Here's one for the referees: Do you generate stats (abilities, skills, et cetera) for non-player characters as you would a player character? Do they get an abbreviated stat block instead (say just the skills or abilities relevant to the encounter)? Do you just give them whatever abilities et al. you think they need on the fly and write nothing or nearly nothing down?
If you generate NPCs in the same way you would a player character, do you generate them randomly, or do you choose the abilities, skills, et cetera, or some combination thereof?
It depends largely on the system, but I prefer systems where villains use the same rules as players. I tend to develop every NPC fully, but I have stacks of generic stat blocks for mooks and minions.
For important NPCs, they have a full write up for characters.
If the characters have story importance, but won't be making rolls or being involved in combat, I list their "notable traits" (for good or bad), and then go with expected stats (everyman) for their number.
So the Mayor, who might be a Level 5 Mayor, will have his admin traits, and his contact skills, but no listing for his stats (who would be generic 10s). I might have a note saying he was in the militia when he was young (thus have a rank or two in combat).
Minors characters just a listing of their role. If they need stats or numbers I pull out what is expected, and move on. Everyman numbers fill out the rest.
Mooks: every man stats. Though to make things fun, I have a couple of "spotlight mooks". They have one trait that would make them stand out "on camera". I throw a few points towards their little special trait
Knife +3 with knife. Strong one, +5 STR, +5 CON, Fast one +3 DEX +1 SPD, Last mook standing , recovery +10
And so on.
What I've learned is that a full-statted NPC is probably one who won't see action. It's one of those funny things that we always complain about our players -- their uncanny ability to pull an end run around the GM's plans.
So, by and large, I write up a very, very brief stat block -- often as little as a name, a key skill or two, and maybe a motive -- then wait to see what role the NPC develops within the game. If the NPC is a winner with both the players and me, then I'll flesh him out. Nine times out of ten, this method works great.
!i!
Depends on the system, but I prefer systems that LARGELY develop NPCs like PCs, but I'm not militant about it and accept that there are abilities that are fun in villains but not too fun to GM over as a PC. When running D&D, I generally prefer to run classed opponents as opposition, but also find classed creatures a lot of fun (and built in support for the same was the major stride forward for 3e that sold me on it... and a major weakness in 4e that "sold me off of it".)
I think Ian's right on the abbreviation issue, though. As far as I am concerned, any details that aren't needed outside of direct interface/struggle with an NPC, I'll skip/abbreviate. On the off chance I need it, I'm good enough with my games of preference (D&D 3.5, Spycraft, SotC) that I can wing it if the situation comes up. If need be, I'll take notes about any spontaneous NPC design decisions that get made and fold it back into a more fomalized writeup if needed.
Most of the systems which I favour tend to be light enough that statting out NPCs as needed doesn't pose much of a problem; however, whenever possible I also like to have all the characters play by the same rules, in the interest of consistency if nothing else. (Even in Nobilis the PCs are exceptional because they are Nobles, not because of any mechanical privileges denied to NPCs.) Praedor features optional abbreviated stats for relatively insignificant characters (with a list of examples for the likes of "peasant", "thug", "scholar", and so on), which combines together some of the attributes and replaces the extended skill set with a single general skill that represents professional competence. If one of these bit parts then later on ends up becoming more important to the campaign, expanding the brief block into greater detail is easy. In the meantime, there's really no need to worry about anything beyond the most generic abilities and some quirks of appearance or behaviour.
And I create NPCs to suit the situation where they first appear, never randomly. With point-buy chargen that only makes sense, anyway.
Quote from: The Shaman;266861Here's one for the referees: Do you generate stats (abilities, skills, et cetera) for non-player characters as you would a player character? Do they get an abbreviated stat block instead (say just the skills or abilities relevant to the encounter)? Do you just give them whatever abilities et al. you think they need on the fly and write nothing or nearly nothing down?
It depends on the game, but generally the latter. I see no reason why NPCs should be built to the same standards as PCs - some of them are going to be just less capable than the PCs, some of them more so. Also, going through the full character gen process for every important NPC consumes gallons of time.
Quote from: Warthur;266946Also, going through the full character gen process for every important NPC consumes gallons of time.
That's going to depend a lot on the system you use.
When I played d20
Modern regularly, I had a bunch of pre-gen ordinaries, like rookie cop, street cop, and veteran cop, that I could plug in as needed. Using an online generator made character creation quick and easy.
For
Traveller, there's a
1001 Characters - couldn't be simpler, really.
When I picked up
Flashing Blades again this spring, I started creating characters using the chargen rules and putting them head-to-head in duels to familiarise myself with the combat rules. I discovered that randomly generating characters gave me lots of ideas for encounters and adventures based on those characters, so I started building a stable of NPCs just from fiddling around with chargen. The random generation of characters according to the RAW was really inspirational in ways that simply picking stats or making stuff up on the fly just isn't for me.
It is game dependent really.
I honestly... almost will not ever KILL a player character with a character that isn't fully generated, either by me or a suppliment. I always try to have important characters written up.
A lot of the time, particularly in dnd, I will use the DMG's guide to average characters instead of rolling them up.
In palladium, because writing a character is so much work, a "fully" statted character looks like this:
Shiba (The Sonic Samurai)
4th level Super Hero
+14 all rolls
6 apm
Super Powers: Sonic Speed, Super Human Strength, Super Human Prowless
Martial Arts: Zanji Shingenken Ryu
Martial Arts Powers: Sword Drawing, Zanshin, One Mind Kata, Hard Chi
Skill Programs: All Cultural, Body Guard Assassin SP
That's it for Palladium...
I like minimalist stats for NPCs, just enough that they can interact with the PCs. For D&D that's a Class, Level and AC, from which I can quickly derive hit points, attack bonus, damage, saves and skill bonuses.
Here's a thing I wrote on quick d20 NPCs:
http://immortalshandbook.com/simony2.htm
Eg: Fighter-5 type NPC will have say STR +2 and a +1 longsword, giving melee ATT +7/d8+3, 5d10 hp - say 28, plate and shield AC 19, Fort save + 4, Ref & Will + 1. His skills will be ca +8.
D20 Challenge Rating is then based off his stats, not Level (which would be much too high) - this guy looks around CR 3, a moderate challenge for a 3rd level PC group.
I do on the fly mostly. For some games, I use NPC generators to generate statblocks. I create 10-20 and print them out to have handy. If they get used, I write the NPC name on it for future reference. They're not optimized but that's ok - it makes them normal instead of being perfectly built for the present situation. Jamis Buck's is great for D&D 3.0-3.5 - make a few choices, hit a button and get a bunch of stat blocks.