Anyone else find it annoying to figure out skills for NPCs?

[Enkhidu]

I don't understand your two statements; why could you do this for Champions and not d20?

Don't get me wrong - you could do it for d20 - though doing so for d20 requires some more hoops to jump through. You either need to accept that the GM won't be making sure NPCs are "by the book" or that you have to change book that everyone uses.

The problem comes down to the idea that DMs need to use the same rules set for NPC creation as the PCs do. Not all people subscribe to that notion. Nemm does (and so, to some extent, do I). So, with that in mind, I suggested that using a d20 variant that's even more Heroized would fit that bill - it would allow DMs to eyeball a bunch of numbers to make the NPCs viable without worrying that they wouldn't be "legal," (though its a given that the DM wouldn't know overall point value for the NPC).

 

[swrushing]

I don't understand your two statements; why could you do this for Champions and not d20?

i will take a shot...

point buy systems and HERo/Champions in particular do not have the stats linked in any organized fashion to a level.

In Champions, a 150 pt NPC might have an attack bonus melee of +2 or it might have a +9 and a 350 pt'er might be anywhere up or down from that. The same characters might have 20 stun, 35 stun or 75 stun.

in DND, "LEVEL" links things together much more rigidly, and the classes are meant to be informative. That means that when something you are fighting has +13 attack bonus that tells you something, and you can make some reasonable or informed guesses about its BAB and other traits.

So, you can free form in HERO, just picking numbers out of thin air, to suit your needs on the fly and have no "rhyme or reason" implied in the system to be not in line with. The onyl rhyme or reasons are provided by the Gm whenever he hands out his "the way things make sense in my world of tonight."

In DND however, if the mage beats you in a grapple when your BAB is +8 and you rolled well but he falls unconscious from a sleep spell, you have a case of "incompatible level features" to wonder about. Under some Gms they are clues that something is up, a sign that "things are not as they seem" while under other GMs, it may be seen as "just another case of joey's "on the fly" goof ups."

Now, whether it is "a good thing" or "a bad thing" to have no systemic "rhyme or reason" sort of linkages between things in the system is another issue altogether.

 

[Erratic K]

Suggestions:

1) published adventures. You may spend some time bending fluff things to fit (names of towns, etc), but the crunchy bits are done for you.

2) don't make anything you don't need. Many people already stated this in the thread. Unless the NPC is bound for combat with the PCs, you don't need to define much. Versimilitude is good in terms of fluff and plot, but if two NPC's fight, you don't need to run the combat... a single d20 roll will do and then describe the fight as most suits your campaign or the players.

3) let others do the NPC work for you. I used the generic NPC charts in the DMG for 90% of the humanoid interactions with PCs. I've used a couple more out of FR books that had NPC charts. I'm willing to gloss over some crunchy differences (so what if my 1/2 orc fighter and dwarf fighter NPC's had largely the same stats- handwave handwave). If you are not willing to gloss over the differences, find more books that have the NPC work done for you.

4) Go object oriented: Convert other NPCs, reuse parts. Got an NPC that you like from whatever source that has bad fluff- change the fluff.

-E

On the otherhand, I'm sometimes willing to put in extra effort to design a BBEG or boss monster- and sometimes is pays, and sometimes the players avoid it... stuff happens.

By the way, I love the 80/20 NPC creation method, I'll be using that.

 

[S'mon]

BTW I find that the Henry & S'mon "80% accurate" NPC method gives me much more distinctive NPCs than using either the 3.0 DMG tables (which I do use) or Jamis Buck's NPC Generator (which I used to use). The problem with the latter's computer-generated NPCs is that they often don't make sense and they tend to be either far weaker or far stronger than what I wanted - by the time I've editted them into shape & assigned equipment, I could have done it myself from scratch a couple of times over. With 80%-accurate I get exactly the NPC I want, with the abilities _I_ think are reasonable rather than what the computer coughs up. It defaults, with the standard Elite NPC (3 Good +2 stats, 3 +0 Average, ie 24-PB equivalent) to creating moderately competent NPCs who are slightly more min-maxed than the 3.0 DMG 'Default Array' NPCs (because Default Array is a very inefficient way of assigning its 25 point-buy stat points, it gives 2 +2, 2 +1, 1 +0 and 1 -1) but they will not overshadow PCs. And if I want to I can always assign that Fighter who's the "strongest in the kingdom" a +4 or +5 STR bonus, with minimal effort.