Welcome to the Optimal Guardian/Consular guide for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, written by /u/TangoSierraFan.
This guide is inspired by my "Potentially optimal consular build," which was posted on Reddit in April 2018 and has been viewed over 23,000 times. This is a link to the guide, but be warned that it contains spoilers. This site will be spoiler free besides the names of planets/locations and party members.
I have received many private messages about the guide and will use this site to make improvements since the original is now locked and could be better organized. This Google site will serve as the most up-to-date version indefinitely.
This guide details how to build and play the optimal jedi consular or guardian, including passing all persuade checks and maximizing HK-47 with the repair skill, which unlocks all of his story dialogue. Though HK-47 is not the most optimal party member for combat, he is the most optimal for enjoying the game.
This guide assumes you are playing with the Yavin DLC. Playing without it limits item choices in a huge way.
The consular build focuses on area damage (Force Lightning) and buffs with moderate melee capabilities. It is a light side build that uses all of the fun dark side powers. Light side is the most optimal way to build a consular, whereas dark side builds will be much less effective. The guardian build is a strength-based melee fighter with buffs. It works for either light side or dark side, but dark side is the optimal choice.
Both builds will trivialize the end boss.
The build pages are geared toward being as brief as possible. If you would like to know more about the how and why, please see the Helpful Information and Useful Resources sections of this site or contact me with questions.
I am a 30-something year old who played the original game on XBox back in 2003. I happen to have a lot of experience with d20 tabletop games, which KotOR's character generation is based on. If you would like to understand more about the mechanics that KotOR is based on, I am happy to answer questions.
I am open to any and all comments, criticism, and input. I am more than happy to answer questions. Please feel free to contact me through Reddit (/u/TangoSierraFan).