I would like to make an NPC in the same fashion as a player creating their PC.
Will this NPC follow the same rules for creating and determining an encounter as regular monsters out of a Bestiary and/or Gamemastery Guide?
For instance, if the APL of the player's party is Level 3, and I wanted the NPC enemy to be Level 3, will this encounter be the "trivial" difficulty at 40xp?
I just built four characters the PC way two days ago and used them in the campaign yesterday.
I have been converting the PF1 Ironfang Invasion adventure path to PF2. At the end of the 2nd module, Fangs of War, they faced Parthus, troll oracle 4 with 2 dire weasels, CR 7; Hessel and Kensa, hobgoblin monk 5, CR 4 each; and Jang, hobgoblin druid 8 with her cougar companion Ruanni, druid 8, CR 7. These were supposed to be three separate encounters, but my campaign has 7 players and their characters are 7th level, so I merged the encounters for more difficulty.
Usually I convert characters by finding a similar character in the Bestiaries or the Gamemastery Guide's NPC Gallery and modifying details so that they resemble the Ironfang Invasion Characters. But those sources lack oracles, monks, and druids. I could find those classes among the pre-generated iconic characters, but those are built like PCs anyway. The PF2 Bestiaries also lacked dire weasels.
For Parthuk, I started with the standard Troll, creature 5, leveled his proficiencies and hit points up by 3 levels, and added the mystery, curse, and spells that a 3rd-level oracle would have. That was pretty crude, because the cantrips and focus spells heightened due to Parthuk's level to be cast as spell level 4 but the slotted spells were stuck at 2nd spell level and below. I replaced the dire weasels with goblin dogs.
For the hobgoblin monks, I built them like PCs except that I did not bother with skill feats nor general feats and not even all their class feats. I picked Wolf Stance as their unarmed attacks, added the 6th-level Wolf Drag, and made them 6th-level trip-expert hobgoblin monks. I compared them to the Hobgoblin Archer creature 4 in the bestiary and to the numbers in Gamemastery Guide's Building Creatures section, page 56. I raised their attack numbers to follow the Gamemastery Guide. And I added the 8th-level monk feat Kip Up, in case they critically failed a trip attempt and fell prone themselves.
For the druid Jang I started with the Hobgoblin General creature 6 from the Bestiary, bounced her proficiencies and hit points up to 8, erased the general's special abilities, substituted a longspear for the general's martial glaive, made Jang a master in Nature, and followed the druid spell rules exactly trying to match as many PF1 spells in her original list as possible. I did give her the rare spell Swarming Wasp Stings because that fit her style. I followed the PC rules by the book for a nimble mature animal companion to create her cougar Ruanni.
Parthuk's first spell was Message to call the others to his room--he also got a critical hit on a claw Strike--and he died before he got a second turn. Seven versus one is deadly. The goblin dogs fared better and the party monk caught goblin pox. The monks rushed in, and ironically the playtest inventor decided to use the trip function on his innovation weapon and tripped the trip-expert monks. The kip up came in handy, but the two rogues in the party had plenty of sneak attacks while the enemies were down. Jang threw some amusing spells, Swarming Wasp Stings and Aqueous Orb, but once she was surrounded and her beloved cougar was at risk, she surrendered.
In retrospect, I might add a few skill feats to Jang, because the roleplaying needs of a captive are different from the roleplaying needs of a combatant.
I mostly wrote the above because 8 hours of converting characters lasted for only 4 hours of gameplay and I never got to use Parthuk's Cosmos Mystery oracle abilities. Usually conversions by the NPC rules are three times faster. For this thread, however, let it serve as an example of my experience in using NPC building techniques, PC building techniques, and combinations of both.
It's generally not recommended to make enemies with PC build rules. The game's combat math is tuned with an imbalance in mind between PCs and NPCs.
Actually, Paizo balanced them vary well. The inflated attack and AC numbers on the NPCs are balanced by them having fewer trained skills and feats. A creature X is exactly as powerful as an Xth-level PC.
However, the PC build makes the character more versatile. NPCs are one-trick ponies. A monster like a crocodile is deadly in ambushing from underwater in a river, but it would be weak in a dungeon hallway where it could be shot from a distance. My party once fought a 24-hobgoblin garrison with three different kinds of hobgoblins in it (and a spriggan lieutenant as their commander) and none of them were trained in Medicine for Treat Wounds when the PCs retreated to the forest for an hour to treat their own wounds.
One-trick ponies are convenient for us GMs because we don't have time to learn a dozen different things that an NPC could do. Doing one or two attacks well is best for the game. But it means that the enemies cannot adapt to new tactics when the PCs switch tactics to negate the NPCs' best tricks.
For example, Jang did not immediately surrender when surrounded. She used Hydraulic Push (a 1st-level spell on her list in the PF1 module) to shove a rogue out of the way so that she and Ruanni could run. But the party's champion used Liberating Step on the rogue so that the rogue could step right back into surrounding her. Jang had more versatility than most NPCs because her spell list was built like a PC. But the 7-member party had even more versatility and could counter her new tactic.
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Currently, I think NPCs built according to the rules of the "game master's guide" are more powerful than the monsters from the bestiary and PC. They're even probably a little too strong
Indeed they are stronger, but a lot more streamlined. You don't have to deal with all the feats they would take, the stat boosts, ect. They have a few simple abilities and maybe some spells, and that's it.
That's the point of them. A level 16 PC can do a LOT. And while level 16 monsters do have a lot of abilities, it's a drop in the bucket compared to PCs. Plus Monsters don't have 8 Class Feats, 8 Skill Feats, 4 General Feats, and 4 Ancestry Feats to deal with. (Or more with some classes)
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Currently, I think NPCs built according to the rules of the "game master's guide" are more powerful than the monsters from the bestiary and PC.
Stronger, less versatile.
They're even probably a little too strong
Depends - since they're less versatile, they'd have less ability adapting to whatever odd tactics your particular group of PCs have. Now, if you built NPCs specifically with your party of PCs in mind, then this lack of versatility stops being a problem because they have the right answers for the party they're actually facing.