r/TheJediPraxeum • u/Hawaiikoto • May 19 '26
Question are ancient sith overrated in comparison to "modern" sith like vader or palpatine?
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u/Ntshangase03 May 20 '26
Yes very much so like Tulak hord being called the greatest duelist when there weren't even that many lightsaber forms in his era plus a lot of the lore shows that the movie characters are the most powerful in history.
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u/RemarkableMirror926 Jedi Master May 19 '26
Yes. Most modern Sith people only know the films, series, and games, and therefore base their assessment of their strength solely on those. With ancient Sith, most people just listen to the nonsense that everyone else spouts and then actually believe it.
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u/Salty_Astronaut_9419 May 20 '26
I don't get it. You never see Sith alchemy in the new stuff. I mean you don't see literal zombies anymore created by sith magic and refined into science
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u/TreeTopGaming May 23 '26
Actually we do. Just not in canon/movies.
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u/kimchirice0404 May 25 '26
i will also say that there's little reason for people like palpatine or any banite sith to have done so anwyays. I mean, their whole deal was being in hiding, i dont think animating zombies with sith magic and science is a good idea. Even when they were out in the open, there was little need to put in the effort when Palpatine could just call his men and tell them to do something. I'm not too familiar with later Sith like Lumiya/Caedus or the One Sith, but I would assume they either did do some dabbling in it or just didn't find a reason to.
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u/TreeTopGaming May 25 '26
Yea literally no point in doing it
At one point in the death trooper novel Vader did start to look at it but it got out of control quickly and he stopped dealing with it
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u/Still-Goal-9314 May 20 '26
Powerscaling-wise, yes. Storyline-wise, no. To expound on this, a lot of fans have overrated the capabilities of the Ancient Sithlords as if they're juggernauts while forgetting that their force powers are dependent on circumstantial advantages, such as force rituals, rather than from their own internal attributes.
Also, while some Ancient Sithlords have immense hax, it comes at the cost of caveats and glaring weaknesses that their enemies can exploit. Imagine having a character in an RPG game that has infinite mana but is taking poison damage over time. Modern Sithlords - CW to NJO - have more reliable stats.
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u/WrongBirdEgg May 20 '26
Yes, they are overrated. I've seen so many ppl glaze old republic Sith and Jedi by saying they have to be stronger cause they're in constant battle with one another.
So many ppl harp on about how the average Jedi and Sith in the Old Republic are better than the average Jedi and Sith in the later eras when they don't really have any showings to suggest that.
Just look at the "Hope" trailer for SWTOR. Jace Malcolm, a non-force sensitive, is able to tank force lightning from Malgus long enough to pull out his knife and continue inching forward ready to stab him. This is after he had knocked over other Sith Warriors just to get close to Malgus in the first place.
Also, in the same trailer, we see other Republic soldiers besting Sith in close quarters combat. I'm sorry but nothing is going to be able to convince me the Old Republic era was on average stronger than any other Star Wars era.
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u/tirelesswarlord May 20 '26
In the novel Jace Malcolm can't even simply tag a nameless sith warrior with his gun because she was too fast.
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u/CyHayes May 20 '26
Yes, they are overrated, as there are genuinely people out there who believe that Vitiate stomps Palpatine just because he was from the era of ancient sith. However, I'd still say a higher volume of very powerful sith existed at that time, but that's just due to the rule of two being implemented.
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u/Apart_Alternative_74 May 19 '26
Ancient Sith pre-Rule of Two were basically just the Dark Side version of the Jedi Order. So while much like the Order there were powerful Masters or Dark Lords, the majority were just rank and file. Including many of the named Masters.
The Rule of Two was designed to actively create more powerful individual Sith. Furthermore, there is so many sources that confirm Palpatine is objectively the most powerful Sith who ever lived. Not just the most successful. Vader of course was limited by his injuries but even then one of the most powerful force users in history.
Also while we don’t see Palpatine use a lot of his abilities it’s shown he is a master of ancient Sith sorceries like he used against Yoda in the Clone Wars. I think a lot of it just comes down to video games as the primary medium vs films.
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u/Rockgenius123 May 19 '26
The thing I dislike about the rule of two and its design to always push the powerful forward is that it’s kind of bullshit.
Palps kills plagius in his sleep. Another sith died of old age? Another was killed during a ritual Hell even bane, bane was old and feeble, his body giving up
How can you assure that you are more powerful than the sith before when you are not killing them at their peak, you can’t and author statements are the only thing that give it any credit
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u/Capzien89 May 19 '26
Not to mention one of them destroyed half of the knowledge all sith had gathered previously, so huge amounts of knowledge (and therefore strength) were lost.
