Statting out the bad guys

[godsDMit]

Currently DMing RotR, and the party has decided to go if they can find out anything from the inhabitants of the Brinestump Marsh (I think thats vague enough to not need a spoiler, lol).

Anyway, I statted out a named bad guy for the encounters Im going to put them through, and I began to wonder: How do other people stat out named bad guys?

Personally, I do whatever method of stat array the PCs used. We used 20pt stat buy for the game, so this bad guy has a 20pt stat buy array, with racial modifiers, obviously.

Seems fair to me. What about you?

[verdigris]

godsDMit wrote:

Currently DMing RotR, and the party has decided to go if they can find out anything from the inhabitants of the Brinestump Marsh (I think thats vague enough to not need a spoiler, lol).

Anyway, I statted out a named bad guy for the encounters Im going to put them through, and I began to wonder: How do other people stat out named bad guys?

Personally, I do whatever method of stat array the PCs used. We used 20pt stat buy for the game, so this bad guy has a 20pt stat buy array, with racial modifiers, obviously.

Seems fair to me. What about you?

I'll admit to being a terribly lazy GM. I go here: PFSRD

WARNING: possible spoilers in there. For all those that have gone before and done all that work, my players and I thank you.

[james maissen]

godsDMit wrote:

Seems fair to me. What about you?

Depends.

For elites I will tend to use the same ability generation as for PCs.

For mooks I tend to use the ability generation for Cohorts.

But one thing that I do when I stat out anyone is do so in Word or the like using hidden text to break down all the numbers so that if I tweak things I can make sure no errors crop up.

Also I tend to list things like ranks in skills parenthetically after each skill bonus, so I can see them at a glance.

-James

[godsDMit]

Im usign most of the stats from the SRD site as well, but this one was a new character who wasnt already in the game. A new bad guy I added.

Also, yea, for mooks, I generally use the generic stuff.

[Karlgamer]

verdigris wrote:

I'll admit to being a terribly lazy GM. I go here:

Most awesome like EVER!

[brassbaboon]

I'm a lazy GM too. I use whatever I can find. I reuse lots of NPCs across different campaigns. Since I am brand new to Pathfinder I am having to do a lot of NPC creation right now.

Generally for critically important NPCs (good, bad and ugly) I use the same process as the players do, including choosing feats, skills and purchasing level-appropriate magic items. I put a lot (probably too much) time and effort into this, and pretty much treat them as if they were characters I would actually play as a PC. That means I give them at least some sort of backstory, some personality and their most important motivations.

For less important PCs I reuse old characters, pull stat sheets out of the books or off the web or just roll them up without a lot of concern about optimizing feats, skills, etc.

Anything less important than that I usually don't name. Unnamed NPCs can literally be nothing but a box for hit points that I roll attack and damage totally on the fly until they are killed.