Quotes from the novelization of the movie that shall not be named is below:
The Emperor gasped. Stared at his hands, which had begun knitting themselves back together, bones regrowing, pale flesh closing over them. “The life-force of your bond,” he said, his voice tinged with wonder. “A dyad in the Force!”
His gleeful triumphant thoughts washed over Rey, as she struggled against his grip, unable to move. He had won. At last. All those years, all that searching. He’d tried to create a dyad with Anakin, as his master had tried to create one with him. The Rule of Two, a Master always in desperate search of a yet more powerful apprentice, was a pale imitation, an unworthy but necessary successor to the older, purer doctrine of the Dyad.
“Unseen for generations,” he crowed. “And now the power of two restores the one true Emperor!”
He raised his perfect, healed hands, and called on all the dark power of the Force and the Sith who had come before him, and pulled their life from their very bodies. It poured from them like a river of light, leaving them weaker and weaker.
The Emperor laughed as his body strengthened, became whole. The milky film faded from his eyes, revealing golden irises around obsidian pupils.
...
Rey and Ben lay collapsed on the floor as Emperor Palpatine released himself from the Ommin harness and drifted down. He stood straight and strong now. Invincible.
The Emperor raised his voice to the throng. “Look what you have made,” he said. Their chanted response was thunderous, and he stood, hands slightly raised, as if absorbing their worship as power.
...
“Do not fear their feeble attack, my faithful!” the Emperor said, Ben already forgotten. His lips spread apart into a nightmarish grin, and he lifted his face to Exegol’s sky. “Nothing will stop the return of the Sith!”
He raised his hands as though reaching toward the battle overhead. Even through her haze of weakness and exhaustion, Rey could sense him draw on the Force. The Emperor’s power was staggering now. No, their power. Hers and Ben’s.
Tears streamed down her face as he used their stolen power to create a conduit of Force lightning. Writhing, crooked tendrils of light shot from his fingers, coalesced into a thick stream of light that burst into the sky, flooding the Resistance ships. They sparked helplessly against the onslaught, tilting on their axis.
...
The Emperor’s power was beautiful to behold, reaching ever higher, spreading out like a flower of light. In a way, she and Ben had made that. But the Emperor was using it for unspeakable evil. And now she was helpless. Dying.
...
His attack intensified. “You are nothing!” he yelled. “A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me. I am all the Sith!”
His gleeful triumphant thoughts washed over Rey, as she struggled against his grip, unable to move. He had won. At last. All those years, all that searching. He’d tried to create a dyad with Anakin, as his master had tried to create one with him. The Rule of Two, a Master always in desperate search of a yet more powerful apprentice, was a pale imitation, an unworthy but necessary successor to the older, purer doctrine of the Dyad.
“Unseen for generations,” he crowed. “And now the power of two restores the one true Emperor!”
He raised his perfect, healed hands, and called on all the dark power of the Force and the Sith who had come before him, and pulled their life from their very bodies. It poured from them like a river of light, leaving them weaker and weaker.
The Emperor laughed as his body strengthened, became whole. The milky film faded from his eyes, revealing golden irises around obsidian pupils.
...
Rey and Ben lay collapsed on the floor as Emperor Palpatine released himself from the Ommin harness and drifted down. He stood straight and strong now. Invincible.
The Emperor raised his voice to the throng. “Look what you have made,” he said. Their chanted response was thunderous, and he stood, hands slightly raised, as if absorbing their worship as power.
...
“Do not fear their feeble attack, my faithful!” the Emperor said, Ben already forgotten. His lips spread apart into a nightmarish grin, and he lifted his face to Exegol’s sky. “Nothing will stop the return of the Sith!”
He raised his hands as though reaching toward the battle overhead. Even through her haze of weakness and exhaustion, Rey could sense him draw on the Force. The Emperor’s power was staggering now. No, their power. Hers and Ben’s.
Tears streamed down her face as he used their stolen power to create a conduit of Force lightning. Writhing, crooked tendrils of light shot from his fingers, coalesced into a thick stream of light that burst into the sky, flooding the Resistance ships. They sparked helplessly against the onslaught, tilting on their axis.
