'Power Charts' and LFL.
An argument has been made by a member of a certain party that our establishment of who is stronger than who is flawed because "LFL does not hand out power charts."
It's clearly bullshit, but this is a thread for a case to be made for it, so we don't interrupt the fascinating morality argument in the Battle Bar thread.
Step up, Nai, and make your case.
Originally posted by Nai
No. They don't.
Yes, they do.
They come up with sources that can be interpreted in an attempt to determine which individual out of two would be more powerful.
Which is essentially the same thing. If LFL's policy is to make sure that no "power charts" are given, to leave it ambiguous as to the relative strength of certain characters, then they would not declare -- in any way, shape, or form -- that Character X is stronger than Character Y. But they do. All the time.
If they'd come up with absolutes, you wouldn't see any argument happening here.
Nonsense, Nai. You've been arguing against absolutes for years, here.
Give me the source that has an omniscient entety stating "Yoda is more powerful than Mace Windu". You won't find such a source.
The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia and official databank both refer to Yoda as "the most powerful practitioner of the light side." The omniscient narrator of Revenge of the Sith refers to Yoda as "the most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known." And since you're a big fan of using a person's statement once it suits your benefit, Mace Windu himself says to Palpatine during Dark Rendezvous that he is not Yoda's equal in peace or war.
Because he defeated them in actual combat? By this logic, Mace Windu is superior to RotS Sidious.
"Kenobi moved in for the attack, but Dooku proved far too powerful."
-- the Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, H-O, page 210.
"Shywalker and Dooku dueled, but again the Count proved his superiority."
-- the Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, H-O, page 211.
"Dooku and Skywalker dueled with fierce energy, but Dooku proved far too powerful for even the Chosen One."
-- the official databank, Anakin Skywalker.
The latest example is the only one where you have an absolute, which is only possible, because the SW franchise assumes Lucas own word as absolute canon - and Lucas said that Vader is 80 % as powerful as Sidious.
He's not the only source, actually.
And here you have the only working example of absolute in the SW Universe: The word of George Lucas himself is absolute canon. And even that would be relative - because Lucas can change his opinion.
But it's not the only example.
I'm afraid: You're wrong. Proof: Every single retcon an contradictionary evidence that pops up in the entire SW franchise.
This makes no sense, I'm afraid. You cite George Lucas as an absolute source and say "even he can change his mind." That doesn't mitigate his authority. The retcons are irrelevant.
This reminds me of something I saw recently: has anyone seen the Kotor Campaing guide? The Exile is listed as being Revan's superior in Intelligence and Charisma by one attribute point, and is inferior in wisdom and strength by a single attribute point.
She's listed as being superior to Ulic in many attributes like Intelligence and Wisdom and has a (use the force) skill level above his as well. She shares "adept tactician" feats with Revan and she has a leadership feat Revan doesn't as well as a "battle analysis" feat iirc, although Revan has some miscellaneous skills like deception etc. that she doesn't.
Ironically the Exile is overall superior to the likes of Ulic and Bastilla shan despite being given a CL (character level) two places below both. Although Shan and Ulic have some attack feats unique to them.
It also says in her profile that one of her teachers (Vima Sunrider) cautioned her about the use of her powers, especially her aptitude for severing others from the force. Overall she has better defense feats than anyone, including well rounded attribute and skill levels.
So is it safe to assume the Exile is one of the deadliest in Kotor? Depending on whether we take subjective stats (considering Kotor 2 had a higher level cap as well as more planetary level battles she's still given a slightly lower CL).
Personally I think it was way too subjective, although certain force powers like beast trick, telepathic manipulation, telepathic influence were listed. To put the Exile's CL below the less experienced Bastilla is pretty much off beat with how the kotor games depicted them.
She was given the same CL as Atris although we know she should have a CL as high as Malak's or Revan (who are at 20) because of similar experience, they didn't even list jedi master as one of her classes (only knight) despite being a knight already in the Mando wars - they even mentioned that she trained several people but didn't give her a master class.
Originally posted by Gideon
Nonsense, Nai. You've been arguing against absolutes for years, here.
And here, dear Gideon, we have the single dominant error that appears in every bit of "reasoning" you're trying to perform here. Shall I point out, why? I just need three quotes of Chris Cherasi to do it:
"When it comes to absolute canon, the real story of Star Wars, you must turn to the films themselves—and only the films."
Absolutes, Gideon? The only absolutes in SW canon do appear in the movies with the exception of words coming from Lucas himself. Anything else is not absolute by the very definition of the LFL canon policy. That starts with with the novelizations and goes down to the computer games.
"The further one branches away from the movies, the more interpretation and speculation come into play."
Another fact: All sources, Lucas words and the movies excepted, contain interpretation and speculation. By that very line of thought every bit of information (notice: information is not equal to "fact"😉 spawning in the additional source-material (read: everything except the movies and Lucas own words) can be questioned and - as a consequence of that fact - be argued.
"The analogy is that every piece of published Star Wars fiction is a window into the 'real' Star Wars universe. Some windows are a bit foggier than others. Some are decidedly abstract. But each contains a nugget of truth to them. Like the great Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi said, 'many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.'"
And this nails the coffin of your blind faith in written words appearing in the source material. You can quote anything you want - in the end [as far as stuff depicted in the movies and Lucas words aren't concerned] every single word produced in the SW fiction spawns from an interpretation of events happening in the "real" SW universe that the author of said fiction (read: the narrator of the story) presents to the reader. Non of it can be labeled "absolute truth".
By now you should have realized, that everything not coming from Lucas directly and not being shown in the movies already represents interpretation of facts and not the facts themselves. And going by that, everything can be argued unless you have to contradict Lucas himself or the movies in order to do the job.
So - there are no absolute power-levels given, because every single source that directly compares characters is subject to interpretation itself as it doesn't present us facts but rather the interpretation of facts by the respective narrator / author. Thus you can't find absolutes in them, unless they do state facts established via the movies or Lucas own words. Of course there can be certain tenors in said interpreations, e.g. a majority of the sources hinting that Sidious is the most powerful Sith Lord in history (at time of RotS). But due to the fact that those are just interpretations, one can still question them. And this is why the power-levels of characters in the SWU are ambigious - unless Lucas steps in and defines them, as he did with Darth Sidious and Darth Vader.
In short: The people at LFL and myself are smarter than you. Accept it. Move on. End of debate.
A thread dedicated to this is ridiculous.
Final word- it's all interpretation, which is ultimately all opinion. There is no universal unambiguous soruce of relative power levels, nor is such a thing desirable as it would be a very petty creation.
No amount of sophistry or double-talk will change this simple fact.
This has been a whole new level of feeble. Don't make threads arguing about arguments again. Sheesh.