Overview
A general guide for levelling yourself and your party, which could be helpful in a game that has no respecialization system. Originally written for a friend, then I decided to publish it.
Introduction
KOTOR is an excellent game, but not without serious flaws. One of the most obvious, especially on your first playthrough, is the lack of a way to reset your character’s feat or power assignments, making it really easy to give your character and party some really ineffective stat distributions. This is especially important considering how unbalanced some of the characters are.
This guide isn’t intended to go into the nitty-gritty of all of the details for each stat or power choice, but is meant to offer a general tool for levelling throughout the game.
The Player Character
Your player character is the riskiest character when assigning stat points and other levelling perks, since if you mess up, you can’t just not take yourself with you.
Your starting class choice isn’t as important as it seems, but does help define your role later on.
Soldiers have low skill point progression, fast feat progression, and high health. Useful if you’re planning on becoming a Jedi Guardian later on, and plan on solving most problems by slaughtering them.
Scout: Middle-of-the road. They don’t lean heavily on either end of the in-combat or out-of-combat progression scale, but aren’t the best choice if you’re new because they start with blaster skills that you’ll quickly stop using.
Scoundrel: The frailest class, but the best if you’re planning on being a powerful out-of-combat character due to their high skill progression.
The Jedi classes are further specialized.
Guardian: The combat class. Even slower skill progression than the soldier, but are combat monsters and tanks.
Consular: Casters. They have decent skill progression, but mostly focus on force powers and have high force points.
Sentinel: Jack-of-all trades. They’re the most useful out-of-combat, but aren’t as tanky or heavy-hitting as the Guardian or as wild with force powers as the Consular.
Your stat, skill, feat and force power alignment should be judged on a per-level basis. However, a general goal for how to build your character helps if you want to know what to aim for.
Guardian:
For Stats, focus on Strength and Constitution, with occasional points in Charisma or Willpower so casting a single force power doesn’t leave you drained.
For skills, beeline Persuasion, as usual, and then grab another skill that you have need of (Treat Injury is always a good one) as well as Repair or Awareness.
The only force powers you should prioritize are Speed, and then possibly Heal or Push.
For feats, aim for heavy armor (if it allows you to use force powers), melee combat skills (always aim for Flurry), weapon proficiencies, and survivability.
Consular:
For stats, focus on Willpower and Charisma, with a point here or there in Constitution to avoid dying when the fire goes your way.
Focus Persuasion for skills, as usual. Treat Injury isn’t as critical since you can heal yourself and your party, but is always a safe bet, and Awareness is good to avoid blowing yourself up.
For force powers, go nuts: Heal, Lightning, Choke, Stasis, Speed, Push and its upgrades are all excellent tools for controlling or destroying enemies.
For feats, aim for weapon profiencies, Empathy and the like.
Sentinel:
For stats, go with what you need. This is a very safe class, build-wise, as long as you keep your stats high. Strength, Willpower, and Constitution are always helpful, but a case can be made for intelligence if you need the out-of-combat skills.
For skills, Persuasion, as always. Then, go for what your party members don’t have (probably some combination of Computer Use, Security, and Repair).
For Force powers, as with stats, go for what you need. Speed and Push are always good choices.
For feats, weapon and armor proficiencies, out-of-combat bonuses, and similar general boosts are powerful. Flurry and melee combat skills are also good for lightsaber combat.
On a side note, all characters should try to keep their repair skill high; A high repair skills allows you to repair HK-47 later on in the game, unlocking some powerful bonuses for his combat capabilities.
Carth Onasi
Carth is one of the more diverse characters in the game when it comes to builds. He can be either a melee damage hybrid tank or a ranged blaster user.
For the purpose of this guide, he will be considered a ranged blaster user, since that’s easier for your first time through the game.
For stats, focus on Dexterity and Constitution, with the occasional point in Intelligence. This will allow him to deal enough damage with his blasters, but take more hits than Mission. Give him two blasters ASAP and get him the dual-wielding feats when you can.
For skills, focus on Treat Injury and Awareness, with occasional points in Repair. His healing is mostly for himself: compared to other characters, Carth only really helps you when you’re in combat and has few skills for unlocking doors, etc.
For feats and abilities, focus on anything that does ranged weapon damage, boosts it, or any ranged weapon abilities, like Rapid Shot, Power Shot, and Sniper Shot. Stuff that boosts his defenses is also helpful, like heavy armor proficiency.
If you’re building him as a tank, go for melee weapon proficiency and the associated active skills (Flurry should always be prioritized for melee characters).
Mission Vao
Mission is probably your best out-of-combat party member besides T3-M4. Unlike T3, however Mission can actually do stuff in combat as well on a regular basis.
For stats, focus on Intelligence and Dexterity…and that’s about it. The infrequent point here or there in Constitution will keep her from crumpling like paper, but your main character and other party members should be tanking the damage anyway.
For skills, focus almost exclusively on Security, Demolitions, and Awareness. You need Mission to get you into locked rooms, to locate mines, and to disable or retrieve them. All other skills should be focused on compensating for what your character lacks, but try to prioritize Computer Use and Repair if you can. Stealth is usable, but requires Mission to use up her belt slot and go solo, so I don’t think it’s worth it.
For feats, anything that boosts her three essential skills is a must, and the rest can go into ranged weapon damage abilities. Get her using two blasters as soon as you have the feats for it, and grab Rapid Shot so she can play cleanup on larger groups rather than risk drawing the attention of larger enemies.
Zaalbar
He’s a Wookie.
Ok, I could just leave it at that, but I won’t, so…
Zaalbar is your tank. He’s Wrex/Grunt five years before Mass Effect was even being considered. He’s a male Aveline and Cassandra, a furrier Alistair, and only slightly hairier than Blackwall, and just barely less tanky.
