One of the flaws of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (KotOR 2) I believe everyone, regardless of how much you like the game (or not), will agree on, is that the Handmaiden, real name Brianna, will only join your party if you play a male Exile.
However, the good news is, there are actually mods that allow female Exiles to get Brianna the Handmaiden as a party member! Unfortunately, despite the fact that such mods have already existed for a while, there are still KotOR 2 fans who do not know the existence of such mods, which is why I am making this masterlist. Brianna is an amazing character, so I highly recommend you to have at least one playthrough with Brianna as your companion regardless of your Exile’s gender.
Originally I made this list in a reblog, but now I am making a whole new post for this so hopefully this list can be found more easily, especially since the OP I reblogged had deactivated their blog.
Currently there are three mods that allow female Exiles to get Handmaiden as a companion:
Handmaiden 4 Females: Gives Female Exiles an option to recruit Handmaiden. However, the main flaw of this mod is that Handmaiden will still refer to a female Exile with “he/him” pronouns, which some people (myself included) would find very immersion-breaking. Also, the mod has not been updated to make fully compatible with the latest version of The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod.
PartySwap: Allows you to recruit both Handmaiden and Disciple at the same time. Obviously, this mod is not compatible with Handmaiden 4 Females. This mod fixes any potential gender/pronouns mix-up by adding gender checks to dialogues that references the Exile’s gender, though by doing so it also basically makes Handmaiden and Disciple straight, so if you also want to romance Handmaiden as a female Exile, I would suggest checking out the below mod as well.
Handmaiden and Female Exile - Disciple and Male Exile Romance: My mod. As the mod name suggests, this mod allows you to recruit and romance Handmaiden as a female Exile, ditto for Disciple as a male Exile. Obviously, my mod is not compatible with Handmaiden 4 Females either. However, my mod provides an installation option to make my mod compatible with PartySwap. As my mod description says, read my instructions carefully. My mod also fixes any potential gender/pronouns mix-up.
It’s important to note that all these mods require The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod (TSLRCM) to work, so you need to install TSLRCM first. In all seriousness, TSLRCM is an essential mod for KotOR 2 that I do not recommend playing KotOR 2 without it. I need to point out that despite what the download page says, if you use the Steam version of KotOR 2 I do NOT recommend using the Steam Workshop version of TSLRCM. Manual installation is way better since it gives you more control in installing mods, avoiding mod conflicts as much as possible.
Just for future reference.
(via fuckyeahwarriorwomen)