SS - The Tyrannical Ten - Darth Caedus (DC77) vs Kyp Durron (SithArchaeologist)

Solid finisher.

Interesting finisher

Well played Perelta. Holt would be proud.

HellfireUnit wrote:Well played Perelta. Holt would be proud.

Is this my proud daddy moment?

PeraltaEagle45 wrote:

HellfireUnit wrote:Well played Perelta. Holt would be proud.

Is this my proud daddy moment?

Yes. Son.

That's my tear trigger.

Expect something up later tonight.

Finisher

Before we begin, I'd like to give a massive thank you to @PeraltaEagle45 for making this debate a highly enjoyable experience, and (Largely) maintaining civility throughout. If you make it through to the next round I wish you the best of luck. With that said, let us proceed:

To kick things off, I feel it's necessary that I address the rather sudden disappearance of one of the core arguments I constructed in my third post. The reason for its absence comes as a result of me taking a step back and looking at it as whole, which made me come to two realisations:

A) That the argument itself was not wholly necessary.

B) That it was built on an incredibly weak foundation that SA was exploiting without much effort.

I reached the conclusion that if I continued to push the point I'd succeed in doing nothing but wasting the time of the readers, and weakening my own case. As a result I decided it'd be better to spend time on the other, more relevant subjects. While this explanation is likely to damage my chances of winning this debate, I felt I owed the readers, and judges a reason for my abrupt dismissal of previous points.

Now, let's get into detail shall we. My points throughout this debate have not been sufficiently addressed by Sa, as I will explain below:

>SA throughout this debate has continuously asserted that Jacen's pain threshold is not dramatically superior to that of Durron's, yet has provided little in the way of substantiation for this claim. The feats prevented for Kyp as detailed in my posts, are of a fundamentally different nature than those of Jacen's, and are not meaningful to this matchup in any way, unlike Jacen's.

>SA asserts I did not provide sufficient evidence that Jacen grew monumentally between the events of Bloodlines and Invincible as a counter to my argument regarding Jacen's capabilities with illusions, yet does nothing to address my point beyond simply saying I didn't articulate it well enough.

>SA suggests that the quote placing Durron and Kyle as combative peers isn't precise, and backs up this notion by nit-picking away at irrelevancies that do nothing to affect the actual comparison. My example quote was merely provided to demonstrate that the comparison can function in spite of the uncertainty of the placement of another character, and was never intended to be relevant to the actual validity of the statement (Let the rest of my argument attest to that).

>SA's points regarding the validity of his comparison crumple given the number of variables he's failing to account for such as Luke's restraint, which clearly affects his argument, regardless of how you swing it.

>SA makes assumptions regarding Kyp's mindset without acknowledging the iteration of the character being discussed, who during this point in the timeline muses that he'd be incapable of using his full power. If we assume that the characters are fighting as they normally would Durron isn't going to be drawing deep into his raw reserves.

>Said iteration of Durron is beneath Jacen per the assessment of 3 individuals.

Good luck @PeraltaEagle45. Judges, you may begin.

Wanted to get this out quick so we can move on, and I'm likely gonna be busy for the duration of this week.

Decent post.

And so it concludes.

Interesting... I look forward to thre judges’ conclusion.

Excellent debate. Three judges have been chosen to give a verdict in the near future.

@DarthAnt66:

Excellent debate.

Cheers.

Three judges have been chosen to give a verdict in the near future.

Who's judging?

Interested to see who wins. By far the closest match of the tourney thus far imo.

Any word from the judges?

Starting my judging

Thanks for participating! I'll be one of the three moderators judging. 

