How can I make Bao-Dur an effective Jedi Guardian?

Having gained the required influence, I am now able to make Bao-Dur a Jedi Guardian. That's great, but he can't wear robes, which means the best armor he can wear and still cast all force powers is the Miner Outfit, which provides an amazing 1 point of defense and no other bonuses. His Tech Specialist levels also don't stack with his Jedi Guardian levels for the Unarmed Specialist feat, which means he'll be at least 6 levels behind on his unarmed damage.

Normally, my Jedi use double-bladed lightsabers with Master Flurry and Master Speed to dish out a preposterous 5 attacks per round, which is enough to kill most opponents in 1 or 2 rounds (especially if they've been caught in a Stasis Field); but one cannot cast Master Speed with armor on. His amazing 10 dextery also means he'll be getting hit a lot if he wears the Miner Outfit.

So, how should he built? Will he be an effective unarmed combatant despite lagging behind in his Unarmed Specialist feats, or should he use a lightsaber? Armor or clothes? If armor, what powers should he take? What about equipment and upgrades?

Solution 1:

Bao Dur is a pretty unorthodox character and requires a little thinking outside the box.

First off, on the question of Armor: Forget force powers, give him the heaviest armor he can wear. Jedi Guardian's don't have a particularly wide variety of Force Powers available to them anyway, so you should easily be able to tailor a list to his limitations. Force Deflection and Redirection are obvious choices, as are Force Push, Energy Resistance, Heal, Stasis/Stun, and maybe even dip into the Dark side for powers like the Wound or Fear lines.

As for weapons, you're right in your intuition that Unarmed is probably the way to go - especially if you can hold back his level to 6 before switching him over to a Jedi, as his Shield Breaker ability will more than make up for the lost damage to a few levels. That said, if you need him to be a skilled tech specialist, you can do okay giving him a single lightsaber and focusing on feats like Dueling and Toughness - at that point, he's basically a tank, and you'll want to emphasize his survivability. This works best in combination with characters that can employ stealth to get enemies to focus fire on Bao-Dur, before striking from behind. I still wouldn't take him past level 10 or 12 as a tech at an absolute maximum though. Skill points aren't that hard to come by, and you always have T3 to handle that stuff in a pinch.