Lightsaber Colors, and Power Influence.

[Waddles McGee]

I was discussing with someone at another board the nuances of the SW vs ST debate, and we somehow got onto the subject of lightsaber colors. We never reached a conclusion on the issue, and I'd personally like to.

The issue is:
Does spectrum color influence lightsaber power?

I think don't it does- it might on the smallest scale- despite what the EU says; I quote Wiki:

According to the Expanded Universe, these gems merely determine the blade color. However, in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, different gems may alter the intensity or damage type of the blade (making the blade more accurate, or more effective against droids, for example), in addition to altering its color. It might be worthwhile to note that in these games, separate crystals are used to perform different functions, and only one type of crystal is used to change the blade's color. Also, it has been said that a red lightsaber is somewhat less powerful unless charged by the dark side of the force, and when it is, it was told to be able to momentarily weaken lightsabers. (This was the explaination given for Obi-Wan's lightsaber doing slightly odd things in the duel with Vader in Episode IV.)

This bit from the article says that the EU states that the color is just the color of the blade, and nothing more. However, the next except:

The synthetic red crystals favored by the Sith can create a somewhat more powerful blade than blue or green crystals but are generally not as pure because of their artificial nature and can thus be undesirable as the focus of a lightsaber. The Sith apparently had a large supply of red crystals and also favored red as a symbol for passion. It was not uncommon for the Sith masters to supply their learners with the synthesized red crystals. However, Darth Vader, at the beginning of his Sith period, wielded a blue lightsaber, as shown in Revenge of the Sith. Likewise, Exar Kun used a blue double-bladed lightsaber in the Sith War.

states that it does indeed have an influence on power.

So, I'd like your thoughts, relevent information, and opinions on the matter, as a quick google search turned up beans, I have no novelizations, and I can't think of any examples from the canon that would suggest influences in power.

My conclusion:
The color of the blade does NOT influence power.

Wikipedia Article:
Lightsabers

NOTE: If this has been done before, please link me so I may read through. My search revealed no discussions.

[DesertFly]

Utter nonsense. The parts of the EU that say that artifical crystals are more powerful or such are few and far between and not supported by any other sources. To date, all lightsabers have behaved exactly the same, except for rare diversions like the lightwhip. The color has never been shown in any movie or story to have more than aesthetic influence. In fact, the only reason that Jedi avoid red blades is because those are associated with the Sith, and the Sith use them for the same reason.

[Lord Pounder]

Though it should be pointed out in later EU several Jedi do use red lighsabers, Leia Organa-Solo being the most noticible.

[Dooey Jo]

Blue light is more energetic than red light, so there should at least be a small and indirect difference.

But why would artificial crystals be less pure than natural ones?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

There are of course the esoteric crystals mentioned in KOTOR I/II. But I think those are a rarity.

[Knife]

Since the gems that alter the charactistics in the lightsabers are more game mechanics than anything (to build a more powerful weapon as you level up) I think we could ignore them in conjunction with other EU material if they conterdict.

My take, and Sidious said it best; The Sith have moved past the need for lightsabers but they still use them to humiliate the Jedi. Their color may be uniform due to the idea that they use them as a mocking tool so when one is drawn, the Jedi know what or whom is using it. Phycological warfare, if you will.

Besides, as Shadow's of the Empire shows, Luke Skywalker made his crystal for his blade prior to RotJ in a blastfurnace in Kenobi's old shack. He was following instrucitions he found in Ben's things, so a synthetic crystal is implied to be ok for a Old Republic Jedi, and seems to be ok for Luke and his first lightsaber.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Theoretically, a beam is as good as the crystal one uses. Sometimes i wonder if the colour is more a result of tracers like in the case of the colour of a turbolaser than anything else.

[Galvatron]

My take, and Sidious said it best; The Sith have moved past the need for lightsabers but they still use them to humiliate the Jedi.

With all due respect to Jim Luceno, I disagree with this. AOTC made it pretty clear that the Force wasn't enough to defeat Yoda, thus Dooku had to resort to lightsaber combat.

And Sidious didn't exactly "humiliate" Mace Windu with his lightsaber either.

[Knife]

My take, and Sidious said it best; The Sith have moved past the need for lightsabers but they still use them to humiliate the Jedi.

With all due respect to Jim Luceno, I disagree with this. AOTC made it pretty clear that the Force wasn't enough to defeat Yoda, thus Dooku had to resort to lightsaber combat.

Actually, it seemed a stalemate on both accounts to me. But it should be telling that Dooku did indeed start off with a Force attack rather than lightsabers, which would bolster my position.

And Sidious didn't exactly "humiliate" Mace Windu with his lightsaber either.

Certainly made the other two Jedi Masters look like punks though, didn't he?

[Galvatron]

Certainly made the other two Jedi Masters look like punks though, didn't he?

Yeah, but the implication of the Sidious quote is that the Sith should be able to hand any Jedi's ass to them without a lightsaber. Maul didn't. Dooku didn't. Sidious didn't. Vader didn't.

