| A rather late reply to a post, but I've just recently manged to get KotOR I, so I've not come here until now.
On attribute buying during character creation, it depends a lot on what you eventually want your character to do.
#1. Go all out to 18. This means a lot of 8 and some 12 or a lot of 10 all over the other attributes. Extreme in one end but totally mediocre in the rest. Given the +1 overall bonus gained over the #2 detailed below, I personally do not find this worth it at all.
#2. Max out at 16. The point buy system charges each point you put in an attribute the amount of bonus that attribute currently gives, to a minimum of 1. This means that forking out 6 points to push one attribute from 16 to 18 is not quite worth it. Since it can easily net you 4-6 points somewhere else. As a Jedi, you will likely want to be using disabling Force Powers and these are affected by WIS and CHA, which you would do well to have it better than 10 to make them harder to resist.
#3. Max out at 14. This takes the philosophy in #2 one step further by refusing to pay more than 1 point for any attribute. When compared to #1, this is a whooping 2 bonus difference, but when compared to #2, a reasonable 1 point difference. It should not make much difference in the overall for that one ability you would otherwise pay to raise to 16, but it will raise 2 more attributes to +2 bonuses, from an otherwise +1.
Beyond that, a Sentinel basically walk the line between the 2 other classes which represents either extreme. I would place importance on DEX, WIS and CHA for overall character ability in Force/Martial/Social ability. STR and VIT comes close after and INT is the least important, unless you want extra skill points, which in case, it should swap places with WIS.  | 
Attribute point distribution.HELP!!!!!!!! 
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