Of course, I'm just looking at the arguments and sources made in the debate, and not injecting my own. OK, so the main topics here:

Jacen's illusions - Eh, at most I think there might be a mildly plausible case that was made for Jacen being able to fool Kyp for "an instant" if Kyp < Luke could be established, which it never was.
Kyp's parity with Kyle - It's doubtful that Luke would think that Gaalan would be a match for either Maul or Sidious (since if he's a "match" for Maul he'd get stomped by Sidious); in his last post before conclusions, DC more or less makes this point, and I agree. Kyp's dueling ability is therefore likely to be on Kyle's tier, and DC demonstrated Caedus's massive superiority to Kyle as a duelist. I guess SithArcheologist noted that this was just Luke's qualified musing in the middle of a fight, but that wasn't expanded on well enough to beat the massive gap between Caedus and Kyle.
Jacen's pain tolerance - honestly SithArcheologist succeeded in making this a wash. I don't think it was convincingly established that Jacen's injuries were fundamentally harder to deal with.
Jacen's supremacy quotes - I buy the credibility of Luke's statement that he's the only one who would be "sure" of beating Jacen, but that doesn't mean Jacen is definitely or even probably stronger than Kyp, so it doesn't seem to change anything.
Kyp > Luke feat - I don't think the counterargument about how Luke could counterintuitively be more exhausted by drawing into less of his reserves was sufficiently expanded on to refute the feat comparison and Kyp's own perspective.
Kyp's other feats - not countered.
Whether Kyp's raw power implies combat ability - while the "mindset" argument was countered (it was just about whether Kyp believed in the rightness of his cause, which he probably would fighting Darth Caedus), DC's late point about Maul vs. Sidious and the large gap needed to overpower someone with TK was basically ignored. Indeed, IIRC no 1 v 1 combat feats were provided for Kyp.
Whether authorial intent for Jacen is outweighed by Kyp's feats - well, SithArcheologist appeared to accept authorial intent but argued it was overridden by Kyp's feats; however, this would've required a refutation of DC's point about raw power being disparate from combat ability, which was essentially ignored.

In other words, based just on the arguments made:

• Caedus is a better duelist than Kyp by at least a fair amount.
  
• Kyp has more power than mid-NJO Luke, but probably not enough to break Caedus's defenses.
  
• Dueling prowess would weigh in more than a disparity in raw power unless if the latter were astronomical.
  
• Authorial intent favors Jacen.
  

Therefore, Caedus would win even though most of the points in his favor didn't go through because 1) he was established to be a superior duelist and 2) Kyp's raw power wasn't convincingly translated into combat ability.

It's an interesting conclusion because I think SithArcheologist won on most of the points of contention, but lost on dueling and then did not address a late argument about TK and Force barriers that ended up breaking his scaling chain.

Arguments that could've been made for Caedus:

EDIT: redacted given that Caedus will be used later.

Arguments that could've been made for Kyp:

• Countering the argument about TK and Force barriers - noting that power actually plays a huge factor (maybe the single biggest) in fights, that even without ragdolling-gaps TK is very frequently a deciding factor in fights, that if Kyp really > DE Sidious he may be able to dominate Caedus outright. Oh, and it can easily be argued that Sidious was toying with Maul that fight, given that he actually had him and Savage pinned against the wall and casually let them go. TK certainly mattered in Dooku vs. Obi Wan, for example.
  
• If Kyle is a 50, Kyp is a 100 and Gaalan is a 75, it's plausible for him to be a match for both of them without Kyp being in Kyle's tier.
  
• Do more comparing between the astronomical gap alleged between Kyp and Caedus in Force power vs. some vague offhanded musing about dueling Luke made while trying to compare someone he was fighting to two masters off the top of his head, and really ambiguous claims about Jacen being able to use illusions or damage soak.
  
• The Caedus vs. Kyle fight can be argued to have been situational.
  

I can provide more detailed feedback later.

I'm also reserving the right to change my mind until noon PST today.

So is this just your (tentative) vote, or the consensus of all 3 voters?

Two more judges will be voting.

When are the other 2 judges gonna vote?

These are my disorganized notes from reading the debate. They are not formatted nor grammatically reviewed. 
 
SA Opener: Too much unimportant information. We get it Sidious is powerful. I think SA could have stripped back the accolades and focused more on fleshing out the Kyp vs Luke vs Sidious comparisons as they seem truncated because of limited character counts. 

Central Claims established: 

Bane>Sidious>Luke>Kyp


Caedus Feats > Bane Feats(no evidence provided as of yet)

Innovative but tenuous claims.

