I am the laziest DM ever

[fl8m]

Ok i admit it i'm lazy but i'm also the only one of my group willing to run a game so it all works out.
MY current problem is I want to use advanced monsters, in particular monsters that advance by level, the 4th lvl fighter hobgoblin or the 7th lvl monk 2nd lvl swashbuckler 1st lvl blackguard orc, and i don't want to go through the effort of making them.
Is there a program out there that can randomly generate a creature for me? I assume i'd have to adjust it for common sense and campaign needs but just a base to start with would be good.

another question. how do you all come up with stats for your npc's or humanoid enemies? do you roll them up like pc's or us the formula in the monster manual or what?

it's 5am so some of this may make no sense

 

[Yair]

Well...
Any character generation software can take care of the mechanics for you, leaving you with only the choices. I use PCGen, I believe Metacreator is easier and faster, and probably GMGenie and others too. I prefer PCGen becouse its free and open, but it is slow, sometimes unbreably slow. And you still have lots of options to make, so it really doesn't save that much.

There is also an NPC Generator I use, but IIRC it produces not-so-great results, and is limited to only PH races. Hmph.

There are also pdfs now being sold that include advanced monsters or NPCs, such as this one.

As for generating ability scores, use the Elite Array as detailed in the MM.

 

[Bigwilly]

NPC generator

You want the old version of the NPC generator, which is only 3.0 but allowed you to generate advanced versions of a wide selection of monsters from the MM (and Creature Collection too apparently). I might have a copy floating around my hard drive if you are interested.

 

[S'mon]

See Quick NPC system in my sig.

 

[Pinotage]

Wasn't Jamis Buck's NPC generator updated to 3.5e? Anyway, that's one you might find useful. It's easy to find with a Google search.

Pinotage

 

[JimAde]

Here's one by a guy called Birched:

http://www.stanford.edu/~marke/npc.html

It's excellent.

 

[just__al]

DM Genie! http://www.dmgenie.com

It rocks the haüs

You won't ever figure out how you did without it.

The best part of it is I had an NPC tagging along with the group (they called him "ensign red shirt") that was really supposed to die but never died and kept levelling up especially since he was many levels behind the group and I do 3.5XP. It took me all of 2 mintues to level him. He eventually took endurance and diehard and was almost keeping up with the PCs by the time he split off from the group.

They are pretty sure that he and a very important NPC were killed off camera, but the important NPC has a god like diplomacy mod so he might have talked his way out of town and perhaps even turned the guards against the Rakshasa that replaced the Baron I haven't decided yet, but I digress....

 

[Bigwilly]

Wasn't Jamis Buck's NPC generator updated to 3.5e? Anyway, that's one you might find useful. It's easy to find with a Google search.

Pinotage

Yes it was but the 3.5 version that I have only supports core races.

Bigwilly

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Here's one by a guy called Birched:

http://www.stanford.edu/~marke/npc.html

It's excellent.

I think this one is darn clever and easy.

 

[Birched]

I think this one is darn clever and easy.

Thanks! And one day, I promise to actually update it to 3.5... life has just been so darn busy. The 3.0 generator still gets a lot of traffic. I hadn't checked in a while - I was pretty happy to many people are still using it. Mostly, I'm glad I put up something the community found useful, though I was a little surprised that of the thousands of people who've used it a fair amount, only six donated 'thanks' money. So, if you ever stick up a paypal donation sticker, I guess that you should expect less than 0.2% of the people that visit to consider donating. To those six, I am very grateful.

Anyway, that link still works (it leads to a redirect page), but I expect a server change in the next 6 months, so I set up a redirect from a hosting service. You can now find the npc generator at http://www.hailscape.com.

- Birched