30/40/50k marauder? You're sure we're playing the same game? I did Baras today with my marauder who had (mostly custom armor with blue inserts lvl 44-50, except for purple lvl 50 hilts in both lightsabers) with his measly 11k hp and killed him - not without problems; I still had to use call on the force, fury regen, most defensive CDs and a health pac (and lost my companion in the process), but nevertheless he went down. Okay, it might have gone smoother had I interrupted his nuke later (after all, voice of the emperor has a ~5s casting time or something like that). All, in all, Lord Draagh 2.0 gave me more problems since he was (apart from the missing nuke) a far tougher opponent than his master. No, the key is interrupting. And I'm not sure, but isn't the casting bar active by default? (I started playing 1,5 months ago and can't recall activating it)

Oh, I would have been totally for the options of either having a generic replacement healer who is gameplay-wise a Quinn-clone, or transforming him into a Cyborg. Of course, both options would have halted story-progress with Quinn, but well. The fact that he isn't killable is simply character-breaking; for both LS and DS. Light side, because they were actually the best catch someone with a Sith as a boss can have, given how little they usually value their underlings. Dark side, because... well, you've not just failed a Sith, but BETRAYED him? Come on! To say the truth, I didn't quite play my Sith Lord how I wanted him to. Originally, I intended to create an empire-loyal, but still comparably forgiving and honorable fellow. Slightly light side-leaning, if you know what I mean. But because my Jedi Knight, whom I wanted to play as a sort of "renegade-jedi" gave me quite a stir (can't wear fancy relics, have problems keeping my DS-vendor boots etc.), I decided to go full light side with my SW, even though I had quite a bunch of decisions that were rather out of character (the fact that I had LS Jaesa with me most of the time helped me acting kinder than I actually wanted to). So basically after Dromund Kaas, I've been LS all the time, with two exceptions: I let the other Sith bodyguards kill that annoying noble on Alderaan (on of the very very few DS options that were actually cheering Vette up), and I killed Quinn. Did I say Quinn? Sorry, I meant force-choked him to near-death and then took him back on my ship, because I was railroaded to do so -.-

Still bugged. But I guess for the sake of continuity, I simply dragged Pierce along for the scene.

I am quite sure that's a bug, because apparently you always gain the high rep bonus, no matter who you're with. Elaboration: I am playing as a (kinda) dark side character, so of course I'll try to avoid amassing light side points when possible. Since getting 150 points of LS would have been a pain, I handed the machine over to Leksende and was really puzzled when I gained 136 affection with Kira. I resetted the conversation because I assumed it was a display bug (perhaps a minus missing in front of the value?) and restarted it, this time with my equally LS droid companion t7. Same story, gained 150 DS points and 120 affection. Long story short, no matter what personality your companion has, apparently you'll always get max +affection for handing over the device until they fix this.