DC Opener: REALLY dislike the lack of counters in the post. SAs post has tons of very extreme claims, so I think it is best to refute those claims early so the audience maintains skepticism + DC does not provide arguments that paint Caedus beyond SA's Kyp. More unimportant info. He is a master of the force. This really only needs one statement not entire segment. Jacen being durable does not place him above Sidious+ Kyp, until you refute that notion this argument holds no value. Section 3 is where we get to the important part of the argument. Very ambiguous character quotes that don't make any direct statements about Kyp and Caedus just vague implicatures. Section 4 could use some more elaboration(if only we trimmed down sections 1 and 2.)

"Jacen's mastery is leagues ahead of Kyp's, they aren't on the same tier.”
This is never proven as no Kyp comparison is given. 

The Empire State building being 1,454 feet tall does not tell me anything about the size of the One World Trade Center. It just tells me it is reasonably taller then most buildings. 

"Jacen's pain tolerance and mind games are enough to keep Kyp from defeating him, even if Kyp is more powerful.”

This claim is only true if you refute SA's post and ergo is irrelevant ATM. 

"Jacen is at least Kyp's equal as a force wielder, quite possibly superior.”

Seems tenuous ATM, but first actual claim.

"Jacen has tooled people who are on Kyp's level combatively.”

Ok.



Where are we? SA's opener was better not due to its superior structure. He focuses more making big claims and comparing to Caedus. The arguments don't leave me convinced but the onus is on DC to refute them. 

SA rebuttal 1: I like this post structurally. There is no need to make any massive rebuttals because DC did not provide any feats near the scope of SA's Kyp. That being said, he should have actually spent more time on section 3 and his semantic rebuttal of the Kyp Kyle quote is incredibly weak.  

DC rebuttal 1: This is so confusing. Why does DC spend the vast majority of the post countering SA's rebuttal(aside from the single point about the Dovin Basal(this is the most legit argument provided but the audience does not know that if DC does not prove it)) The meat and potatoes of his arguments are in the opener SA's rebuttal is just the seasoning. Onto the post itself. 

Counter 1: "Elaborate. The vast majority of the quotes I posted make explicit note of Jacen's "mastery” of the force in relation to other characters.”

Fully addresses the claim 

Counter 2: "Your assertions are unfounded. This is not "wry banter”, it's Luke's response to a genuine question, something you would know if you'd actually bothered to read the passage in the novel rather than making assumptions without backing them up…

Only addresses the less relevant half of the claim and is too hostile. 

Counter 3: "All of this being said, even if I were to agree with your viewpoint regarding these quotes and concede them both outright my overall argument would still stand. There was no rebuttal to my points regarding Jacen's superior mastery to the majority of Luke's council, nor was there any counter to Leia's statement about Jacen possessing greater mastery than Luke, both of which place him above solidly above Kyp.”

Solid pressure. 

Counter 4: Skip.

Counter 5: "More context + Jacen grows stronger”

Fully addresses claim. 

Counter 6: "Character quotes hold”

While I find DC' argument to be quite weak, SA's counter does not satisfyingly refute it. I like seeing DC hone in on this point and use SA's argumentation against him. 

Counter 7: "Dovin Basal does not place Kyp>Luke, k”

Fully addresses point(kinda) does not properly attack: ”This, however, should not affect this comparison. Luke only ever used as much power as was necessary. Yet that power left him "exhausted to the point of collapse.”  DC's confusing rebuttal: " Luke barely ever taps into deeper reserves and only brings what's necessary (Confirmed by Jaina, Jacen ect) so no scaling can be drawn from him.” The second point of DC's rebuttal makes a lot more sense. 

Counter 8: "Match means match”

Fully addresses point  Could do more with this counter. 

Where are we? DC addresses some of the SA's big claims and had a pretty strong, albeit structurally confusing rebuttal. SA is still winning, but his success is contingent on his next rebuttal. 

SA Rebuttal 2: 

Counter 1: "So no, the "vast majority" of your quotes do not talk about Jacen's mastery in relation to other characters. In fact, less than half of them do. Knowledge and mastery are not the same thing at all. I will analyze some of these specific quotes as needed later on in my post.
"

K, as long as some of them make that comparison DC is in the clear(SA does give more counters later on though.)


Counter 2: "Your credibility sucks after this terrible argument”
Ya, DC's hostility and poor counter here set him up to get burned. 

