Return of The Jedi

[Karha of Honor]

They planned to eat the stormtroopers. I'm pretty sure this is supported by canon.

Yeah there were even a few old EU stories that did take into account the ewoks behavior and had the ewoks to have killed and eaten some of the imperial stormtroopers stationed on the moon before the rebels even showed up on the moon.

Which admittedly makes the empire's defensive planning for their shield generator look even more stupid given they had to know about the whole natives wanting to eat them bit though maybe Palpatine thought it was amusing his stormtroopers were getting eaten...

Which given some of his behavior both in the movies and the old EU wouldn't surprise me one bit to be honest.

The Ewoks had no blasters.

This what it looked like when one side had rifles and the other one did not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musha_incident

To assume that the Ewoks will stay the fuck away was not unreasonable.

[SuccubusYuri]

Legends wise, I find it hard to believe that Palpatine didn't know Battle Meditation, since the whole point of the Rule of Two is that each Sith attempts to master as many aspects of the Force as possible, and Palpatine was a genius and supposedly the most powerful Sith who ever lived up to that point with the debatable exception of Vader. At the very least, he should know HOW to do it even if he never actually used it before.

At the same time, I also don't think Palpatine was using it- he was more than a little distracted during Endor, after all, and Battle Meditation requires a fair amount of concentration. And really, he was just arrogant enough to think that he didn't need it- the Rebels faced an entire Imperial fleet AND a Death Star (that they didn't know was active), with inferior ships and no expectation that they were flying into a trap. As far as he was concerned, this was an easy win, to the point that he was more concerned with how their crushing defeat would infuriate Luke than whether or not they actually had a chance.

Yeah I generally feel "Palpatine knows battle meditation" fits the occam's razor. Adding, shadow apprentices and nonsense, was really just to explain why none of Palpatine's clones (which as Chuck jokes, there are oh, so, so so many) seem to have been able to turn the tide of the war into any Imperial Remnant favor, even though they seem pretty knowledgable about much of his other stuff (most of the time). As much shit as Lucas gets for the "Dathomirian Zabrak" stuff, Legends is full of that shit, too.

I have preferred, myself, to think of Battle Meditation as, not really a be-all end-all as it's often presented. Like, it can help, but there are ineffable qualities that it cannot do on its own, or those ineffable qualities are things the user must understand in order to incorporate into the technique, because as we see from Palpatine directly, he's not the brightest bulb when it comes down to analyzing other people's priorities. Both in Luke, and in Anakin, he really lucked into the whole "Mace Windu tries to assassinate me" card. He doesn't really get what makes people tick other than fear, he is great at manipulating those, but the whole "fighting spirit" thing seems to elude him.

[Jonathan101]

I have preferred, myself, to think of Battle Meditation as, not really a be-all end-all as it's often presented. Like, it can help, but there are ineffable qualities that it cannot do on its own, or those ineffable qualities are things the user must understand in order to incorporate into the technique, because as we see from Palpatine directly, he's not the brightest bulb when it comes down to analyzing other people's priorities. Both in Luke, and in Anakin, he really lucked into the whole "Mace Windu tries to assassinate me" card. He doesn't really get what makes people tick other than fear, he is great at manipulating those, but the whole "fighting spirit" thing seems to elude him.

He didn't luck out with Windu; he outright manipulated him the whole time. He purposely went out of his why to be passive-aggressive with the Jedi Council in general and Windu in particular, recognising that Windu was closest to the Dark Side outside of Anakin and had the worst temper.

When Dooku is killed, Windu says the war is nearly over, but Palpatine reminds him that Grevious is still alive so the war is continuing (and thus, Palpatine will have to "reluctantly" continue being Chancellor despite his term being up).

When Palaptine suggested Anakin be sent to kill Grevious, that wasn't because he actually wanted Anakin to be sent, but to annoy the Jedi that he was interfering in their affairs, and drive a wedge between Anakin and the Council.

When he wanted Anakin on the Council, same reason- annoy the Council, and know that the Council (and particularly Windu) will dislike Anakin just for being there.

And then when he told Anakin that he was Sidious, that was intentionally after Anakin informed him that Obi-Wan was about to engage Grevious (and thus that the Council will be showing up soon to remind him to step down once Grevious is gone). If they weren't on there way already, they definitely would be after Anakin told him- which means that, when he claims that the Jedi tried to kill him and overthrow the Republic, he is technically telling the truth (Windu even says that they might need to take control of the Senate in order to maintain order).

Everything he does in RotS is extremely calculated.

[Yukaphile]

The Revenge of the Sith novel implies Mace Windu might have been near his equal because he was absorbing the darkness into him, and letting it flow out, like a conduit. It's his unique style of combat, Vaapad. Though, of course, I also believe Palpatine was not going all out, because he needed to convince Anakin to turn against the Jedi. The face deformations, though, I don't think that was planned, because in the novel Sidious even commented on how the new face would serve him well.

[Chaos Sepher]

They planned to eat the stormtroopers. I'm pretty sure this is supported by canon.

Again, refer you to Forces of Destiny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs_vQgn ... Pp18c3FluC