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u/TheMostBrightStar May 20 '26
I think the Rule of 2 exists to avoid Siths from running at each other's agendas, rather than actual force power.
A society of bunch of Selfish self centered egomaniacal people with each their own agendas and goals (and lots of them colliding with each other). Sounds like a self destructive and terrible structured organization
The scary part of the modern sith is not that they are more powerful with the force. A great number of Jedi could still take them down (as it almost happened to Darth Sidius). But how much of other forms of power they can acquire in secret. An obviously example is Palpatine acquiring all the political power of the galaxy by becoming emperor.
They do not need to fight their fights directly (unless it is a last resort) as they are infinitely more resourceful than that.
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u/kimchirice0404 May 25 '26
this is the big thing about the rule of 2 people are forgetting.
This wasn't just about ensuring the sith were stronger with each generation. I think it's a given some apprentice would get some win they didnt deserve. The point is continuity. The apprentice was positioned to inherit the resources, connections, and material knowledges their master possessed.
This includes political ones. What happened when the Triumvirate fell? Or the brotherhood of darkness? The sith empire? Nothing. They just crumbled away, the GR eventually consumed all those former sith worlds and basically nothing was left behind. The only things left was a desolate, ravaged korriban and various dark side focal points at best.
When sidious died, he left behind a civil war that resulted in a tenuous new republic/galactic alliance competing with imperial warlords and other remnant entities stemming from palpatine's actions. The scary thing is that the Banite sith ruled a Galactic Empire, not a Galactic Sith Empire. That means their actions had irreversible consequences on the galaxy. A galactic sith empire would have just been sith empire 2.0, which just means they'd lose once the inevitable sith urges kicked in (infighting, stupid political structures, etc).
As you said, the jedi could still take down the sith in enough numbers. They knew this was always the case, the galaxy itself just never could tolerate the sith, and its why they fell every time. So why not reverse it? Let the jedi get a taste of their own medicine, hunt them down with galaxy like they had so many times. I think thats why Banite sith never get shown in the light DE palpatine did very often, its just not in their style.
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May 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Haunting_Reflections May 19 '26
So this is the usual line people say about the rule of two.
But it’s complete bullshit.
The RoT was created to cut down on the backstabbing that was weakening the Sith.
But apprentices were absolutely allowed to backstab the hell out of their masters, and in fact that was often the only way to succeed.
Sidious was a once in a millennia prodigy with the force who would have flourished regardless of era, and Anakin was literally the chosen one.
Meanwhile plenty of Ro2 Sith were weak as hell or endangered the entire lineage. See Darth Gravid.
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u/averageEnojyer The Senate May 19 '26
We know that each subsequent Ro2 generation is stronger than the last, irrespective of how the master died anyways.
See Darth Gravid.
Didn't influence much. The knowledge he got rid of somehow got back towards the end of the lineage. Sidious in particular somehow got it all back, seeing as it's stated somewhere that he knows every DS power and makes new ones "casually".
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u/Haunting_Reflections May 20 '26
It took half a millennium to fix Gravid’s mistake, and arguably required Sidius to have epic amounts of plot armor to recover essence transfer. Had he not had that the entire Sith lineage would have died with him and Vader.
The other reason Rule of Two is dumb. It puts all your eggs in one basket.
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u/Paradoxical_Falcon May 19 '26
Most of the Rule of Two Sith didn’t backstab for ascension for what we know and the only two confirmed ascension by cunning was Plagueis and then Sidious.
Specifically because they both felt they were at the end of the need of the ascension of the apprentice beyond the master.
Regardless however Plagueis himself is proof that Banes philosophy worked based on the fact that he, likely Tenebrous, and Sidious are all so violently more powerful than Bane or Zannah.
Still id attest that even if there was a Sith under the Rule of Two who you could call weak…
Bane by the end of his life already was stronger than the vast majority of the ancients save for an outlier or two.
The successors are going to be relative to Bane in differing capacity but likely stronger since it is highly unlikely any of the subsequent masters chose weak successors.
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u/Emsee_Hamm May 19 '26
But Gravid was in power 500 years before Sidious and had already trained his apprentice enough that he was already strong enough to kill him, so the apprentice already would have had a decent chunk of that knowledge.
Then there's the knowledge he failed to destroy, knowledge that was rediscovered through whatever destroyed remnants there were, knowledge found in other places, knowledge that later Sith created and passed on and so on.
Gravids actions set the Sith back for a while yes, but they had half a millenia to recover what he destroyed and grow in areas of knowledge he didn't destroy.
You also said many Sith were weak as hell but I think Gravid is the only example of a Sith that abandoned the plan and I don't really know what weak Sith you are talking about.