Counter 3: "Can you read?”

Fully addressed point with solid counter. 

Counter 4: "
So, to summarize: over half your quotes don't say what you want them to. Caedus MIGHT be more knowledgeable and masterful, but it won't matter against someone so vastly more powerful, such as Kyp.
"
I like this because while some of DC's quotes stand the test of scrutiny the actual Kyp comparisons do not(unless DC proves SA wrong.) This renders the quotes as useless ATM.    

Counter 5: "The nature of the injuries are different, yes, but the way the Force user handle that pain is not "fundamentally different." The difference between your leg being broken in 3 places and one of your kidneys being stabbed through is not significant. Both will equally affect your ability to stand on your feet and fight. Because lightsabers cauterize their own wounds, the main impact of a lightsaber stab is organ damage. And might I draw your attention back to part of Kyp's feat as quoted earlier (emphasis mine):
"

Fully addresses argument with fair counterpoint. SA argues strongly that the pain tolerance is a wash. 

Counter 6: "All right. So how much did Caedus grow? Is that quantifiable in any way? You say that Kyp is "substantially less powerful" than Luke. Prove it. You say that prime Jacen should have "no issue" fooling Luke. Prove it. You've made quite a few completely unsubstantiated claims in this paragraph. Prove them. Prime Jacen has never tried to fool anyone near Kyp's ballpark with an illusion. You have nothing to support these claims. Come back when you do.”

This highlights DCs biggest issue his lack of clarification. HE is spending way too much time on irrelevant arguments when he should be polishing his central comparisons. 

Counter 7: "I believe I made that condition quite clear in the original post: "when there is clear evidence to the contrary." In terms of Kyp's supremacy over mid-Vong War Luke, we have additional information that corroborates Kyp's assessment. My argument against Caedus' quotes always has been, and will remain, that the mountain of evidence we have indicating Kyp's superiority outweighs those quotes for Caedus. And, since they are not OOU statements, they are not binding. That is my argument. Not that we use character quotes only when it suits me. I'm still incorporating all the important factors as mentioned before.
"

I think this addendum strengthens SA's initial rebuttal but still does not address the heart of the quotes. DC needs to attack that Dovin Basal feat and all of the scaling attached to it. 

Counter 8: "My "extremely sketchy scaling" has yet to be countered at all and it places Kyp vastly beyond Jacen. Thus, we have that "evidence to the contrary" necessary to overrule character quotes. Not only that, but Kyp comes out on top of every single feat comparison we can come up with, which I will get to later. That's two out of three comparisons which Kyp takes home.  
"
Sufficient evidence. But too much reliance on the Dovin Basal feat, I think SA can attack DC's quotes rather then just letting them hold. It puts a lot of pressure on that initial comparison. We shall see if SA defends Dovin Basal well. 

Counter 9: "
Allow me to elaborate. As you yourself have agreed, Kyp handled more power than Luke, and he handled that power more effectively. Even if Luke could have brought more power to bear for his Dovin Basal feat, it doesn't matter: Kyp handled the physical toll of using that amount of power far better. This is why how they handled the affects of the power is important. If Kyp used more power, and it took less of a physical toll on his body, why wouldn't that indicate superiority? It means he can channel more power in a fight than Luke can. It means his actualized power is higher because again, the power he can actively channel at once is higher. My scaling stands.

Oh, and I'd love for you to try and prove that Kyp "lacks the force of will" to use much of his raw power. Go ahead, try.”

No shocker here. DC's argument was obviously flawed and lacks substantial evidence. Hope he can strengthen the rebuttal in the final post. 

Counter 10: "The phrasing in this quote is key. "He might have been a match for an expert swordsmaster such as Kyp or Kyle Katarn." Luke is estimating that Gaalan might have been a match for an "expert swordsmaster." He then lists Kyp and Kyle as examples of expert swordsmasters. The language is in this quote is not nearly as binding you're making it out to be. Not only is there a massive qualifier sitting right in the middle of it, but it doesn't even require Kyp and Kyle to be on the same level as duelists for the quote to make sense. Luke is making a rough estimation of Gaalan's skill mid-fight and he's throwing out names that Gaalan might be skilled enough to match. Nothing more.
"

Weak counter. I think DC can take a point here if he argues properly in his final post. DC's initial argument left some wiggle room.


