Wow, all I can say is that this book was a bummer. Probably an ok resource if you are running a very low level campaign, but I have no problem stating third level characters, and the free resources on the web make it even easier. There are about two characters I can use in my game. I would recommend not wasting your money;)

Every GM's nightmare: NPCs. Coming up with believable, memorable and challenging personalities for PCs to interact with is an art, learned over years of experience and gaming. But that's just half of the challenge, since we're talking D&D/PF here, we need to tackle the daunting NPC statblocks, full of abilities, spells and other things that require time and energy to create.

So it would be a great thing to have some help here, right? A book with pre-generated NPCs is always a good idea. As long as the idea is well executed, that is...

NPC Guide consist of 3 chapters. Chapter 1, titled "Named NPCs" contains 30 fully-fleshed NPCs, each one with a portrait, backstory, statblock and suggested "boons" which they may bestow upon PCs. Chapter 2 presents 50 generic NPC statblocks - no fluff, just stats. Finally Chapter 3 describes Paizo staff PCs from their personal campaigns.

While the quality of writing, artwork, ideas and fluff is great, the book suffers from two serious problems, which somewhat cripple it's usefulness.

Firstly, almost all the statblocks presented in NPC Guide are low level. Only a couple of named NPCs are above CR 5 and all of the generic statblocks are below it. This is a major blow, because arguably the most time-consuming and demanding part of NPC creation is the science of statblock building.

The second problem is that there isn't really anything in the way of new rules elements (items, spells, feats, etc.) to support the NPCs. In fact, being mostly low-level, they tend to be rather bland on the crunch side.

While it's very nice to see dozens of both common, generic NPCs and more fleshed-out personalities, I fear that this wasn't exactly what a harried GM is after. Knocking together a level 3 NPC isn't that hard (especially with Hero Lab around), but the high level statblocks are killers.

Luckily, Paizo seems to have realized the error, and the recent Rival Guide is everything such book should be.

A clever idea that proves surprisingly useful. A must have to pull together a surprise ambush or a contact in a seedy bar. Check out my full review NPC Guide

I just got this book after spending an hour going through it I think it's a fantastic addition to my library. The next time I need a statted NPC quick I've got a ton of options. No doubt there is a theme of low and mid level NPCs, which leads me to believe that we'll get more compilations like this down the road, probably geared towards higher levels. The compilation of Paizo staff NPCs stands out and has some very interesting characters.

In reading the "sell" on Paizo website you get the feeling that this book is the saviour to the bane of GMs. Indeed when you look through the blog materials you get a sense this could be correct. Only one obvious missed points that the book is targetted to low-mid level scenarios.

The introduction in the book itself sells this book better than the advert does. A lot of time and thought has gone in to creating NPCs with charcter. A GM could use the proposed NPCs as a bases and adapt to suit only needs but again it adds time - something this book claims to save for GMs.

I enjoyed the stories and particularly the Paizo characters in at the back. It provides what it says it would but perhaps not to expectations of GMs. It is a solid book and worthy of 3 stars.

As stated in the previous review. I am a very busy DM, and as such, have little time to spend on generating NPCs.
I hav eno issue with the format, some fleshed out, some little more than stat blocks. It is the level range that was selected that bothered me.
Even at my current busy level, I can take the time to throw together 1st, 2nd or 3rd level NPCs. It is when you get into the middling (8,9,10)to higher levels (11+) that the idea of what this can do seems more appealing to me.
Instead, the decision was made to put in a plethora of low level NPCs.

Something as easy as the old first edition "Rogues' Gallery" would be fantastic!

This artifact had nearly one hundred stats for all of the classes, and a selection of more fleshed out characters, including those characters run by E. Gary Gygax, and the other originals.

I am NOT a grognard, I just think this would have served my purposes much, much better. I know that the stat blocks of today are thicker and chunkier than those of yore, I just think that a more streamlined version of this would have gone better, as would the higher levels.

What I liked what several NPC's was the several fleshed out characters and special designed NPC's around the world of Golarion which I have adopted as my new home for my players as GM. this was a cool feature, but is of limited use to me as you can only use so many low level Hellknights.
What I would have liked to see in a GM resource such as this and would still be VERY interested in purchasing from Paizo. Is an NPC generation guide. I am an Extremely busy person but the majority of my GM'ing occurs within cities, so my players antagonists and protagonists tend to be humanoid. I think something that took the base classes and leveled them up each level or say 1,3,5,8,10 and gave me the stats for each level and maybe one or two different twist so not every fighter I used had power attack and every mage used sleep. other sections I think would have been and still could be great would be area specific building charts, such as a name, height, clothing chart for Cheliax, Linnorm, Ustalav, Etc. so i could take those stat blocks and give them personalities on the fly. I'm not sure about other GM's but this has always been one of the biggest time consumers for me and slows both battle down and storyline as I now I have to give Bob the guard a name and levels for his shiny new sense motive check I didn't see coming.
For what it is, it will be useful. It just not what I was hoping for.