This came up in a discussion with the kids (henceforth Brainiac98 and BrainiacME) tonight. I’m not sure how we got onto the topic of which is the smartest of the Star Wars characters, but there are many reasons why I love my wife, and having incredibly geeky conversations with our kids is just one of them.
Anyway, Dangerosa and I (and 98 and ME) were of the opinion that it’s:
R2-D2
By a mile. Second place is (according to the adults) Chewbacca. The kids are holding out for C-3PO, because he speaks so many languages.
So two questions:
Any other proposals for smartest?
If you’re using old-style D&D, which all of us know and love, what INT do you give R2 (or your choice)?
Threepio can function in over six million forms of communication, but by his own admission, “I just don’t understand human behavior”. And for all his diplomatic programming, he has an uncanny knack for irritating people with his fussy and deliberate manner. He is also a coward, gives up at the drop of a hat like a cheese-eating surrender monkey, and was remarkably slow to grasp the ruse Luke was perpetrating in Return of the Jedi, when he was telepathically elevating him to be a golden god to the ewoks.
Linguistic Ability: 6M+; Street Smarts: 2; Social Skills: 3.
R2, on the other hand, is a classic 'droid gearhead, able to interface with and plumb the inner workings of seemingly any mechanical object or network, even while in deep space on the wing of a Tie-Fighter. Unfortunately, his communicative ability is limited to binary code and, vocally, an inarticulate (if emotively suggestive) series of bleeps, blatts, fuzzy burbles, squeals, childlike sighs, and raspberry-like ejaculations, which only other droids and a handful of humans can appreciate. For all his linguistic limitations, though, R2 is an unusually deep soul (for a droid), with a tenacious dedication to honoring the Light Side of The Force – normally, an organic phenomenon – and its upholders, the Jedi, and has been known on occasion to engage in a bit of espionage, a combat assist, and even short-range flight.
Linguistic Ability: 5; Street Smarts: a cool million or two; Social Skills: 6.
More a bit later…
I’m with TD on this one. Vader was one of a handful of Jedi left in the world who had the advantage of studying at the Jedi Academy on Coruscant. He was a veteran of the Clone Wars with extensive military, spiritual, and diplomatic training who personally helped to hunt down and kill many of the remaining Jedi. He served as a staff officer at-large to the Emperor, using a combination of political cunning and fear to help maintain an Empire. If there is someone in the room who knows more about what’s going on than he does, he can read their mind and act accordingly. If any of the other four or five Jedi try to read his mind, he could likely stop them.
As for Chewie, R2-D2 beat him at holochess. “But he’s a computer!” you say, “…it’s not a fair fight!” That’s right, it’s not. R2-D2 is a computer, and Chewie is dumb enough to try to beat a computer at holochess. Between Vader and R2-D2, I think you have to give it to Vader, who – if you believe the newer trilogy – was the one who built R2-D2 from scratch anyway.
Just for fun, my rankings in the other categories:
CHA - Lando, possibly Leia once she realizes her Jedi powers
WIS - Yoda, period.
STR - the Rancor, perhaps the Sarlacc, or even the Space Slug get massive size bonuses to STR. Wookiees are probably the strongest humanoids we get to see.
AGI - Luke is the youngest (trained) Jedi, so his training augments his genetic “fighter pilot” tendency to have excellent twitch reflexes. Yoda can spend his force powers to temporarily augment his AGI, but would likely fight Luke to a draw.
CON - Vader and the Emperor both get very very poor scores here, as a side effect of getting dunked in lava, zapped with lightning, and selling their souls for power. I guess you could back Yoda on this one as well, for having a 900-year lifespan.
Your kids have a point. From my first edition handbook on page 10 (it’s not a first printing so you could have a different page) you’ll find the intelligence table. You’ll note that 16+ adds one language per point of intelligence. Therefore per AD&D rules he has an intelligence of nearly 6000000. This is offset by the fact that his WIS is apparently 3 or 4.
R2D2 only speaks one so his maximum INT is 7.
