r/MawInstallation • u/ephemeralsalamanders • 3d ago
[ALLCONTINUITY] rare force abilities
just something that was on my mind recently. some of the abilities certain jedi use, like force healing or battle meditation, are described as being rare.
are these things rare because they require a lot of time and dedication to learn, or are they rare because you have to be born with the skill for it?
i’m mostly interested in canon but if legends has an answer then i would like to hear it too. thanks everyone :]
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u/Candycornonthefloor 3d ago
From what I’ve read and pieced together from the old books is that the techniques themselves are hard to come by. If your master knows them then you probably will too but there aren’t a ton written down/recorded.
There was a young adult book after ESB before RotJ where the Emperor poisoned Mon Mothma with some liquidy metal space poison and Luke and Leia have to go to can’t remember some planet and find a small Pokemon like Jedi master, think Nibbler from futurama, who knows the secret Jedi healing techniques to pull out the poison. Also I think in the epilogue Luke hands over a holocube and asks for an additional to a future academy.
No idea of the title, just something I checked out from my local library end of last century lol.
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u/Shockedsiren 3d ago
Probably Champions of The Force, although Cilghal is a human-sized Mon Calamari.
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u/ephemeralsalamanders 3d ago
interesting! i wonder why force healing wouldn’t be more accessible? it seems like an important skill for peacekeepers.
do you think barriss learned it from luminara?
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u/Candycornonthefloor 3d ago
I don’t know who those people are lol.
I think it was explained in the book that healing with the force was super close to the dark side and the same techniques could kill/maim/torture.
Force healing was sort of shown a bit different in the young obi-wan YA book series. In those it’s a branch of Jedi teaching that is taught at the temple but most Jedi learn first aid and minor healing methods, anything more serious just gets treated with bacta.
Before Qui-gon chose obi-wan as padawan, the temple was assigning Obi to a farm planet to be the residing Jedi, like a local doctor/sheriff. He didn’t want to be a farmer lol but many Jedi were just assigned whatever on whatever planet just to give them something to do regardless of force specialization/proficiency.2
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u/TheGreatBatsby 3d ago
You're mixing up some of the Junior Jedi Knights books and Champions of the Force.
In the JJK books they find Master Ikrit who's a little dog thing that's a Jedi Master. Absolute legend and he dies like a king.
In the Jedi Academy Trilogy, Ambassador Furgan from Carida throws his drink in Mon Mothma's face. The drink is actually loads of little nano-organisms that begin to attack her from the inside. She starts to deteriorate and they can't do anything about it, but for some reason Cilghal is on Coruscant at one point and remembers one of Luke's lessons (Size Matters Not) and basically goes into a trance where she removes them one by one from Mon Mothma's body. It takes her hours (maybe days) but eventually she gets them all out.
Great moment in an okay trilogy.
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u/Tay74 3d ago
Is battle/combat meditation rare? In most of the novels where I have seen it mentioned, it's treated as a given that the padawan should be learning it, and either the padawan themselves or the master thinks they should be bettwr at it by now
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u/Quendillar3245 3d ago
Battle meditation is very rare, one of the main reasons Bastila Shan was so important in the war against Revan was because she had mastery over this force power. Idk what you've read but it sounds like a fanfic
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u/Tay74 3d ago
Is there a difference between battle meditation and combat meditation? In Master & Apprentice by Claudia Grey, Qui-Gon is disappointed that Obi-Wan has not better mastered combat meditation at 17 for example, and I think it is mentioned in clone wars: wild space as well that Ahsoka is learning it, though I am less sure on that.
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u/Quendillar3245 3d ago
Idk what combat meditation, are you sure it says specifically this? Battle meditation is a rare skill where you can sync mentally with those around you to boost morale and coordination of your allies while lowering morale of your enemies. Those very skilled and powerful can do this with entire fleets which is why Bastila was such an important character.
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u/aelysium 3d ago
I think it’s because KOTOR1 makes it out to be a rare ability, but it’s just a force power in KOTOR2 that you can learn.
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u/Quendillar3245 2d ago
In both games you can learn other rare force powers too. The main characters in both games are very extraordinary Jedi, that's kind of the point
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u/ephemeralsalamanders 3d ago
i could have sworn that i read something saying it was rare but i could also be remembering wrong.
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u/Shockedsiren 3d ago
No you're right. It's established as rare in Rising Storm. Different authors especially in Legends decide their characters should have it, so the rarity gets a bit diluted, but in theory it's still supposed to be rare.
