I'm looking for archetypes for NPC characters - the staff, the support crew, even beloved workers and owners of favored PC businesses. We seem to have lost the NPC classes, so how do we build characters who take and develop abilities for downtime, not combat? Craft, Performance, and Lore gets you blandly through level 5 or so, but someone who is experienced and gifted should have something special.
Any of the bright and prolific 3rd party writers have anything like that? Sure, the Prophets of Kalistrade should eventually have plenty of support for trade and paper wars, but I want some famous smiths that you need favors to even see for a consultation, a barrister who can see right through the deception feats of the rogues and bards, and a terrifyingly competent butler who keeps the whole manor ticking despite the owner being a drunken embarassment.
Suggestions appreciated.
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Classes and archetypes aren't present for NPCs because you jump straight to the end and assign appropriate modifiers and abilities. You don't use building blocks to get there the way PCs do.
The benefit is that you can just jump straight ahead to giving the barrister the (for example) level 13 perception you think he needs, and equivalent will, while leaving him as a frail level -1 combatant, instead of building like a level 13 PC with a special class.
I one hundred percent agree with what everyone else has said above. If I was forced in to imagining an NPC class. It would get 4 hp per level. Be trained in Fort saves, reflex saves, will saves, perception, unarmored defense, and 2 skills. It would have no class feats and only get skill feats. It could get trained in 1 simple weapon or unarmed at level 5. Nothing else would naturally go above trained except it could have regular skill boosts.
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I'm looking for archetypes for NPC characters - the staff, the support crew, even beloved workers and owners of favored PC businesses. We seem to have lost the NPC classes, so how do we build characters who take and develop abilities for downtime, not combat? Craft, Performance, and Lore gets you blandly through level 5 or so, but someone who is experienced and gifted should have something special.
Any of the bright and prolific 3rd party writers have anything like that? Sure, the Prophets of Kalistrade should eventually have plenty of support for trade and paper wars, but I want some famous smiths that you need favors to even see for a consultation, a barrister who can see right through the deception feats of the rogues and bards, and a terrifyingly competent butler who keeps the whole manor ticking despite the owner being a drunken embarassment.
Suggestions appreciated.
NPCs aren't "built" the way PCs are (for 99%, rarely NPCs are built with PC rules). There aren't, and never really should be NPC only classes or archetypes.
NPCs are built by deciding their level, looking at some charts for what stats they should have at a level and deciding if they should be good.
See here for more details.
That said, those rules are primarily for NPCs that the PCs will fight.
As someone else mentioned, for a character the PCs aren't intended to fight, you don't even need to go that route.
To make a baker who is the best in the continent, just make the character a baker with legendary baking lore (or craft, not sure which is appropriate) and maybe some appropriate skill feats (if any exist) and that's it. Just decide what kind of modifier is appropriate. You want literally the best baker possible in the world? Give them a +48 to baking, that's the extreme skill value for a level 24 creature.
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Not archetypes, exactly, but Lost Omens Character Guide has theme templates. I haven’t noticed that sort of thing show up anywhere else in Paizo products, but I liked the idea, and think there’s design space.