Re: ROTS Sidious vs. LOTF Luke Skywalker
Originally posted by carthage
*Only feats from the LOTF novels
This kind of takes away a lot of Luke's most ridiculous showings and confines him to one of the most inconsistent series in terms of feats. Luke at his worst is barely above Lumiya, almost dies to two or three YV droids, and struggles against a Caedus who gets tagged by Mara Jade and random mandos. However, Luke at his best is solidly above a Caedus who is described as being above Vader. He doesn't really have many saber feats otherwise. If we just use feats from LotF, in sabers Luke probably dies to Kit Fisto, lol.
Of course, we can be a little more reasonable and allow a combo of feats, accolades and power-scaling, in which case Luke at his best is still > Caedus, which puts a lower limit on his dueling abilities (likely > Dooku, particularly as Caedus thinks he may be the greatest swordsman in history). His demonstrated prowess in the Force means that he's likely at or above Sidious's level at his best if his ability to enhance his dueling is proportional - and Luke tends to scale to the competition/would fight at his "best" against Sidious.
^ that's somewhat incoherent because limiting feats to a particular series sort of messes things up, as dueling feats are largely an exercise in powerscaling and it's tough to do that here. So ignoring that stipulation, Luke takes this. DE Luke + some unlocked potential > DE Palpatine in sabers, and I doubt that Leia unlocked more reserves than three decades did (heck, Luke didn't even seem to notice that he was getting help until Leia pointed it out - the aid may have largely been psychological). We also know that the reborn Palpatine thought that beginning of DE-Luke would pose a reasonable challenge to him, and DE is before Luke undergoes his wank-status (that happens around NJO).