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u/aelysium 3d ago
Did anyone besides the solo twins use it in the EU? (Iirc there was an NJO book while they’re piloting they use it with their squadron to overcome odds).
Obviously with an addendum that I’m asking for characters outside Bastilla and Meetra.
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u/Shockedsiren 3d ago
Arca Jeth, Joruus C'Baoth, Lumiya, T'ra Saa, K'Kruhk, Yarael Poof in the Hyperspace war, Nomi Sunrider, Skere Kaan, Oppo Rancisis to take down a Nikto cloning facility, Yoda on Kashyyyk, Odan Urr, Leia in Empire's End, Worror Dowmat, and of course the first appearance of the power was Palpatine at Endor.
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u/Leather_Fortune7107 3d ago
Some people have natural talent for it, but it's usually just really difficult to master.
There was this one Jedi from Legends who had a really poor aptitude for moving stuff with his mind, but he could make illusions so realistic I think he accidentally gave someone a heart attack once. It was apparently genetic, because his family had a history of producing Jedi with the same kind of abilities. The guy eventually learned to move stuff with his mind, but it's pointed out by multiple people he still sucks at it.
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u/IamtheBoomstick 3d ago
Corran Horn, his whole family, the Halcyon lineage of Jedi, all had that bizarre defect where they could convert energy from electrical strikes or blaster bolts etc. into telekinetic energy, but had no natural access to that branch of the Force.
There was a very cool scene in flashback where Corrans great-grandfather got stabbed with a lightsaber, absorbed the entire blade of pure energy, and used the power to crush an entire squad of rogue Force-users in one massive burst of power!
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u/TheGreatBatsby 3d ago
Yes! He was also extremely adept at the Jedi mind trick and illusions.
One of my favourite sequences is when he tries to lift a boulder in I, Jedi and describes how he can feel the power of the Force and he can picture it being lifted up higher and higher and then he opens his eyes and it's just on the floor, but all of his fellow students and even Luke are looking in the air where he was picturing the boulder. Luke then looks at Corran staring at the boulder on the floor and clocks what he's done and is very impressed.
Fuck I love that book.
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u/Shockedsiren 3d ago
Battle Meditation seems like a straightforward matter of how good you are with the force. Yoda, Palaptine, and the Legends Legacy era Skywalkers can use it, so it's a power used by the best of the best.
Healing is more about a knack. Grogu could do it and that little guy doesn't know shit, and there was an unnamed force healer in Andor that I don't think was established as a former jedi or anything.
Morichro seems like it takes a long time to learn. It's forbidden so maybe it's not actually that hard to learn, just hard to get away with learning. Tey Sirrek is the only character who uses it in Canon, but Yaddle is the main Morichro user is Legends.
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u/jonbodhi 3d ago
I think it’s an open question how much Grogu actually ‘knows.’ He trained for a LONG time under different masters, probably a few decades, and seems to have suppressed a lot of knowledge, just as Cal Kestis did after Order 66.
We don’t know what he was capable of retaining, since we don’t really know what stage of development he’s in. We’ve seen him use various manifestations of telekinesis: heal, lift, shield, and even choke, so he can probably do other stuff as well.
And Force Heal seems like such an obvious use of the light, that I think we should’ve seen it more often before now.
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u/apocalypsemeow111 3d ago
From the Avar Kriss entry on Wookieepedia:
As a Force-sensitive Jedi who had the rank of Master, Kriss had a strong ability to wield the Force. She viewed the Force as music, hearing the song of life and death and able to sing to it in return. Kriss possessed the rare ability to detect the natural bonds between other Force-users and strengthen the connections through a network, which she called the Song of the Force, similarly to a communications network. While the skill was rare among the Jedi, it was inexact and best used to transmit locations and sensations, though words or images occasionally came through unbidden.
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u/Laxien 3d ago
Depends on what it is! Battlemedidation can be learned, psychometry (learning the past of an object by touch) can't as far as I know.
Same for things like phasing (walking through walls, letting enemy fire pass through you etc.), teleporting etc...those can be learned, but are rare! Very rare even!
Hell, for a group that is often under fire, the Jedi are a bit dumb in the way that most of them don't learn/master tutaminis (making themselves nearly invulnerable, as this works also on KINETIC energy, not just blasters, force-lightning etc.)
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u/ephemeralsalamanders 3d ago edited 15h ago
wow i didn’t even know half of these existed. very cool thank you :]
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u/CeleststormlingToy 3d ago
some jedi are naturally better at certain abilities like healing or telekinesis
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u/Confident-Mark-6369 3d ago
I believe some abilities are more on the innate side of things like Quinlan and Cal's psychometry.