Age vs Power.

[Vroxen]

What's the correlation of Age and power?

I read about the Sith emperor who apparently killed thousands during the ages of 6 - 10. Then at the age of 10 he killed a Sith lord and took control of a planet. When reading about things on wookie it makes it extremely hard to understand limitations...

SO after reading this I decided I'd check out the Jedi High Council members to see what kind of power they had at a young age, but none seemed super powered like Vitiate. The other thing I noticed was how most of them were 40+ the council members are meant to be the best in the order and this is where I have developed my idea that I need to be a lot older to have a strong character. Now recently I decided to look at those who rule the Sith, and it turns out they are almost half the age of the Jedi and at equal or higher power. So now I am TOTALY confused

Would people be up for helping me to develop a character? I would ask in the chat box but being from England its a lot harder to catch you guys.

[Julian]

The Jedi value experience that comes with age, which is why there are age minimums for particular ranks. Because you can join the Sith at any age, that's harder to track. The Sith have only been around for two years, so positions have been filled by whomever was qualified or selected. Also, Dark-Siders tend towards being more powerful because they have so little restraint in developing abilities.

[Vroxen]

So without any bias... Is it easier to write a powerful Sith character than a powerful Jedi one. I tend to get muddled with the Jedi as they have a specific way of doing things... However I have no idea about the Sith other than what I went through in the academy on Korriban in KOTOR I and the trials I faced on Korriban in the SWTOR MMO.

[Rugs]

Well to start, you're not going to see the same sometimes-ridiculous power levels that canon characters sometimes have. So you can't really use Vitiate as a point of comparison for anyone here, because we don't allow that level of absurdity.

As far as the age/power thing, part of the matter with the Sith leadership is two-fold, in that a lot of the higher leadership characters are older, when things were a little more loose than they are now. The Council tends to have a more recent character makeup. To add to that, some of the characters were given power ups out of necessity. For example, Jenno originally intended Iniquitous to be a student/apprentice, but when the site was young, necessity demanded that he change the character to lead the Sith. So of course, he got a bump in ability.

But in general, older characters are going to be stronger than the younger ones. There's some variance, based on quality of the bio, what the characters did in the bio, etc etc. Also can depend on if the writer is known as being trustworthy or not.

But really, it's a case-by-case thing. I can tell you we don't really look at stats as a Dark Side/Light Side thing, so that doesn't really come into play, at least for the purpose of determining how strong a character should be. We have some incredibly powerful Jedi and some incredibly powerful Sith.

[Vroxen]

Thanks for clearing that up. It was just confusing, but I understand that the grandfather clause is in place for a lot of characters. I tend to read peoples profiles before making a character, which is probably one of the reasons I end up overloading the characters with the best of what I learned instead of making something original etc.

[Deleted]

The Thrawn trilogy introduced Joruus C'Baoth as an extremely powerful and elderly Jedi Master, with the ability to mind control Star Destroyer crews for days on end and command the elements in terrifying fashion, BEFORE getting truly unethical. The issue here is that Zahn intended him to be the exception rather than the rule, but other writers chose to run with it for most baddies and Jedi, including Luke himself and his students. That's why so many EU Jedi are basically wizards as opposed to the more subdued psychic samurai of the films.

Now, as far as George Lucas is concerned, jumping around like anime characters and mild telekinesis/telepathy is just about the height of Jedi power. You don't see Mace Windu Force grabbing TF ships with his mind. Yoda himself struggles with a particularly large pillar coming down. Even Palpatine, who pulls some crazy schenanigans in Dark Empire, is basically still just a a really good swordsman with Force lighting.

The best comparison is in Outbound Flight when Jorus C'baoth blocks missiles with his brain and controls other Jedi singlehandedly with no effort. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Master of the films, witnesses these actions and is outright astonished that any person could wield such strength.

My point is, there's a vast schism in the writing base concerning what Force-users are actually capable of. Don't know if that was helpful, but I thought it might be relevant.