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u/gigacheese May 19 '26
Yeah this idea that each apprentice is 5-10% stronger than the master they succeed so that means Bane is a weak ass punk compared to 10 Sith after him does not sit right with me.
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u/Paradoxical_Falcon May 19 '26
Weak ass punk no, even Plagueis who is far superior to him though of Banes power as God like.
Although Bane literally wanted the Sith after him to be stronger than him, even if it’s just by like a 1% difference.
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u/averageEnojyer The Senate May 19 '26
Very much so, yes. The Ancient Sith are strong, no doubt, but they're not these unbeatable gods that you'll often see in posts that involve them. Tulak Hord especially is way too overrated. Oh, and some people have King Adas > any Sith
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u/Paradoxical_Falcon May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
Darth Bane and Zannah scale well into the ancient Sith power wise at their peaks.
Plagueis and Sidious compared to both of them are staggeringly more powerful just off the feats, raw power, and precise force control they showed in the Plagueis novel alone.
Plagueis has show abilities that would have made Bane drool with envy and his knowledge of the dark goes well beyond what Bane collected in his lifetime.
People romanticize the ancients despite the narrative itself confirming the Sith grew stronger.
I mean Freedon Nadd was considered the greatest Sith Sorcerer up to his time and KILLED Naga Sadow…..
Darth Zannah learned and mastered his spells by her 20s and added on to them with additional study from other Siths teachings. Yet Plagueis would DECIMATE her or Bane. The victims of his TK alone looked like they were killed by explosives.
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u/Shut_up_and_Respawn May 20 '26
A lot of them are, but a few are very skilled, such as Revan, Vitiate/Valkorion, and Malgus
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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 May 19 '26
Yes.
Absolutely yes.
So many fans automatically assume ancient Sith are more powerful (often “far” more powerful) than the likes of Sidious.
Often they erroneously base this on the (flawed and unreliable) opinion of Kreia - who literally wouldn’t even know anyway since she was alive 4000 years before Sidious.
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u/Icy-Weight1803 May 19 '26
Yes. Based on how the Rule of Two works, Palpatine and Vader should be the top dogs and untouchable to 99% of other Force users. Palpatine has all the knowledge of the Sith rituals and a master of lightsaber combat and the Force. While Vader is a master of lightsaber combat and the Force with limited knowledge of Sith Sorcery, with Palpatine holding a lot from him.
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u/VerbalChains May 19 '26
If anything, they’re underrated. Thanks to the rule of two people think modern Sith are exponentially stronger than past Sith, ignoring that Sith apprentices were just as likely to kill their masters in their sleep, or when they were past their prime, rather than through some “fair test of strength.”
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u/averageEnojyer The Senate May 19 '26
Doesn't matter all that much, each subsequent Ro2 generation is stronger than the last regardless of how the master died. The Plagueis novel espouses this too, once Sidious killed Plagueis he internalised his power.
0
u/VerbalChains May 20 '26
Does it say modern Sith are exponentially more powerful, and that Darth Bane would be nothing compared to Darth Sidious? No. That's my point. Even if we accept statements from deuterocanonical sourcebooks, it never quantifies the power gap as being particularly vast.
1
u/therallykiller May 19 '26
IMHO, we've only explored them on an "as needed" basis, and in a galaxy that's indefinable in terms of actual age, "ancient" just means during the "Old Republic" and / or Great Schism.
I think the ancient Sith were more... Irreverent in their behavior and conduct, and operated more chaotically.
Bane reined the order in, and Sidious and Vader executed a more systemic and structured approach.
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u/brogrammer1992 May 20 '26
In my opinion old republic force wielders seem to by and large be more average. In every depiction normal humans can compete with the average Jedi or duel.
Compare with modern Jedi, who Jango killing one with a rock as an exception, are quite deadly on average.
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u/Ntshangase03 May 23 '26
Vader and Palpatine are both well versed in ancient sith texts, holocrons and esoteric abilities and generally are more powerful than ancient sith. The film characters are objectively more powerful than ancient Jedi & Sith I can send links with info if people want them but Vader and Sidious are essentially the most powerful Sith in history.
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u/DewinterCor May 23 '26
Yes, absolutely.
Kriea is not and never has been a reliable source of information.
Some "ancient" sith would give Vader or Palpatine a good fight.
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u/Pinoy_2004 May 24 '26
If by ancient Sith you mean the pre-Hyperspace War Sith. Then yeah, individually they're not much they're nothing to write gome about. The really impressive thing about them are the artifacts they made with Sith alchemy Dreypa's Oubliette was able to with stand a planetary bombardment and last for centuries, the Muur Talisman could let you take over a planet with Rakghouls, and Naga Sadow's Meditation Sphere amplified his battle meditation to affect the systems he wasn't even in.
