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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6568216" data-attributes="member: 4937">In any edition, if you end up with combat with a NPC without stats, ball park the stats and retroactively justify what you did.&nbsp;&nbsp; You don't have to be completely accurate here.&nbsp; The world won't end if you are off by +/-1 in any given number.&nbsp; I tend to give a lot of NPCs where I don't anticipate combat simply class and level and go from there.&nbsp;&nbsp; Give the NPC a bonus on the fly as it comes up and write it down in the NPC's growing stat block.&nbsp;&nbsp; For spell-casters, simply select common spells they are likely to know as they cast them (try not to metagame so that they always have the most useful spell, unless the NPC is supposedly a lot smarter than you are, in which case metagame away).&nbsp;&nbsp; You'll eventually end up with a stat block (usually for a corpse).&nbsp; In general, these completely unplanned combats don't need to be severely challenging.&nbsp; Either the PC's are in a fight with a person of small importance and so the fight shouldn't have great significance, or they are likely jumping and probably murdering someone important in what amounts to an ambush and the really interesting is the consequences of that and not the fight itself.&nbsp; Another thing is that over time, you should come up with a bunch of 'stock' stat blocks for generic persons.&nbsp;&nbsp; If you aren't doing this and you aren't too particular about the demographics of your world or your world has default demographics, there are plenty of published resources that provide these stock character sheets for you.&nbsp; 5e being new and poorly supported at present you'll probably find fewer of these, admittedly.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6568216, member: 4937"] In any edition, if you end up with combat with a NPC without stats, ball park the stats and retroactively justify what you did. You don't have to be completely accurate here. The world won't end if you are off by +/-1 in any given number. I tend to give a lot of NPCs where I don't anticipate combat simply class and level and go from there. Give the NPC a bonus on the fly as it comes up and write it down in the NPC's growing stat block. For spell-casters, simply select common spells they are likely to know as they cast them (try not to metagame so that they always have the most useful spell, unless the NPC is supposedly a lot smarter than you are, in which case metagame away). You'll eventually end up with a stat block (usually for a corpse). In general, these completely unplanned combats don't need to be severely challenging. Either the PC's are in a fight with a person of small importance and so the fight shouldn't have great significance, or they are likely jumping and probably murdering someone important in what amounts to an ambush and the really interesting is the consequences of that and not the fight itself. Another thing is that over time, you should come up with a bunch of 'stock' stat blocks for generic persons. If you aren't doing this and you aren't too particular about the demographics of your world or your world has default demographics, there are plenty of published resources that provide these stock character sheets for you. 5e being new and poorly supported at present you'll probably find fewer of these, admittedly. [/QUOTE]

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