...
The Emperor’s power was beautiful to behold, reaching ever higher, spreading out like a flower of light. In a way, she and Ben had made that. But the Emperor was using it for unspeakable evil. And now she was helpless. Dying.
...
His attack intensified. “You are nothing!” he yelled. “A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me. I am all the Sith!”
Of course, Palpy gets a "Island Level after absorbing the Force Dyad" thing, but his normal power and the power of the 'top-tiers' who scale to Palpatine falls down hard. The result should be pretty similar to the pre-upgrade scaling.
It is of note that Palpatine can draw power from the previous Sith Lords, though it is unknown if he had this ability in the Prequels, but either way the Rule of Two is no longer cool; the Force Dyad is a legendary power sought by the Sith, and the Rule of Two was created in an attempt to acquire it, so it is clearly significantly higher than Palpatine's normal power if he wanted it so much during his peak, and Rey attributed the lightning feat to her Dyad with Ben.
On the light side, peak Darth Vader gets to scale closely to Darth Sidious again... so yay!
Part 2: The Error of MHS+ Combat Speed
The speed rating for a competent Force User in the Wiki appears (minus justification) as something along these lines:
| Subsonic running speeds with Force Speed, Massively Hypersonic+ combat speeds and reactions augmented by precognition |
To begin with, I'd like to clarify that I have no issue with MHS+ reactions due to reacting to lightning n'all. But the MHS+ combat speed part is non-sense in Disney Canon. Why?
Because Master-level Jedi constantly struggle against, and sometimes get their ass kicked, by bounty hunters, war lords, mercenaries, assassin droids, and the like. We are not talking about a couple of instances we can dismiss as outliers, we are talking about something that repeatedly happens again and again, and we have seen dozens of times throughout movies, cartoons, and comics. A trained non-Force User can keep up with trained Force Users in combat. If you, the reader, is familiar with the standard Star Wars canon then making a list for something so common is redundant as you should be able to recall a few instances. But here is an example any way:
So Jedi combat speed gets downgraded to subsonic... since they are able to keep up with an opponent trained enough to show subsonic reactions... instead of blitzing a few subsonic opponents who would appear frozen in time if the Jedi were strolling around in MHS+ speed.
The latest Squadrons game confirmed that the projectiles of star fighter laser and ion cannons move at 2000 m/s, which is faster than the subsonic speed assumed for blasters. This probably doesn't scale to blasters, but it would be grounds for upgrade if a non-Force User was seen dodging something similar.
Part 3: The Decline of Durability
This section is all about striking down the Durability of Canon Star Wars characters. The rating for durability among Force Users who aren't too uncool tend to be along the lines of:
| Durability: Wall level naturally. Large Town level with Force Amplification |
Incidentally, the Striking Strength of Force Users is more or less:
| Large Town Class Force Amplification |
Oh wow, so canon Star Wars characters can just make a passive force barrier and casually tank those puny Wall level and Small Building level blaster shots.
Heh. Imagine bringing a pea shooter to a Force fight.
Except that does not happen. Canon Force users are perfectly harmable with normal blasters, and they never attempt to no-sell blaster shots (maybe... because they can't use the Force this way just like they can't use it to fly?). Even Vader who is superior to 99% of Force Users gets harmed from blasters while wearing his armor.
There are instances where Force Users explicitly create a Force Barrier (by placing their hand forward) which makes blaster bolts disperse, freeze, or bend, but where can we find Force Amplification that allows Force Users to shrug-off blaster bolts hitting their body (thus making lightsaber deflection unneeded)? Because this is exactly what the rating implies. Tanking nearby Tier 9 sized explosions from lasers that miss the Force Users don't count.
Likewise, it is also news to me that Force Users can physically punch through fortified doors.
Force Amplification is a thing, but it is jacked to absurd degrees that do not reflect the materials in canon.
