Originally posted by Escape81
That armor would be a ***** to fight against... Palpatine would have to get extremely creative. Probably end up throwing everything in the room at Bane, and then he'd decapitate him.
That said, it wouldn't be easy - given that only 5% of Bane's body is vulnerable to attack - and all of Palpatine's is. So far, though, Palpatine is more powerful than Bane.
Bane's physical abilities are enhanced substantially with the addition of his Orbalisk armour.
"They attached themselves to Bane's body, causing tremendous pain as they became a part of him. The orbalisk took and gave - they augmented Bane's strength tremendously, but also could not be removed without killing Bane. They bond with their dark sider victim - as they inject poison, the user wields the dark side against them, which they feed off of. The poison also had considerable healing and performance-enhancing properties, assuming the victim survived. As if that were not enough, they were almost impenetrable by lightsabers. The orbalisks reproduced and grew on Bane, eventually covering all but his face."
With the armour, I would venture as far as to say that after the novel, Bane will be considered a better duelist than ROTS Sidious and possibly even DE Sidious by virtue of the fact that 98% of his body is resistant to ligthsaber attacks.
In terms force abilities I can see him being above ROTS Sidious but not DE Sidious.
That being said, if Dessel (Bane) can engage Sidious in saber combat, I am pretty sure he can win. I can't see Sidious defeating a Sith Lord who is an inpenetrable fortress against saber attacks, and who also has his strength and physical abilities augmented by both the force and the substantial boost from his orbalisk armour.
If Sidious manages to unleash his force lightning...well we will have to wait and see whether Dessel can deflect it.
Can't wait