Force lighting, op force power or torture device?

[Zurvan]

With so many star wars related threats popping up I may as well add my question to the mix.

Thanks to games and characters such a Starkiller it seems that the force lighting power gain this status of extremely powerful and deadly skill that can fry waves of foes in a second, but for me and by what we can see in the movies it kind of look cool but it doesn’t seem lethal, more like a sadistic tool the emperor used for torture, it doesn’t really kill the foe only cause immense pain.

Nowadays everyone can cast it, mostly because of how cool it looks but to me it was a Palpatine thing, what you guys think about it?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

It takes a bit to fry Jedi's for sure. Maybe they have resistance....of course certain parts of Vader are vulnerable...

Do we ever see it used in a common soldier or non jedi?

Palpatine using it on Windu's lightsabre seemed to stalemate the situation.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Maybe it’s like the force choke, it can be lethal, one snap and the foe is dead or it can use as intimidation and torture tool, it all goes on how much “force” you apply to it.

[Devonix]

The worst thing to happen is that people took the various Force powers and applied videogame logic to them.

Force Lightning was a narritive tool. It's just a visual representation for the audience that simple physical exertion to defeat his opponent was beneath the Emperor. That's all it ever was.

[Darth Ultron]

''Force Lightning'' has always been a bit of a misnamed Force Power. As we don't see any Force users with any other elemental type powers, it's a bit odd to have 'lightning'. And most Star Wars games just have the ''lightning'' do ''cool video game'' damage.

''Force Lightning'' is definitely more of a telekinetic type power. It can sure knock people down and throw then around with great force. And that makes the pain it causes more like ''telekinetic crushing/ripping the body'' then just ''lightning''.

Also, I lot of the older Star Wars games had the idea that Force Lightning was a corruption of the Force. And we do, in the Movies, only see Sith use Force Lightning on Jedi. So it might be a bit more like a 'Force Corruption Blast'' that 'harms' the Force inside a person.

[Metahuman1]

Maybe it’s like the force choke, it can be lethal, one snap and the foe is dead or it can use as intimidation and torture tool, it all goes on how much “force” you apply to it.

I'm kind of in agreement with this position. Given how little damage it does to Luke when the Emperor clearly want's to draw it out and toy with him, or how little it does to Obiwan or Anakin when it hits them in Clone Wars era material and Dukoo doesn't want them dead, but how much harm it does in all other canon instances, including how much harm it does to Palpatine himself in episode 3.

[Mechalich]

To say whether or not any given force ability is 'OP' requires putting all force abilities within a unified rules framework. In the films and TV series force lightning does what the narrative demands it does in much the same fashion of other force powers. It was and is a problem of the expanded universe to quantify how these powers work in a way that is ideally consistent with the films but also produces a framework with verisimilitude for the universe as a whole.

So in SWTOR lightning is exactly as powerful as telekinetic attacks - because the Inquisitor and Consular are mirrors of each other - and is no more powerful overall than other force disciplines or even technologic attacks because the game demands equality between classes. In an action lightsaber shooter like Jedi Academy lightning absolutely wrecks non-force using enemies but is actually a relatively poor power choice overall because every NPC with a lightsaber is going to block essentially all of it, and nearly 100% of the tough opponents have lightsabers. In tabletop RPGs like SAGA edition lightning is a very powerful, but highly limited attack that causes the player to accumulate dark side points extremely rapidly and this represents a quick road to becoming an NPC (because even dark jedi types can pass some sort of point of no return where they degenerate into gibbering insanity or something). It also has diminishing returns because the system is structured such that Force power become proportionally weaker as levels increase.

The prevailing EU opinion is that lightning is not electrical though it may share some properties with electricity. Instead it is an expression of dark side energy itself and this is why it is damaging and corrupting. However this has not been applied consistently.