There is also an other thing to address. Grievous' durability is Large Town Level scaling to Karbin. So what did Karbin do?
| Durability: Large Town level (Has taken telekinetic thrashings from post Skywalker Strikes arc Darth Vader, who was powerful enough to casually wreck an AT-AT with his telekinesis. Was still alive and functional, albeit severely damaged, after being rammed at full speed by Aphra’s Ark Angel, an armed light freighter sized transport. For reference; Black Krrsantan’s anti-slaver ship, which is dwarfed by the Ark Angel, was able to damage and ground the Millennium Falcon by ramming it at full speed) |
Yeah... This is wank. The only 'telekinetic thrashings' Karbin received (and by 'telekinetic thrashings' I mean general use of the Force), are just these two instances:
1) Vader drops a statue on Karbin, and Karbin is implied to have dodged the statue narrowly. 2) Vader lightly Force Pushes Karbin into the path of the Ark Angel. Hold my telekinetic thrashing indeed.
As for the other supporting evidence, the Millennium Falcon was just taking off from the ground; there is no evidence that the Black Krrsantan rammed at full speed, and while a section of the ship got buried in the sand there is no visible damage.
In fact, the same arc has two durability anti-feats for space ships. A simple thermal detonator is able to make a sizable hole into the Millennium Falcon, and simply ramming into a hill will demolish a light freighter with no visible damage to the hill.
Obviously the writer didn't hold space ship durability in high regard.
So for durability "Force Amplification" is replaced by "Force Barrier", and Striking Strength is Wall Level just like their physical durability.
EDIT: Actually an argument can be made to upgrade the physicals of strong Force Users to Small Building Level.
An inexperienced Ahsoka gets shot in the arm by a blaster pistol which incapacitated her and burns a hole in her arm.
A more experienced Ahsoka gets shot in the arm by a blaster carbine and she is a lot less damaged, though a few more shots would kill her.
Part 4: For a More Civilized Tier
Lightsaber tiering is... very weird to say the least. Lets read what it says:
| Large Town level (Capable of cutting things with a durability comparable to General Grievous, Karbin, and AT-ATs). Up to Island level for more powerful lightsabers (Kylo Ren's crossguard lightsaber killed a Zillo Beast) |
Setting the whole over-inflated zeppelin that is Grievous/Karbin aside, doesn't this explanation logically imply that Mandalorians wearing Beskar are at least Large Town Level for being able to block lightsaber strikes?
The Island level justification is unfortunately also based on wank. Aside from the lack of evidence that there are lightsabers massively more powerful than others (let alone Kylo Ren's unstable lightsaber with a cracked crystal), Zillo Beasts are vulnerable in the gaps between their armor plates, and Kylo did not target the beast's armor... in fact Kylo killed the Zillo Beast from the inside where it is vulnerable after being swallowed.
Just before the forum move, heat calculations revisions were on-going, and it has been accepted that we should not assume that durability toward heat energy is interchangeable with durability toward kinetic energy in a verse by default, and the consensus is that they don't scale if they didn't come from the same source (like Ki or Chakra).
Lightsabers melts through things instead of delivering kinetic energy like the Force; lightsabers are technology while the Force is mystical.
Lightsabers are also poorly integrated into character profiles; only mentioned as equipment without trace in the AP section.
So I propose the following tiers for lightsabers to allow for a consistent and coherent tiering:
- At least Large Building level+ with lightsaber (Vastly superior in energy output to weapons such as Thermal Detonators, can easily cut and melt through almost all materials in the galaxy with a few exceptions)
- At least Large Building level+ with lightsaber (Vastly superior in energy output to weapons such as Thermal Detonators, can easily cut and melt through almost all materials in the galaxy with a few exceptions). ... Can ignore conventional durability with lightsaber
- Unknown with lightsaber (Can easily cut and melt through almost all materials in the galaxy with a few exceptions)
- Unknown with lightsaber (Can easily cut and melt through almost all materials in the galaxy with a few exceptions) ... Can ignore conventional durability with lightsaber
The first choice is on whether to make the tier unknown or to upscale from the energy output of an infantry weapon. The second choice is whether to consider lightsabers weapons that bypasses conventional durability through energy manipulation.
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