In case I haven’t made it obvious enough, focus exclusively on Constitution and Strength. The very, very rare point in Intelligence is available, but only if you don’t usually use him with people like Mission.
For skills, Treat Injury (so he can keep himself alive), Repair (only if your character is not skilled in Repair: otherwise, Computer Use) and Awareness, the ever-present dump skill stat.
For feats, get him two melee weapons and the appropriate feats before anything else. Beyond that, any melee skills and other stuff that boosts his survivability is all you need. He’s gotta be using two swords at all times.
Regarding Bowcasters; They’re impressive, but rare, and you have enough ranged weapons users that you can afford to make Zaalbar a tank. If you insist on using him as ranged damage, redirect points you’d put into strength into dexterity instead, but it’s really not a good idea.
T3-M4
This adorable little droid is almost useless in combat. They can zap people with droid blasters and limited-use attachments, but their little metal body is going to get squashed when enemies so much as sneeze in their direction. Don’t do that to T3.
What they do excel at, even more than Mission, is out-of-combat usability. And in combat, if you can keep T3 alive, they can harass people pretty well.
For stats, focus on Intelligence and Dexterity…and that’s it. Any points put into Constitution will be wasted, since T3 will die too quickly anyway.
For skills, Computer Use, Repair, and Security and absolutely necessary. If you have points to spare, then put the rest into Demolitions and Awareness, the dump stats. When this little buddy is in your party, no droid is too damaged to be repaired, no computer too well-protected to be hacked, no door too well-locked to be broken into.
For feats, focus on anything that boosts out-of-combat skills besides Persuasion, and then give him dual-blaster feats and ranged weapon skills once those are taken care of. Taking T3 with you essentially just means that combat is with two people instead of three, but they’ll pull their weight outside of combat.
Bastila Shan
Bastila is meant to be a Jedi support. She’s powerful in lightsaber combat, but really shines when she can use her various force powers to buff you and your other party member.
For stats, focus on Wisdom and Intelligence, with the occasional point in Charisma and/or Strength to enable her to do more damage with her lightsaber strikes and force powers. Have her use a double-bladed lightsaber as soon as you find one and give her the upgraded two-weapon fighting feats/dual-wielding bonuses. If you’ve got leftover feat points for her, feel free to get Flurry and its upgrades, but you should focus on passive skills for her when you can.
For skills, focus on Awareness and Treat Injury. She’s an excellent medic, and awareness is a dump skill for any leftover skill points.
For force powers, go for anything that buffs the party, heals, or offers crowd control. The only offensive force powers you should pick up for her are Force Push and its upgrades as well as Throw Lightsaber.
Canderous Ordo
Canderous is also a ranged weapons user, like Mission and Carth, but unlike the rest we’ve seen so far he focuses on Big Freaking Guns. He’s actually, for lack of a better term, a Ranged Tank.
For stats, focus on Dexterity and Constitution. Canderous hits hard and takes hits well, even better than Carth. He actually has regeneration capabilities!
For skills, Canderous is REALLY not an out-of-combat guy, kind of like a reverse T3-M4. Give him Awareness and Treat Injury, but only so that he doesn’t walk into mines and can heal himself when (unthinkably) he gets low on health.
For feats, focus on improving his ability to use Blaster Rifles (two handed rifles) and ranged abilities like Power Shot, Rapid Shot, and Sniper Shot. Heavy armor is also a must. Any other skills that boost his survivability are absoluely necessary.
Juhani
Disclaimer: I didn’t actually recruit Juhani in my playthrough (oops…) so this build advice is not from personal experience.
Juhani is a melee damage dealer. While Bastila fulfills the role of support with some crowd control and supplemental damage, Juhani is all about combat with her lightsaber. She can be compared to Zaalbar, but she’s more of a melee assassin.
Get her master flurry and force speed as soon as you can, and then stuff like Power Attack. You can either choose to give her double lightsabers or a double-bladed lightsaber: the choice is yours.
In terms of stats, go for strength and constitution with some occasional wisdom so she can cast force powers with SOME effectiveness.
In terms of skills, well, she’s kind of useless out of combat, but treat injury is always useful, and if you REALLY want to you can give her stealth (but, as i said, that uses up a belt slot and is thus kind of worthless).
Jolee Bindo
Your first single-lightsaber user! Jolee is a Jedi Consular, although he’s less of a “jack-of-all-trades” kind of guy.
Since his alignment is neutral, feel free to give him some dark side powers: Bastila is already your support, so Jolee is there to do more damage with force powers. Treat him like a mage in a fantasy game: squishy, but can rip apart enemies if left unopposed.
Give him a single lightsaber so you can free up point slots for force powers. In terms of stats, go for Wisdom almost exclusively, with a few points in charisma to reduce the cost of dark-side powers and a VERY rare point in constitution so he doesn’t crumple.
For skills, focus on Awareness and Treat Injury: he doesn’t have a lot to do out of combat.
For feats, get all the ranks of Duelist, then Toughness, then Jedi Defense.
For powers…go absolutely wild. Get stasis and all its upgrades, Force Storm (), Fear and all of its upgrades, Destroy Droid, and Force Push and all of its upgrades. Jolee is your MAGE. If you have any powers left over after getting these, go for Heal.
HK-47
I love this guy.
Give him a blaster rifle and let him go to town.
For stats, go for Dexterity. A rare point in Constitution will help him stay intact, and if you’re using his out-of-combat skills a lot, Intelligence can help.
For skills, focus on Repair and either computer use or security, whichever your character has less of.
For feats, go for Rapid Shot, then Sniper Shot, then toughness or conditioning.