All were either killed, disarmed and maimed in lightsaber combat against Jedi. So much for the humiliation theory.

[Knife]

Certainly made the other two Jedi Masters look like punks though, didn't he?

Yeah, but the implication of the Sidious quote is that the Sith should be able to hand any Jedi's ass to them without a lightsaber. Maul didn't. Dooku didn't. Sidious didn't. Vader didn't.

Except for the whole Revenge of the Sith thing where Palpatine used his mastery of the Force to erode and kill off a majority of the Jedi Order and only had to use his lightsaber against four Jedi, two of which were the reinging badasses of the Order and he went 1 for 1 against those two.

So with that, yeah, I think Palpy did grow beyond the need for lightsabers in that his evil plans were fostered more through a Dark Side Shroud and manipulation than sheer melee skill. And even his swordmanship was fairly awesome considering he only lost to the most powerful warrior of the Jedi Order and only then after killing off two other Master Jedi and fighting Mace for a while.

All were either killed, disarmed and maimed in lightsaber combat against Jedi. So much for the humiliation theory.

And all Sith from the movies did kill one or more Jedi before they were brought down, minus Dooku who may not have directly killed Jedi but beat them in combat all the same both through Force skills and then through dueling.

[Eleas]

I tend to support Knife's position here. Remember, Dooku, before he turned, held the position of lightsaber instructor at the Jedi temple. That, coupled with his utter arrogance, makes it fairly probable that his preferred means of destroying an opponent is, and always will be, the lightsaber.

Honestly, I feel Luceno's novel presents quite a reasonable assumption: that in most situations, a lightsaber really isn't among the most convenient of the tools available to a fully trained Sith. It may be useful in certain situations, but it's no longer necessary. Perhaps it is hyperbole to say that the lightsaber is no longer relevant, but there's a grain of truth in there nonetheless.

EDIT: Cleaned up the wording a bit.

[Lord Revan]

I see knife's point, for another example let's take (Darth) Revan, he pretty much destroyed the Jedi Order with the Jedi Civil War and I'm pretty sure he didn't do it by personally dueling with every single Jedi in the order (spoilers for kotor2) there's exactly 4 Jedi (excluding the player character) alive during KOTOR2

[Galvatron]

Are we talking about Sidious or all Sith? Did Darth Maul strike anyone as a master manipulator?

[Eleas]

Are we talking about Sidious or all Sith? Did Darth Maul strike anyone as a master manipulator?

Maul was a very effective killer. But the crux of the argument is that his ability to kill had little to do with having a lightsaber -- true, it was a weapon he had trained extensively (even, dare I say, religiously) with, but coupled with Force Precognition and his other abilities, weapons of opportunity such as blasters should really have availed him equally well. Give him a few more years instead of killing him off, and the need for crude physical weaponry would dwindle, and soon he'd be the at his most effective when using the Force directly.

[Galvatron]

And how does that make them any different than the Jedi?

[Eleas]

And how does that make them any different than the Jedi?

In point of fact, it doesn't. Their only edge is that they would be expected to be more adept at using the Force in anger, as it were, and a hitherto pretty nebulous and ill-defined lack of stagnation as opposed to the Jedi, which may or may not have improved the Sith's understanding of the Force.

To clarify, the Jedi too are guilty of this error, but it is perhaps more understandable in their case, given that we all-too-often see Jedi landed in situations where the lightsabers are employed as glorified shields because of a diplomatic fuckup or whatever. For the demonstrated Jedi doctrine of haphazard interference to really work, they have to have some way to expose themselves to enemy fire without suffering the just penalty for such terminal stupidity.

[Knife]

Are we talking about Sidious or all Sith? Did Darth Maul strike anyone as a master manipulator?

I don't think Sidious' statment should be taken as an absolute, in that all Sith are automatically capable of bitch slapping a Jedi with Force powers alone, plus be able to humiliate them and mock them with awesome melee skills to boot.

Rather, while the Jedi have grown stagnate and continue on with their thousands of years old lore and traditions concerning combat, the Sith have evolved to the point that drawing a saber in a formal duel isn't their way. The fact that they still can, even though they display an amazing grasp of Force power, shows that they wish to beat the Jedi at their own games.

Vader is a special case, in the PT he's really just a Dark Jedi when he turns because he's really not recieved any Sith training at that point. He reverts to what he knows best with flashy jumps and lightsaber combat. By the OT, he's in the metal lung so Sith lightning is out though even in his duel with Obi on the DS, IIRC the novel states that all sorts of Force powers are in play.

Dooku actually starts out with Force Powers on both Anakin and Obi and later with Yoda. And quite frankely he does indeed humiliate Skywalker and Kenobi with the lightsaber after he boasts of his new powers.

It was only when Yoda, probably the strongest Force user for the Jedi was able to match him did Dooku go to the blade, and still came out with a stale mate (plus an amazing telekenisis trick to distract Yoda).

