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KOTOR Build: The Forcesaber

Tags: #Albino KOTOR 
  • Member
    July 26, 2015

    Fun fact: I was originally going to name this the Spellsword, because that’s essentially what this build is. Half of the build is about frying your enemies with force powers (spell) and the other half is about slicing them up with your lightsaber (sword). However, since the Spellsword isn’t really a name that works in this setting, I would have to go a Star Wars version of it, such as the ForcepowerLightsaber. Of course, that’s a really awkward and clunky name, so I shortened it to the Forcesaber, which is also an appropriate name because this can be seen as the combination of my Sabermaster and Forcemaster builds. Enough about names though; let’s get on with the build!

    The Forcesaber

    The Forcesaber uses his lightsaber to target single enemies up close and uses his force powers against distant enemies or to hit multiple targets at once. He has access to a couple of buffing force powers as well. Allies provide general support.

    Class: Soldier -> Consular. While Scout -> Sentinel is seen as the well-rounded path (not without reason, I might add), the great thing about the Soldier -> Consular combo is that since Soldier is the best physical fighter of the base classes, and Consular is the best force power user of the Jedi classes, you get a character capable of handling both the physical side and the force side of combat. You’ll want to stay as a Soldier up until level 8 and then go Consular.

    Alignment: Dark Side. The Forcesaber utilizes several different dark side force powers as part of the force side of his combat style.

    Skills: As a Soldier, keep saving all your skill points until you become a Consular, which unlocks Persuade as a class skill. At that point, you can put them all in there.

    Teammates: This build works well with pretty much all party members; I opted for Canderous (built him for melee combat) and, just for kicks, T3-M4. If you want more details on how to develop these party members, this guide has good builds for both of them.

    A note for the earlygame: Since this character will need to hang back and use a blaster until he can use a lightsaber, I recommend having Carth use a melee weapon and take care of the frontlines. You’ll want to swap him out for more capable frontliners as soon as you can though.

    Attributes

    STR:8   DEX:16   CON:14   INT:8   WIS:15   CHA:14

    That’s what you’ll want your starting stats to look like. For the attribute points you get on levelups, put the first two into Dexterity and the last three into Wisdom. You can get away with having low strength with this build; all it’ll mean is that you won’t be doing as much damage with your lightsaber. On the other hand, Dexterity will be determining both your accuracy and ability to dodge attacks, making it your most important stat. This build isn’t particularly concerned with skills, so don’t bother with Intelligence. Finally, you’ll want a decent amount of both Wisdom and Charisma in order to use your force powers reliably.

    Feats

    Listed in order of priority. All of them should be maxed out unless indicated otherwise.

    Two-Weapon Fighting: This is a weird one. Ordinarily, you’d want this ASAP since you’ll be using double-bladed weapons, however, due to a glitch, double-bladed weapons don’t suffer an attack penalty at all, making this feat useless for this build. However, it’s my understanding that this was patched on PC, so if you play on PC, pick this up. If not, don’t bother with it.

    Power Attack: In the early going, you may not want to use this due to the attack penalty. By the time you become a Consular though, you’ll want to use it in lieu of your regular attack. Important to note is that the damage bonus from this applies to each hit of your attack. So if you’re using a double-bladed weapon and hit twice, each of those hits will have the boost from Power Attack.

    Jedi Defense: It’s great being able reflect blaster bolts back where they came from. Offense and defense at the same time.

    Implants: There’s a couple of nice level 3 implants come lategame, so you’ll want to max this out eventually.

    Toughness: Between your good Constitution and taking Soldier as your base class, you’ll already have a decent health pool, but this will augment it further.

    Conditioning: A boost to your saving throws is always nice. That being said, if you’re on PC and thus taking Two-Weapon Fighting, you won’t have the feats to spare for this, so skip out on this one.

    Force Powers

    Listed in order of priority. All of them should be maxed out unless indicated otherwise.

    Drain Life: Being on the dark side, you won’t be able to use Cure/Heal very cost-efficiently, but this is a good alternative power to use when low on health.

    Force Speed: Burst of Speed isn’t terribly useful (aside from getting around faster), but the extra hit(s) from Knight/Master Speed make it the most OP force power in the entire game.

    Force Push: This is your crowd control power of choice. Force Push is nice for keeping enemies away from you, while Force Whirlwind can more or less disable them, and, Force Wave is a great power to use if you get surrounded. It’s also, if I recall correctly, one of the few powers that can be used effectively on the final boss.