Where we stand? DC is losing. He needs to centralize his argument on the points that actually matter and provide more evidence for his claims. DC needs to prove that combative parity between Kyp and Kyle. SA was a little too passive on the holistic intent argument and should have found an alternate way to address Kyp and Kyle parity. 

DC rebuttal 2: 

"Based off the arguments provided why don't we examine the potential scenarios that grant Kyp victory:

">Kyp overpowers Jacen via vast superior power in the force, cracking open his defences with telekinesis.”

Disprove Kyp>Luke>Sidious

Versus the scenarios that grant Jacen victory:

">Jacen outlasts Kyp due to his vastly superior pain threshold.”

Disprove pain tolerance parity and this argument does not matter if Kyp>Luke>Sidious

"Jacen tricks Kyp with illusions long enough to land a devastating blow that ends the match there and then.”

Disprove Kyp>Luke>Sidious

"Jacen defeats Kyp as a result of his superior bladework.”

Prove Kyle = Kyp


Point 1: "Despite the substantial gap between the two Sheev has to "search relentlessly” for a crack in Maul's defences and when he finds one he "pounces” on it while "snarling”. The implications here are obvious, Sheev cannot conventionally breach Maul's guard with the force, requiring an opening to bypass his defences. To create such an opening against Jacen, Durron will require superior bladework or mastery in the force, neither of which he's in possession of. With all of this to consider, allow me to pose a simple question: Do you think the power gap between Jacen and Durron is bigger than the gap between Sidious and Maul? I personally don't see any reason why it should be. With that out of the way, let's get on to addressing your arguments.
”

New argumentation here. A little unfair for SA, but the rules permit it. This argument does add further strength to DC's position.(still not that great of an argument IMO)


Counter 1: "They're "fundamentally different" because Jacen's injury was explicitly noted to require force energy to survive after, in stark contrast to having your bones broken, something even normal humans can recover from.
"

Very dismissive counter. DC loses this engagement. 

Counter 2a: "There's a great deal of textual evidence throughout the LOTF that indicates Jacen grew substantially. For one Bloodlines explicitly emphasises that Jacen's power in the force was increasing daily. Moreover, a concept that's given a great deal of spotlight throughout LOTF is that Jacen gains his power through sacrifice, with Lumiya noting that it's a "necessary component” of Sith power and that it leaves Jacen "strengthened". After killing Mara the text states that the force "shifted" , with sources even detailing how Jacen's power "swells” after the act. The aforementioned quotes point to a clear massive increase in power.”

This is not quantification so this does not fully address SA's point. 

Counter 2b: "When we consider that Jacen could fool Luke for an extended duration of time while multi-tasking fairly early on in LOTF it becomes apparent that he'd be capable of deceiving Luke without effort at his peak.”

Somewhat reasonable assertion if SA did not contextualize this further earlier in the debate. 

"
All his strength? Lol. Kyp is far more powerful than Mara, whom Caedus was able to successfully fool in combat. If fooling Luke takes all of Caedus' strength, even if fooling Kyp takes somewhat less than that, he won't be able to pull it off while Kyp is actively attacking him, not unless he wants to get bisected.

"
There is nothing about those quotes that disputes this argument, it just adds a layer of ambiguity. SA has placed Kyp as Sidious+, if DC fails to dispute this notion it does not bode well for him.

"This isn't a complicated premise, it's a basic argument supported by logic. We've seen firsthand that this ability is combat applicable under highly unfavourable circumstances. Given the stipulations of this fight and Jacen's own performances it's obvious to anyone with a set of eyes what Jacen can do to Kyp with illusions, leaving the outcome of this match a near certainty.  "

Should have counted SA's point here. DC still neglected to prove that Luke>>Kyp.

