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Sorry if this has been done before or if it is covered in the novelization (haven't acquired it yet).

Palpatine yells "Overwhelming Power" and fries Windu after Anakin betrays the Order and lops off Mace's hand, essentially tying his fate with that of the Sith.

Palpatine boasts that he will soon have a "much younger and more powerful" apprentice. Of course a more powerful apprentice is a useful minion, but wouldn't he also be a potential threat?

So: can the Sith Lord tap his apprentice to boost his own force powers? This would explain the Mace vs Windu duel scene and also how the Sith Lords dare to take on potentially more powerful apprentices without fear instead of taking weaker ones to remain safe and thus undermining the power of their order.

As has been explained in other threads, a true Sith should be happy at the prospect of their apprentice successfully besting them in combat, because it would mean that a) the master did a good job training the apprentice, and b) the Sith benefit because the stronger members are moving up the ladder. The ones who take on weaker apprentices in order to be at an unassailable position are doing harm to the Order because the Sith just gets a big glut of weak members.

Well said.

CivilWarMan wrote:As has been explained in other threads, a true Sith should be happy at the prospect of their apprentice successfully besting them in combat, because it would mean that a) the master did a good job training the apprentice, and b) the Sith benefit because the stronger members are moving up the ladder. The ones who take on weaker apprentices in order to be at an unassailable position are doing harm to the Order because the Sith just gets a big glut of weak members.

Whatever. The temptation of life preservation would be gone if the theory is correct. And you didn't even try answering the question.

Survival instinct easily remains so long as the apprentice remains weaker than the master. If that is not the case, then as long as the apprentice for whatever reason does not challenge the master it isn't really a problem.

I brought that up because it provided another explanation as to why a Sith would take on a stronger apprentice besides the desire to selfishly leech power from them.

Can a Sith Master get a boose in power from their apprentice? Probably, if they know the proper techniques. Sith Masters have been shown to be able to leech power in general, though it is more in the debilitating fashion.

The idea was that it could explain what happened in the duel between Mace and Palpatine, and how the Emperor was able to edge out over Yoda afterwards, despite Yoda being the most experienced and powerful of the Jedi (by then Anakin had become his apprentice).