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Ya know...you kids' d20 system ain't so bad, when you're playin' it.  You roll a die, you add some modifiers, you try to beat a number.  A few more bells and whistles round it out, but at its core, it's just that: 1d20+mods =/> Target Number.

It's getting the mods together in a hurry that busts your rump.  Especially if, say, you're putting together a quick, unplanned NPC.  

You dig?

Like, say, maybe your wife says to you, "I kinda wanna play a Conan game. Let's use Conan d20." And you being the Conan fan you are, plus you love your wife and like to game with her, decide, "Yeah, OK." And you start making stuff up because maybe that actually works for you half the time, you lucky bastard.

So you start playing and you get to the point where it's totally time for her 3rd lvl. Cimmerian soldier to kick some mouthy Turanian's ass. And you go, "Whoa, crap, I don't have stats for a Turanian borderer! I gotta...here...charts..."

Drag.  You know?  It's, like, if you aren't halfway prepped up, you're gonna hafta stop your game to put your NPC together on the fly, so you cover your bases, even if you're just adding up AC, attack values, saves and hit points with a few feats and weapon stats. Only you wish you could do it faster.

But you don't know how.

Is there a good trick for throwing together NPC stats for d20 besides just faking it?

The funny thing is, if someone asked me, I'd just say, "Fake it, Grasshopper.  Take your pants off and game."

Grab the generic NPC stats for a 3rd level warrior from the GM Guide and describe him however you want him to look.  No one will ever suspect there's a difference between what you describe and what the stats say.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Is there a good trick for throwing together NPC stats for d20 besides just faking it?

I don't personally know of one, but I would think there is, somewhere.  There's always using pregenned stats, of course, but that only works if you have them for what you need.

I do think this is something that should be included in D20 corebooks (or for any system where making an NPC by the book can take a while).

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!

THE SHORT VERSION

Is there a good trick for throwing together NPC stats for d20 besides just faking it?

I do something like this:

Best skill = level + 3.
Other skills. Less. Probably 1/2 or 0 unless I am feeling finicky.
Assume +2 stat modifier for stat corresponding to best skill, +0-+1 for others.

Quote from: Caesar SlaadI do something like this:

Best skill = level + 3.
Other skills. Less. Probably 1/2 or 0 unless I am feeling finicky.
Assume +2 stat modifier for stat corresponding to best skill, +0-+1 for others.

Ooooooh.

Recycle parts of your planned encounters. I draw up planned encounters with the intention of recycling large chunks of them.

I've almost always got an encounter with four to six warriors of the appropriate CR planned for somewhere in the campaign. By carefully labeling what all the bonuses are, I can quickly change four fifth level human warriors to six eighth level hobgoblin warriors just by popping racial mods in and out. One easy way to do this is to write things that barely change or that would improve in a linear way in pen, and write highly mutable things in pencil. That way, you can grab a big eraser, rub out big chunks of the sheet at once, and quickly scribble in replacements without having to redo the entire thing.

Also, print monster and opponent stats from d20SRD.org and then annotate them directly on the print-off. That's a really easy way to do it too.

Edit: You can also print off NPC class level progressions, use the generic stat spread the MM recommends 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 and pencil in the rest of the bonuses.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!

THE SHORT VERSION

Is there a good trick for throwing together NPC stats for d20 besides just faking it?

The funny thing is, if someone asked me, I'd just say, "Fake it, Grasshopper.  Take your pants off and game."

You could use the generic rules from Star Wars Saga:

1. The base skill = ability mod + level/2
2. Is the skill something the NPC would be trained in? If yes, +5.
3. Is the skill something the NPC would be an expert in? If yes, another +5.

Its not exact for D20 but its close and easy to use.

All of these are good suggestions.

• Recycle previous stats / encounters.  Use different set dressing on them.
• Come up with or use one of those nifty on-the-fly guesstimate systems, as written by others in this thread.
• Grab pre-written NPC stats from the DMG or wherever, as that's precisely what they're for.
• Don't panic, and don't sweat the small stuff.

There´s no solution, just workarounds, as mentioned above.

You can´t have the detail without doing the legwork, or without someone else doing the legwork.

One last suggestion is to stat up your big bads long before you want the PCs to kill them. It'll help you get a clearer idea of their capabilities over the long run, but it also means that you're prepared if somehow the players outwit you and manage to get to terms with the big bad two sessions before you thought they would. It also gives you a sneaky way to try out tricks you want the big bad to have but aren't sure will work - give some NPCs a partial or slightly different version of the same trick, and see how it works in practice.

There are several ways to quickly hack some NPCs. IIRC, the PHB II has some charts to quickly do that, I think Green Ronins Advanced Gamemasters Guide had something similar. I once used a quick sheet and a playing card mechanic similar to Traveller: New Era. Then there are the Unearthed Arcana generic classes, Iron Heroes' DM classes (very good idea) and a lot can be done with templates and custom prestige classes.

For low-level characters it's really not that hard. This is exactly the situation you mention, where even the players quickly create something. In a situation where the players carefully crafted characters and levelled them up sometimes, it isn't as easy anymore. And why not? If the players have to spend some time, the DM should probably too.

I let someone else do all the work, in almost every possible case -- I just keep a folder and keep all the pre-statted NPCs from modules, Dungeon magazines, WotC web content, etc. etc. in there. Just collect some stuff and sort it, then you can just pull out a statblock when you need it. Change the name, appearance, and so on. It's easy to switch out a weapon, or whatever, if you're feeling ambitious. The same goes for monsters -- I can't be bothered to use templates. I just pull monsters straight from the MM, change the way they look and viola! New monster (or NPC). For example, my players have fought a couple "witches" this campaign, and the first one was a by-the-book Ogre Mage, the second one a by-the-book Aurak Draconian.

Steal. Cover tracks. The way of the spontaneous gamemaster is to never build stats. (Well, that's my way, anyway.) Seriously -- Dungeon, and modules, and characters in various official sourcebooks (say Forgotten Realms book, for example), and WotC web content, that shit is solid gold. With a little collecting and sorting, it's probably never necessary for anyone to stat up an NPC for 3.5 at this point if they don't want to. I don't tend to go spontaneous, myself, but I spend my time prepping other stuff -- it's not, "How do I stat up the big bad," it's "what do I put in this room? What random encounter table do I want for this part of the tower?

Just to give something concrete, the RPGA fastplay characters are a pretty good free resource:

Living Greyhawk Fastplay Characters (level 1)
Mark of Heroes (levels 1, 4, and 7)
Xen'drik Expeditions (levels 1 and 4)

That's the tip of the iceberg. Go forth and profit from the work of others!

Rich

Quote from: richforestGo forth and profit from the work of others!

Plunder ahoy!

I've used most of the techniques outlined so far, from hacking the SRD, to Caesar Slaad's rule of thumb, to plundering other products.  

Also, the primary difference between a standard ogre and a Metalunan mutant is how the DM describes the monster.

I am shamed. I should know this.