Counter 3:"
I never claimed the two statements themselves were inherently contradictory, I was merely pointing out that you've decided to "toss aside" the quotes proclaiming Jacen to be superior to Durron without first examining the "holistic intent" of the statements in question, something you deemed to be necessary when interpreting such accolades, and in itself is fairly clear cut. I very much doubt the writers of LOTF sat down, created these narrative plot points and said to each other "This is all bullshit to serve the story, and is actually wrong”. Your only grounds for dismissal is "contradictory evidence”, that, as I'll soon explain, doesn't stand up to scrutiny in the slightest. My only remaining question is: Do you think the judges will favour Kyp's assessment and a comparison of power that by its very nature can be interpreted in numerous ways over Luke, Jacen, Leia and the clear narrative intent of LOTF? Mull over that for a while.”

Good rhetoric strong rebuttal. The quotes are merely the first prong of DC's argument the second prong is disputing the next comparison. The latter is far more important however. 

Counter 4: "This scenario is not only implausible, but outright impossible. Several of the members present are intimately familiar with Jacen's power level and skill set, and beyond that have actually engaged him head to head. I don't know how you reached the conclusion the council don't have the necessary data to correctly assess Jacen's capabilities but I want to make one thing clear: It is flat out wrong.
"
SA laid all of his chickens in one basket. The direct comparison has to hold for his arguments to stand this scrutiny. 

Counter 5a: "Consider the following: If Luke is barely tapping into the deep reserves of his power (Like always), and is only using the bare minimum of what he has at his disposal, naturally he's going to be exhausted, given he hasn't brought sufficient telekinetic output necessary to perform the feat without strain, and barely has anything leftover after the performance. Kyp however brings everything he can and is obviously left with a significant portion of his reserves left. This conclusion fits more with what we know about the way TK comparisons function within the lore, and is more substantiated in the text being discussed than your groundless fan theory about Kyp and Luke bringing similar amounts of power, but one taking on more of a toll on the body.
"

Unfortunately insufficient counter. DC reiterates his previous points and neglects Kyp's commentary.  Would like to see SA seal the deal here in his finisher. 

Counter 5b: "Given Kyp himself appears to agree with me I doubt it'll be much of an issue (5).”

SA must address this in his conclusion post. 

Counter 6: "The uncertainty of Gaalan's parity with either of the masters is not of consequence and does nothing to affect the actual comparison. For example if someone were to say:

Andy Murray was an excellent tennis player. He might have been as good as Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic, both of whom were equally skilled.

Whether Andy is actually as good as Roger or Novak doesn't affect how good Roger or Novak are relative to each other. Similarly Gaalan not being as good as either doesn't change the fact that both Kyp and Kyle are in a similar ballpark, hence why Gaalan's rough level would be on par with either of them.
"
+1 for DC

 "To add to this, even if your chain did function it wouldn't serve as sufficient evidence Kyp can TK body Jacen, which is a requirement for his victory here, given he has no counter to illusions and is a vastly inferior swordsman that lacks Jacen's pain threshold. Your (Faulty) scaling aside, the implications are that Jacen is more powerful than Durron, as stated thrice in the mythos by objective characters, who we have no reason to believe are wrong in their assessment. So, judges, here's my question for you:
"
Barrier point does add some cushioning to Kyp>>Sidious, but the argument still hurts. 

I'll wait for SA's finisher to make a final verdict. 

SA Conclusion: I would have loved to see him touch on the force barrier point. I think that would make it far easier to pick a winner. 

Counter 1:
 "
You have failed to punch any holes in my scaling chain or other arguments for Kyp. You claim that Kyp admits he no longer has the willpower to perform his monumental feats. Not only does he confirm that he has the power to replicate it, and far more skill, but his reasoning is simple: he can't do it unless he knows he's right. He is referring to that specific event, and why he couldn't do that exact thing on a whim. We can safely assume that for this hypothetical fight, he knows he is serving the greater good.

Your attempt to break my scaling chain likewise reeks of ignorance. Your claim that Luke was more exhausted than Kyp because he didn't draw on enough power (besides making zero logical sense) has no textual evidence to support it. On the contrary, the idea that Force-users are physically drained and/or damaged after channeling large amounts of power is a long-established trait in the Star Wars Universe.  Nox's added power was destroying his body until he increased his midichlorian count. Ragnos disintegrated Axmis when he tried to channel his power through her. The more powerful someone is, the more capable their body is of handling power. Simply put: your theory is asinine and completely baseless.