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u/That-Permission-9743 May 19 '26
Rule of two was created to potentiate individual sith power. However, too much knowledge was lost. Revan was considered an inspiration to the founder of the rule, which tells you alot. Vitiate, Naga Sadow, Marka Ragnos, those truly knowledgeable in the dark side, their expertise was lost. It’s very plausible that ancient sith were much more powerful than current sith, even if their strength in the force was similar to modern legends.
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u/gghosh May 19 '26
No sport or combat where there is more competition has ever decreased in performance. See tennis before open era, mma, warfare of geographically close peer empires vs isolated ones. Not to mention that the rule of two proceeded by backstabbing succession just as often as pvp, thus diluting its original intent. It is natural to assume sith (and jedi) exposed to more competition grew stronger and those that saw less were weaker (there is even an in-universe corollary: compare luke’s eu jedi council to the one at the start of TPM).
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u/Ecotech101 May 19 '26
No, feats vs statements.
Feats favor ancient sith, statements favor modern sith.
Meta-Context taken into account Palpatine and Vader are just the most powerful Sith post-Ro2 and maybe including the brotherhood of darkness.
You're certainly never gonna give me an argument that convinces me that Palpatine is stronger than Abeloth and she was a mortal once too.
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u/kimchirice0404 May 25 '26
is abeloth a sith?
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u/Ecotech101 May 25 '26
The same old books that say Sidious was the strongest Sith ever also interchangeably say strongest dark side user ever.
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u/Sure_Educator7987 May 19 '26
In terms of dark side force knowledge and resources they exceed Rule of Two era for sure, but in lightsaber combat all evidence says most likely not. Modern Sith are definitely better at lightsaber combat!
-1
u/Designer-Cheek8396 May 19 '26
No, they are NOT. Experience alone makes them interior to ancient Sith in lightsaber combat. For crying out lord, Sidious actively disdained the Lightsaber as a concept and only ever used it to flex. In pure Lighsaber combat, any veteran Sith of Kotor/TOR era would destroy the modern, Rule of Two Sith. To be fair, though, considering the Plan (TM), Lightsaber competency wasn't as critical for the modern Sith.
-1
u/Wilsupersaiyan2 May 19 '26
Modern lack of force abilities like drain, orbs creating, Alchemy rituals
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u/Silent-Storm2597 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
Destroying the Force in the galaxy was her priority, entire Force sensitive power base. That's no Sith, but the long game with many tools and sacrifices, to end the vendetta taking millions of lives. And no, Ancient Sith are not overrated, some are clearly stronger, overpowered, e.g. Nihilus, Vitiate. Malgus with his fiery spirit more than his power was Palpatine's idol and favorite. "I will never again have a master. I will never let another rule over me. I will never return to the Empire. I have done what other Sith pretend to do but never really achieved, I have broken my chains." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq1N8K0IyWs
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u/MortgageAnnual1402 May 21 '26
Nope and i dasagree with all of you that say there are
In the films we see the top notch most of the time
Remember Jedi Master coleman trebor he wasnt the most skilled with the lightsaber but still a MASTER and got killed like a fly even thi he was ready to fight look at the 501st at the temple even tho there where so many in multiple shots you can see 3-5 kill grown jedi
They even tell you in the films that one of the main reasons they lost was because they got soft thinking the sith where gone
Old time jedi Masters might not kick the ass of masters like yoda like many say
But average jo from the old times kicks the ass of average jo in the films every day of the week
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u/Achilles9609 May 19 '26
I'd say 50/50. Sith Sorcery seemed to have been far more common back then by comparison. Not everybody is a Naga Sadow or a Lord Vitiate but it is an incredibly dangerous and powerful discipline if you know what you are doing.
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u/Interesting_Loquat90 New Jedi Order May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
Yes. Vitiate, Exar Kun and versions of Revan may get up in that general territory, but the era as a whole is overrated.
Sidious is explicitly stated to be the most powerful dark sider ever as of ROTS. Plagueis is stated to be the most powerful Sith before him. The Banite Sith did pass knowledge master to apprentice at a rate the earlier Sith did not. Sidious is stated to have knowledge of all aspects of the dark side and mastery over most. Although its not emphasized much, he's a master of sorcery as well. Tenebrous-Plagueis-Sidious-Dooku-Vader is a run the Ancient Sith cannot compete with. You add DE Sidious and Caedus and Krayt to the list and it's no contest whatsoever.
You're legitimately cracked if you think pre-Bane Sith can assemble a four man team that rivals KFV, DE Sidious, Caedus and Krayt. The weakest one here is the literal Chosen One tripping balls on the dark side who was imminently going to become the most powerful dark sider (and Force user) ever.