Finally may I say that I just love how everything in AD&D makes perfect sense.
Minor point of debate, Vader built C-3PO from spare parts, not R2D2 from scratch (scratch in any case would imply that he made the parts himself, of course depending on how broadly you define scratch). R2D2 was a droid on Queen Amidala’s yacht, presumably either in the service of the Queen herself or the Naboo Defense Forces. IIRC, in the Clone Wars cartoon, they mention that Anakin and Padme traded droids, as to best suit the droids’ strong areas.
Whatever stat you use to check for traps, Han is low in it, though he is also good in whatever categories would help you avoid the results of said traps (avoiding Imperial capture in the Death Star, avoiding space worm digestion in the space worm, etc.)
When KOTOR 2 came out I started a thread asking what the best setup would be for making an Obi-Wan character, and here is the response that I got:
I’d still be interested in seeing what sort of builds like this would be recommended for the main characters. Something tells me I’ll be playing lots of Kotor in the next little while.
Actually, if I recall them correctly, it was C-3PO who was a pet project that little Anakin Skywalker was building from scratch. R2-D2 was first seen as a mechadroid aboard Padme Amidala’s personal yacht, wasn’t he? And then, by ‘Revenge’ they had switched, with R2-D2 serving in Anakin’s fighter craft as he fought the seperatists and C-3PO working as Padme’s household droid on Coruscant.
I go by the novelizations of the newer trilogy and have found nothing too unbelievable about them, myself. Midichlorians are a bit meh, but I tend to think of them as the one trace Republic science found to measure a person’s innate connection to the force. They are not the force and they do not explain the force.
ETA - whoops, Ragu mentioned most of the first paragraph already. Oh well
I don’t know. I never considered myself that much of an idiot just because I have ChessMaster. (There are undoubtedly all sorts of other reasons I’m an idiot.)
What was causing us to call R2 the smart one is that he always seems to figure things out. 3PO may know lots of languages, but he’s utterly clueless. Even Vader can be deceived. But sneaking things past R2 is really hard.
BTW, on languages – R2 knows more than one, he just has limited equipment for speaking. He is able to understand characters speaking to him in English, for example, although he can’t respond.
While I’m all for the fun of the debate, there is an actual Star Wars RPG out there. It would be interesting to see how our feelings about the subject match up to the “official” reckoning. Anyone have a copy. Personally, not counting droids, I would pick Princess Leia.
If you’re debating about who’s the smartest amongst everyone who has appeared in the Star Wars universe, I think Brainiac would be the most intelligent.
To tell the truth, the metal bikini never really did anything for me. Call me weird, but my jaw-dropping Leia moment came in the first movie when Luke burst into her cell on the Death Star. She was lying on her side, and she oh-so-casually propped herself on her elbow and said, “Aren’t you kind of short for a stormtrooper?” She was just so radiant and beautiful right then.
Of course, I was 11 years old, had only a small black & white TV at home, and a family that pretty much never went to the movies (I had to beg and beg and beg to see SW after seeing the commercials), so that was quite literally my first experience with seeing a beautiful young woman reclining on a “bed” in full color and as big as life.
In any case, I said WIS & CHA partly based on what I read in the various post-RotJ novels, where it was strongly suggested (if not explicitly stated) that Leia’s Force ability led to strong leadership and diplomacy skills rather than Jedi-type combat abilities (though she did seem to have some skill with a blaster).
I have to go with The Emperor. He manipulates Anakin, the entire senate, the separatists, the Jedi council to get his way and not even Yoda knows what’s going on. To quote Beavis & Butthead, “what a bunch of dumdasses.”
Yeah! I mean, no wonder this guy was confident he’d win even with Luke around. He’d previously spanked the entire universe while at the same time leading it! And hey, he’d not only started a rebellion againt him (the Seperatists) he’d decapitated them well before Dooku had a chance to consider a more “active leadership” role for himself.
I mean, can’t you imagine Palpatine saying to Luke, “Evil wil always triumph because Good… is dumb.”?