”

Glad to see this point addressed. Seems like Dovin Basal argument passes through DC's counters. 

Counter 2: 
"You claim Jacen could win due to a "superior pain threshold.” Kyp used the Force to survive his arms, legs, and ribcage being crushed. Sure, Caedus' injury was the worse of the two.”

Ya, DC needed to elaborate on this more. SA wins this exchange. 

Counter 3: "-You claim Jacen could win through his illusions. Let's not forget that it required all of Jacen's strength to fool Luke with an illusion. Pre-prime, sure, but nothing suggests he grew enough to close that gap significantly. You failed to prove that Jacen grew so vastly that he went from needing all his strength and focus to fool someone of Kyp's caliber to doing so with ease mid-combat.
"

I noted this flaw above. Agreed with SA.

Counter 4: "-You claim Jacen could win by "superior bladework” without providing any evidence to suggest it exists. Your example quote said, "both players were equally skilled,” a phrase not found in any form in the Kyp and Kyle quote. You have nothing suggesting Jacen is a better duelist.
"
Insufficient. 

Counter 5: "-Lastly, to address Caedus' character quotes: authorial intent can only go so far. It is useful when discerning between 2 equally viable interpretations. It cannot be used to overrule clear-cut chasms of power. Kyp has demonstrated power several orders of magnitude beyond Caedus. Not only that, he has an objective feat comparison that favors him over mid-Vong War Luke. Unfortunately for Caedus, he has no OOU source that would directly override this. As such, he has nothing.
"
Feat comparison>authorial intent. That does argument is certainly within the orthodoxy. DC should dispute this idea in his final post.


DC Conclusion: 

Counter 1: ">SA throughout this debate has continuously asserted that Jacen's pain threshold is not dramatically superior to that of Durron's, yet has provided little in the way of substantiation for this claim. The feats prevented for Kyp as detailed in my posts, are of a fundamentally different nature than those of Jacen's, and are not meaningful to this matchup in any way, unlike Jacen's.
"

Insufficient. 

Counter 2: "SA asserts I did not provide sufficient evidence that Jacen grew monumentally between the events of Bloodlines and Invincible as a counter to my argument regarding Jacen's capabilities with illusions, yet does nothing to address my point beyond simply saying I didn't articulate it well enough.
"

He said you did not quantify it which you did not. Insufficient.  

Counter 3: ">SA suggests that the quote placing Durron and Kyle as combative peers isn't precise, and backs up this notion by nit-picking away at irrelevancies that do nothing to affect the actual comparison. My example quote was merely provided to demonstrate that the comparison can function in spite of the uncertainty of the placement of another character, and was never intended to be relevant to the actual validity of the statement (Let the rest of my argument attest to that).
"

Fair. 

">SA's points regarding the validity of his comparison crumple given the number of variables he's failing to account for such as Luke's restraint, which clearly affects his argument, regardless of how you swing it.
"
Insufficient 

">SA makes assumptions regarding Kyp's mindset without acknowledging the iteration of the character being discussed, who during this point in the timeline muses that he'd be incapable of using his full power. If we assume that the characters are fighting as they normally would Durron isn't going to be drawing deep into his raw reserves.
"

Insufficient. Does not address counter. 

"Said iteration of Durron is beneath Jacen per the assessment of 3 individuals.”

You have not disputed the feat comparison and have not argued in-universe quotes>feats

Who won? 

I think SA certainly performed better for the vast majority of the debate. Only two of DC's points managed to stand the test of scrutiny(force barrier and dueling disparity). The former of which was introduced in the last official post. SA could have easily won this debate if he just dissected all of the ramifications of Kyp>>Sidious. The primary issue with SA's argumentation is that he failed to emphasize how Kyp's superior force power would overwhelm the dueling advantage. DC does attempt to bridge that gap by mentioning the difficulty of piercing force barriers. SA should have torn this argument apart in his conclusion.  Force Barriers would've almost certainly sealed the deal for DC if he had centered his finisher around this idea. I am going to tentatively hand this debate to SA due to his general dominance throughout the discussion; it is unfortunate that he did not earn a stronger victory.

So the vote is currently 1-1?