    Force Lightning: Provides a nice, reliable source of ranged offense and really helps you nail that evil Sith lord vibe.

    Energy Resistance: This is a weird one. Judging by its name, you’d think it would provide resistance against energy-based attacks, but according to its description, it doesn’t. However, if you actually use it, you’ll see that it does, thus making it a very useful power.

    Force Resistance: Lategame, some enemies will start pulling out some nasty powers on you, so you can use this to counteract that.

    Equipment

    Weapon: You’ll want to use the glitched version of Darth Bandon’s Lightsaber with the Sapith and Upari crystals. If you want to learn more about this glitch, this guide has a nice section about it, but to sum it up here, if you make Manaan the third planet you get a Star Map on after Dantooine (so your fourth Star Map overall), thus making the Darth Bandon fight happen on Manaan, any crystals put into his lightsaber will have different effect than usual (with the exception of Rubat) provided that you never take out its red color crystal. In this build’s case it causes the Sapith/Upari combination to give an impressive +9 boost to both damage and attack!

    Head: Not a whole lot of useful headgear for this guy. I recommend going with whatever you find that gives immunity to mind-affecting powers and boosts to saving throws. In that regard, the best piece of headgear is the Stabilizer Mask.

    Body: As a Soldier, go with whatever armor you come across. As a Consular, go with whatever robes you find that provide the best defense. By endgame this will be Darth Revan’s Robes.

    Implant: Initially, just go with whatever you can find that has a useful bonus. By endgame though you’ll want to be using the Gordulan Reaction System.

    Belt: For most of the game you can just stick with using save-boosting belts. The absolute best belt for this build though is the Adrenaline Stimulator.

    Hands: Marka Ragnos’ Gauntlets are your gloves of choice. Before you get them, you can go with pretty much whatever you want.

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  • July 26, 2015

    As a Soldier, keep saving all your skill points until you become a Guardian, which unlocks Persuade as a class skill. At that point, you can put them all in there.

    Class: Soldier -> Consular.

    Which is it?  I've seen more then a couple of errors of similar nature here Albino, making it seem like you've copied some parts from your other builds. Overall I like the concept but as I said too much of it is copied and pasted here and you have a few errors in some sections (listing two companions and mentioning a guide for 3 of them). Fix up those errors and try and make it sound a little different and then I'll drop my like in (Mostly those errors honestly, make sure we do know what we're getting here)

  • Member
    July 26, 2015

    Alright, I went through and fixed any inconsistencies, though I may have missed some. When I make my builds, I usually copy and paste one of my older builds to use its formatting. With my Skyrim builds, it's not as noticeable, but in KOTOR's case, there's a lot of stuff (only putting skill points into Persuade, Darth Bandon's Lightsaber glitch, etc.) that I use across multiple builds, hence the repetition. It's particularly noticeable in the case of this build because like I said at the beginning, it's essentially a combination of the Forcemaster and the Sabermaster.

  • July 26, 2015

    Yeah I know, it's not a problem, I do the same thing anyway 

    It looks good now (I didn't notice anything you missed this time)

    On a happier not this is similar to what I usually run, personally I wouldn't find sticking completely to one thing all that fun so my characters are usually half and half Saber/Force. Though I do want to try some more offensive non-jedi options. Or at least not run any Saber/Force Powers and rely on Stealth and Mines as well as grenades to kill.

    EDIT: Also as usual I forgot to feature it...I think after we hit 10 builds I'll stop featuring, 

  • August 8, 2015
    I think this is a classic example of not only swamping the group but swamping yourself as well Albino :P. You've posted so much that even one of your coolest builds got misplaced a little. The beauty of this build (and KoTOR in general) I reckon is how quickly you can change between roles, offence and defence, ranged and melee. Anyway take this as half a bump.
  • Member
    August 8, 2015

    Thanks DB :P

  • Member
    December 23, 2016
    I've been running this character little by little over the past few weeks. Really fun. You can take down groups by yourself, one at a time, pretty easily. I play this game very slowly in my free time so I just got the first star map. Looking forward to how much more powerful this guy will get
  • Member
    December 23, 2016

    Yeah, once you pick up a doublesaber, Knight Speed, and Master Power Attack your single target damage really picks up. Once you hit lategame you get some AoE force powers to throw into the mix too.