Scurvy_Platypus
Explorer
Mighty Halfling said:
Hmmm.
I own Buy The Numbers, and while you _could_ do that, you're still potentially looking at a pretty fair amount of time being spent. If they'd made a spreadsheet to handle the building it would have rocked hard.
But they didn't, so you have to do it by hand, and time stacks up on that.
Personally, I'm using a combination of things.
My core is the Adamant product, Foe Factory: Modern. You can find it here: http://enworld.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=51080&filters=0_0_0&manufacturers_id=92
Basically you have a scale of 1-10 to rate an NPC on. 4-6 is about "PC average", meaning that it's roughly comperable to PCs, not "average" for the world.
For each of the categories (Initiative, Attack, Defense, Resilience, Hit Points, Competence) you find the "rank" of the NPC (from I - X or 1-10) and then slide along the chart to the level of the NPC. That's your score.
"Resilience" is basically a one-stop bonus to saving throws. Toss out Fort/Will/Ref and simply use the Resilience score.
"Competence" is a one-stop bonus for skill checks. They suggest that if you need an NPC skilled in some specific area, then you explicitly increase their skill bonuses by taking an "attribute"; essentially like a feat.
It's a pretty simple and slick system.
As an example, an NPC that got a rank of IV for Attack Bonus will have an attack of 0 at level 1 and +12 at level 20.
The _really_ spiffy thing about this is that you don't have to really worry about redoing stats for NPC types over and over and over again. Decide, "I think a Merc is going to be a rank VI for attack and a rank IV for Defense. A Bodyguard though is going to be a Defense of VII and Attack of IV" and you're pretty much set.
In other words, all you really need to do is figure out some basic "templates" and you're mostly done. Decide on the level that some particular NPC is going to be and then jot down the numbers and you're done.
I think overall, the Foe Factory: Modern product is _much_ faster for what you're talking about doing. Buy The Numbers is pretty slick and I get use out of it, but for doing NPC stuff I want fast. I'm using it for my Everstone (BESMd20 based) game, and it's been fine.
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I've actually gone one step further, and am working on using it for handling Monsters. Why? Because there's not a whole lot of difference between an "NPC" and a "Monster" as far as I'm concerned. I don't tend to have NPCs hanging out with the group though, so my case might be different.
I figure that you've got an overall base "difficulty" of the monster, which is represented by its various special abilities. So you look at the entry of the critter and use what you see there as the base determination for the various ranks (I-X) in the aforementioned categories.
After that, you can "adjust" the difficulty of the monster in a sliding fashion. You just keep all the special abilities as they are and go from there. Instant scaling monster. Yeah, it's not _perfect_ but it does what I want. Now I can have Displacer Beasts that are tougher/easier and it's a snap to adjust them.
The Foe Factory pdf has some additional bits to buff your critters/NPCs with as well. I personally prefer the CR cost that's in the Grim Tales critter creator. If you're wanting a fast but "accurate" scaling critter creator, combine the two and you should be fine. Use the GT critter creator to stat out the special abilities of whatever, and essentially use it as a template that gets overlaid onto the simplified stat block that Foe Factory has.
Just something to consider.
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I'll note that the product is for d20 Modern, and I'm doing a D&D derivative, so there's some slight differences, but nothing I consider serious. Supposedly there's a fantasy version of it that exists and they're going to put it out after 4E, but a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.
As I also mentioned, I use a variant of the BESMd20 rules. You can still get the SRD here:
http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/animesrd.html
It's also available a couple of other places.
The details of how my game is put together isn't too important to people, unless they're actually interested in the game itself. What is important is the whole assigning of special abilities and so forth.
Anime SRD has a point system that it applies to everything. Saving Throws, Attack Bonuses, the ability to cast magic, hit dice, all that. All of the character classes in my game get 5 Character Points to spend each level buying their special whatevers. Since everyone is 8th level, it means they've spent 40 points.
So to whip up an NPC, I start with whatever template I've already premade, and that covers the half the "stat block" of the NPC right there. If I think I'm going to need actual ability scores for some reason (Str, Int, etc) then I'll simply grab one of the default arrays. As far as I'm concerned though it's mostly pointless. If it's an NPC that I expect the group is going to be dealing with in a combative fashion, then I'll consider it. Otherwise, I think it's a waste.
After that, I simply thumb around a bit and go, "Yeah, I like that and that and that and maybe I'll take a few helpings of that" and I'm done. Feats each cost 2 CP, and then various abilities cost a variable amount of points. It hasn't taken me 15 minutes to make an NPC yet. The longest time actually is simply writing the stupid stuff down. Each NPC/whatever gets the same number of points to buy extra "stuff" as the PCs do.
It seems to work for me, but I'm pretty easy going on stuff too.
Even if you don't go as far as I am though, I think Foe Factory is pretty darn spiffy. Buy the numbers is great for building classes and having them roughly match up to the other classes, but I wouldn't use it for NPC generation unless it was either a fairly low level NPC (I'm running an E8 game) or I felt it critical for some strange reason to build it _very_ exactly. I also would expect to be getting a fair amount of milage out of the NPC, having it recur frequently and not likely to be chopped down by the PCs in the first place.