Maul is up for interpertation I think. For most of the fight with Gin and Kenobi, he really seems to be playing with them. You can view this as jsut as oriented on melee skills as the Jedi or you can interpert it as him trying to humiliate the Jedi by 'sinking to their level'.

[Waddles McGee]

And Sidious didn't exactly "humiliate" Mace Windu with his lightsaber either.

My take on that is this:
Sidious saw an oppourtunity to turn Annikan, and exploited it. I think that Sidious could have easily disposed of windu, but chose not to, in order to give Annikan no choice but to turn.

Blue light is more energetic than red light, so there should at least be a small and indirect difference.

That was my reasoning, only I derived it from the fact that Blu Ray can hold more information than a standard cd, using a different wavelength.

Maul was a very effective killer. But the crux of the argument is that his ability to kill had little to do with having a lightsaber -- true, it was a weapon he had trained extensively (even, dare I say, religiously) with, but coupled with Force Precognition and his other abilities, weapons of opportunity such as blasters should really have availed him equally well.

I'd tend to agree here; in Shadow Hunter, Darth Maul toyed with his victims pretty well without lightsabers; in fact, I vaguely remember one instance where he fought with a lightsaber to humiliate the jedi, and it said so in the book, even if I can't recall the exact context. (Or at least I'm certain it says that; if someone has the book, they could check.)

[Kotooshu]

I agree that Sidious allowed Mace Windu to get the best of him, in order to force Anakin to make a choice. I think if Anakin hadn't stopped Mace at that point, Sidious may still have had another trick "up his sleeve", if you know what I mean.

Back on-topic, about blade colours and energies. Putting aside the "other cristals" that may be in the lightsaber and focusing only on the colour cristal... the question comes down to the simple point: is a lightsaber blade a laser? If it is, red are the weakest and blue are the strongest, purely in terms of wavelength and the corresponding energy.

However, if a lightsaber is not simply a laser, if it is some sort of laser/plasma mix, that is then boosted by various other cristals as found in KOTOR, then no, colour will have no relevance to its power.

[DesertFly]

I agree that Sidious allowed Mace Windu to get the best of him, in order to force Anakin to make a choice. I think if Anakin hadn't stopped Mace at that point, Sidious may still have had another trick "up his sleeve", if you know what I mean.

Back on-topic, about blade colours and energies. Putting aside the "other cristals" that may be in the lightsaber and focusing only on the colour cristal... the question comes down to the simple point: is a lightsaber blade a laser? If it is, red are the weakest and blue are the strongest, purely in terms of wavelength and the corresponding energy.

However, if a lightsaber is not simply a laser, if it is some sort of laser/plasma mix, that is then boosted by various other cristals as found in KOTOR, then no, colour will have no relevance to its power.

Okay, a) it's crystal, and b) lightsabers are not lasers and there has never been doubt about that.

[Cykeisme]

It must be noted that there were approximately ten thousand Jedi before the Battle of Geonosis, and at the end of the Clone Wars, there were far fewer. The vast majority of these were destroyed through generations of expedient plotting and manipulation, tailoring events and political climate on a galactic scale to generate the so-called "shroud of the Dark Side", and then orchestrating the initiation of the Clone Wars.

Though lightsabers are lethal, the most potent weapons the Sith arsenal were planning, secrecy and foresight, taking advantage of the Jedi weakness of stagnation and hubris.

A mere handful of Jedi were slain with lightsabers.. and even so, far more Jedi succumbed to Sith energy blades than vice versa. As Knife said, they still wield lightsabers so that they show up the Jedi.. beat them at their own game. Saesee Tiin, Agen Kolar and Kit Fisto were described as some of the best swordsmen in the order, and were put down with little effort.

So though we may not take it at literal, face value, I think Darth Sidious' comment still held water. I think he didn't simply mean that the Sith had grown behind lightsabers because they could use Force powers to attack a foe standing before them.. what he really meant was that the Sith were outnumbered by roughly a 5,000:1 margin, yet they still destroyed the Jedi Order.

I agree that Sidious allowed Mace Windu to get the best of him, in order to force Anakin to make a choice. I think if Anakin hadn't stopped Mace at that point, Sidious may still have had another trick "up his sleeve", if you know what I mean.

Ugh. This drivel, even now?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

How does the Sith Sword compare? I remember reading they were as good as lightsabers. Do they allow a Sith Lord to channel his power through the blade? Hmm...

[Lord Pounder]

Sorry kids the Sidious Windu debate was done ages ago. It was argued to death and IIRC it was agreed that Mace beat him with the Vaapaad Wankage.

[Sarevok]

How does the Sith Sword compare? I remember reading they were as good as lightsabers. Do they allow a Sith Lord to channel his power through the blade? Hmm...

In KOTOR the description for Naga Sadow's sword says it is tainted with the influence of that Sith lord. It poisons anything it strikes in the game. This is game mechanics but it probably is correct.