Party Members

There are no fewer than 12 different potential party members in KOTOR2, of which you’ll be able to recruit 10. Some characters will be inaccessible to you based on the sex of your main characters, while others will choose to side with you or not depending on what Force alignment you’ve chosen.

How to Steal Souls and Influence People

One of the intriguing new aspects of Knights of the Old Republic 2 is the inclusion of a system that will let you bend your teammates to your will. If you become a truly evil character, then you can expect the alignments of your teammates to adjust accordingly. If, on the other hand, you treat everyone you meet with kindness and respect, then you can expect the fellow travelers aboard the Ebon Hawk to become more oriented towards the Light Side of the Force.

This was all true in KOTOR as well, of course, but in KOTOR2, there’s a more fleshed-out system of influence that you can use to attempt to coax your team members along the path that you’ve chosen for them. In most cases, you won’t have to worry too much about this, but some party members can become Jedi. For these party members, you’ll have to talk to them constantly and attempt to gain influence over them until they trust you enough to allow you to train them in the ways of the Jedi. Check back to these character descriptions over the next couple of weeks to learn more about each character’s path to the Force.

Kreia

Initial Stats

Class: Jedi Consular
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 16
Constitution: 16
Intelligence: 14
Wisdom: 16
Charisma: 12

If you could take that annoying undergraduate who liked Ayn Rand just a bit too much and put her into a video game, then Kreia would probably be the result. This wizened Jedi is a wearingly cynical, and encourages you at every opportunity to act only in your own self-interest, and will chide you every time you happen to help people with problems, or even if you happen to take notice of them.

Still, though, Kreia has really good starting stats, and, like Jolee in the original KOTOR, will have an easier time skirting the difference between the Light Side and Dark, allowing her to more easily access powers from either side of the fence without incurring penalties. As a Consular, she’ll be able to more easily overpower enemies with her Force Powers and will have a much larger pool of Force Points to use, making her a natural choice for the Jedi Support AI setting.

In combat, Kreia is naturally suited for wielding a lightsaber in one hand. Although her Defense won’t be so hot, she will rarely be the focus of much enemy attention (that honor will fall to your main character), allowing her to skirt the edges of battle, striking enemies that are occupied with other characters. You’ll want to occasionally flip over and manually control her, though, if only because she won’t usually use her most powerful Force Powers unless explicitly instructed to do so.

Attributes: Since Kreia’s most useful feature will be her ability to use Force Powers to full effect, you’ll want to continually increase her Wisdom whenever possible. Luckily, this is one of the easiest stats to increase via equipment and lightsaber crystals.

Skills: Unless you’re crazy, you can avoid boosting Stealth completely. You shouldn’t need to boost Repair very much, either, unless you’re going to constantly keep her in your party. Treat Injury is likely your best bet here, if only so that Kreia can make implants and other items at a workbench; she’ll obviously be relying more on Heal in combat than medpacks.

Feats: As a Consular, Kreia’s Feat progression will be somewhat stunted, but she should still be able to get one once every third level or so. Since we had her outfitted with a lightsaber, Dueling and Toughness were natural choices, but you can browse through the tree and see what you want her to have.

Force Powers: Kreia will have no shortage of powers to choose from here. Because of the Force Bond between the main character and Kreia, you can let her level up the self-buffs that are available, such as Speed and Armor, and let her use those, since they’ll affect herself and the main character at the same time. If you wish for her to use abilities in combat, then level up things like Fear and Shock. Light Side characters will probably want to have Kreia focus on the damaging Dark Side powers, due to the difficulty of bending her alignment too far from the middle of the road.

Bao-Dur

Initial Stats

Class: Tech Specialist
Strength: 14
Dexterity: 10
Constitution: 14
Intelligence: 15
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 10

Bao-Dur will be a welcome addition to any party, if not for his combat skills (although he’s decent in a fight), but for his pure technical acumen. His unique Tech Specialist class allows him to access almost every technical skill as a Class Skill, meaning that you can continue to level them up without having to invest double points in them at each level up. He’ll also have a much larger number of skill points at each level up, making it easy to keep him maxed out in all the relevant skills.

If you come up across an energy field, you can use Bao-Dur to blast through it.

In this sense, Bao-Dur isn’t all that much different than a droid, but his simple ability to be healed by the Heal Force Power makes him more desirable in a party than any droid. He also packs the decent Unarmed Specialist Feat, which will help him dish out a bit of pain while wading into battle with nothing but his fists. If you keep him unarmed, be sure to check around for gloves that add to his Physical damage, or that add other kinds of damage while he’s unarmed. While unarmed, he’ll also be able to use his lightning fist to overwhelm the energy shields that enemies use, dropping them in one blow.

In addition to his combat and field tech abilities, Bao-Dur will be able to upgrade your droid party members on occasion, giving them valuable stat boosts. Since he’ll usually be taking up a slot in your party that might normally go to a droid, though, this might be less useful than you imagine.

If you gain a tremendous amount of influence over Bao-Dur, you can attempt to train him as a Jedi; he’ll wind up as a Jedi Guardian, and will be quite handy at wading into battle with sabers blazing.

Attributes: You’ll probably want to pump Intelligence once, if only for the increased skill points at each level-up, then start dishing the rest of your points into Strength.

Skills: Heck, what can’t Bao-Dur learn? As a Tech Specialist, he’ll be able to easily upgrade Computer Use, Demolitions, Awareness, Repair, and Security, all of which are needed in the field. Know him, love him, keep him progressing in everything he can. You might actually wind up having too many points, and will have to start dispensing them into cross-class skills.

Feats: As an unarmed specialist, one of Bao-Dur’s initial weaknesses is his lack of health; you’ll want to get him a rank of Toughness as soon as possible to offset this. If you’re planning on turning him into a Jedi Guardian, then Two-Weapon Fighting or Flurry would also be a good investment.