Generally lightning is not an 'OP' power at all though simply because it is used to hurt people on a personal scale. So with the exception of The Force Unleashed - which turns every force power up to eleven - it's much less powerful than some of the abilities shown in other media. Truly OP powers include pretty much anything done by the Dread Masters which includes mind controlling or killing hundreds of people at a stroke, Vitiate/Valkorion eating entire planets, or Nada Sadow and Aleema Keto causing supernovas.

[Anonymouswizard]

''Force Lightning'' has always been a bit of a misnamed Force Power. As we don't see any Force users with any other elemental type powers, it's a bit odd to have 'lightning'. And most Star Wars games just have the ''lightning'' do ''cool video game'' damage.

''Force Lightning'' is definitely more of a telekinetic type power. It can sure knock people down and throw then around with great force. And that makes the pain it causes more like ''telekinetic crushing/ripping the body'' then just ''lightning''.

Also, I lot of the older Star Wars games had the idea that Force Lightning was a corruption of the Force. And we do, in the Movies, only see Sith use Force Lightning on Jedi. So it might be a bit more like a 'Force Corruption Blast'' that 'harms' the Force inside a person.

Actually, just being able to do lightning makes a bit of sense, if we make a leap of logic. We know that Jedi can move things around with their mind, what if Force Lightning is doing this with Electrons? (You could potentially argue it's a corruption of the mind trick that works with brain signals.)

Force Lightning can only be practically used for destruction, which means that it's likely a dark side power. In the films the only people we see using it are a very accomplished Sith Master and a fallen Jedi Master who most likely had a couple of years to perfect it, meaning that it might not be an easy power to learn (I'm ignoring both Legends and new EU, because I've read so little of either). For the 'more like telekinetic crushing', looking at the scene in Episode VI, I very much see it as involuntary muscle convulsion.

Now, the Jedi do have enough control of their telekinesis in some SW sources that they could potentially use it to generate fireballs and thunderclaps, but that's another thing entirely and maybe there are Jedi out there who do use their telekinesis like that.

Force 'powers' seem to fall into four categories, the telekinesis favoured by Anakin Skywalker, the telepathy favoured by Obi-Wan Kenobi, the foresight favoured by Yoda, and the ESP and clairvoyance that nobody seems to specialise in.

It's pretty much the reason I don't like Rey. In TFA Kylo Ren has spent enough time training that having mastered two separate powers is believable if unlikely. Rey in TFA takes to telepathy quickly, learning to mind trick shortly after discovering it's a thing, but struggles with telekinesis until TLJ suddenly makes her good at that.

Spoiler: TLJ spoilers

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In The Last Jedi Luke seems to have gained a lot more skill with the telepathic and clairvoyant aspects of the Force, being able to see a planet light years away well enough to generate believable illusions on it. But again this makes a lot of sense, it's implied that Luke has been spending years if not decades on that rock with the original Jedi texts, even if he's shut himself off from the force he's not only learnt more but also developed spiritually.

[Vinyadan]

The worst thing to happen is that people took the various Force powers and applied videogame logic to them.

Force Lightning was a narritive tool. It's just a visual representation for the audience that simple physical exertion to defeat his opponent was beneath the Emperor. That's all it ever was.

I think that this is a big thing, the original trilogy had three different kinds of force users: Obi-Wan and his disciples (Darth Vader and Luke), who used smallish amounts of "invisible" force powers, but mostly fought with lightsabers; Yoda, who only uses invisible force powers, has a contemplative stance, and doesn't fight; and the Emperor, who mostly has other people fight for him, has no lightsaber, and uses the force as if it were a lightsaber.

The prequel trilogy did away with these visually very distinctive categories.




Anyway, as to the OP, I'd say both, but only on one-to-one combat. Force lightening looks like an attack that, once it hits, cannot be defended against. It is very disabling. Vader manages to ignore it, but he still ends up dead. And the Emperor's faces look like he's gradually increasing its power while he's using it on Luke. I'd say that the first attacks are disabling and painful, and repeating them makes them more powerful, until, when the target cannot defend himself any more, they stop bothering with the "debuffing" and become outright deadly.