Stat Blocks Kill Me

[Celebrim]

That's my problem.

I'm not sure that I missed that. It's very much a "I learned to play as a player" sort of problem, and very much you treating the NPCs as PCs.

It's very common for players to go from stats to personality in the process of figuring out what their character is. Relatively few players start with a non-mechanical background and move from that to mechanics. As a GM though, you have to reverse that and learn to figure out who you want the NPC to be, and then fill in the stats later to make that happen as needed. It's ok to be inspired by mechanics, but you shouldn't be as dependent on them as you are claiming to be.

Fortunately, knowing you have a problem is half the battle. By all means create those complete NPCs. But understand the seven sentences that make the NPC memorable are vastly more important than the stat blocks. For everything but an NPC meant to be a combat challenge, if you must do without one or the other, do without the stat blocks.

Being very confident about your demographics is helpful here as well. For example, Tella in my game is almost certainly a 1st level commoner, with no stat above 12 and a total point buy of no more than 15 points. If Tella is unusual - her background has given her the survival skills of a 1st level rogue - that aspect of her background will be more prominent in my mind than even her class is. If Tella is exceptionally nimble I'll note that before I note in parenthesis her heroic level dexterity "(DEX 16)".

One thing you I think really need to get your head around is that for all you claim to be inspired by mechanics, nothing in Tella's mechanics implements who you've made Tella in your description of her. She's not nearly the port from the mechanics you think that she is, and in my game to annotate what you've claimed about Tella's personality as mechanics would require much more precision like Insanity (Hebophrenia) and Misanthrope (Animals). Starting where you ended up with her flavor would have led me to very different places mechanically because unlike typical D&D, my homebrew very much implements flavor as mechanics. You may be far less hidebound to mechanics than you think you are.

 

[Teemu]

You don't need to give your NPCs the exact amount of feats and skill points they'd receive if you followed the rules as written. Also, you don't need to have a separate "Feats" section -- just incorporate the benefits into the statblock. Ability scores can be represented as modifiers only -- you don't need to know whether an NPC has a Strength score of 14 or 15, just "Str +2" is enough.

The thing is, not all skills and feats are made equal. For example, you could have two versions of an NPC with otherwise identical stats except for their feat choices. Let's say this NPC has 3 feats; version 1 takes Skill Focus three times in Survival, Heal, and Appraise; version 2 takes Power Attack, Improved Initiative, and Blind-Fight. The rules pretend that both versions of the NPC are just as challenging and capable -- they're obviously not. You could give version 1 a dozen Skill Focus bonus feats and it would remain weaker than version 2. So why worry about the exact number of feats (and skill points) when the system doesn't quite work like that?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The d20 system is a convenient language for describing any D&D character consistently, but that doesn't mean you should write out every detail for every character ever. Remember, any RPG system is just a reflection of the in-game reality of the setting, so as long as you know what the in-game reality is which you are trying to reflect, you should be able to translate that back out into stats as you need them.

 

[Water Bob]

I'm not sure that I missed that. It's very much a "I learned to play as a player" sort of problem, and very much you treating the NPCs as PCs.

Except that I have been rarely a player, and almost always a GM, throughout the decades.

 

[rabindranath72]

As suggested by someone else, I too keep only the stats relevant to the most likely role of the character. No need to create stats for the random peasant, really; but he/she can still be interesting to roleplay.
Also, I run D&D 3.0, and the DMG is brilliant since it has fully statted characters of all classes up to 20th level. It never takes me more than a few minutes to create a full NPC of whatever race and class I need (which, again, will usually mean it's a character that the PCs can potentially face in some sort of encounter.)

 

[TBeholder]

Stat blocks in 3.x are ostensibly for DM's convenience, and presumably are helpful in case of ready material, but for most part it's blatant padding - they even parrot definitions of feats and qualities from core!
And if you won't use them as is, at a glance it's a mess driowning the details.
A solution used elsewhere is diff stats - there's a set of "typical" profiles, so the designer only needs to refer and note the difference. "For the locals, use Colonist profile, but with +5 to Strength, Survival (Jungle) skill and following equipment: …" is very clear and it's all you'd need in most cases.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

A. only put into stat blocks the stats that you, as DM, think you will need.
B. play E6?

 

[Eldrad]

Try Back to the Dungeon RPG.

A normal human stat is:

HP1d6 AC10 amd Move30 Damage 1D4 by dagger.