Making Fast Friends

[Chrion]

I'm looking for some advice on ways to quickly and in a fairly low stakes way endear an NPC to my players. I'd like for them to befriend him, perhaps by getting him out of some minor bind or helping him in some way and then raise the stakes significantly. Basically I need them to care about this NPC for some reason and I need it to happen fairly quickly.

[Grey_Mage]

I think it would be more endearing if he helped them in a small but unavoidable bind they find themselves in. That way they feel obligated to return the favor rather than an NPC who keeps needing things from them.

Can't give much advice without any setting information.

He can:
-get them into a ball (I think via backdoor methods is better than calling in favors to get tickets) i.e. risking his neck to sneak them in.

-get them out of trouble with the law / guild / ruler by accepting responsibility for them and their actions.

[Dastis]

I would recommend looking into writing tips for likable character traits. Also making them useful/helpful to the PCs helps a ton

[Reksew_Trebla]

The group in Rise of the Runelords I'm playing with are all dorks. We found an intelligent goblin named Scribbleface that was going to be sacrificed because he was reading books (spellcaster), and we saved him. We all spoke goblin, so we had an goofy conversation with him, and he went his own way. Later, he acted as our lawyer, because we were on trial. The resident spellcaster took leadership, and we all said he should get Scribbleface as his cohort. It's been a blast having this npc with us.

I just recommend finding something that clicks with your players, and play off of that.