My best advice is to use the pre-printed stat cards from D&D minis. Then, you have awesome, prepainted minis to use too. I did it for a DDM skirmish mini-campaign and it was great. I think letting the PCs have all their options will still be workable since you can just use more foes or not limit their special abilities to a certain number of uses. The original sets of D&D minis (up to 12 or 13, I think) should be very portable to Pathfinder. Even the newer ones basically work, although all the numbers are bigger (for 4e).
A similar design concept was espoused by Jonathan Tweet in his mini-game Omega World d20 (on the Polyhedorn side of Dungeon #94). That game had a very simple chart for NPCs at any level (1-10) with a few, streamlined choices for feats and skills. Other feats (like improved initiative and the save bonus ones), were "calculated in" gradually. And his best advice was to just pick toughness and save your self the work. Download it for $5: http://paizo.com/dungeon/products/issues/2002/v5748btpy7zeq
For an even better example, see Savage Worlds. In that game, the rules for PCs don't apply to NPCs. The GM just picks the abilities he wants the foe to have and goes on with the game. It really makes the granularity fine for the players but coarse for the GM, maintaing the character advancement game within the game while freeing the GM from a lot of drudge work & calculations.
See also the new Gamma World. Most of the monsters are expressed in a block that is about the size of an index card (some are the bigger index card size but still very manageable). I love it. Makes it very easy to run. Akin to the stat blocks from earlier editions of D&D--especially the Rules Compendium.
If you want to do the work yourself, just take the foes and streamline them. A dragon really doesn't have to do more that breathe fire (or whatever). All the rest of it is just icing on the cake. But, don't let the frosting get in the way of the cake you're trying to eat. That is, don't let the complexity of the game keep you from running it.
A similar design concept was espoused by Jonathan Tweet in his mini-game Omega World d20 (on the Polyhedorn side of Dungeon #94). That game had a very simple chart for NPCs at any level (1-10) with a few, streamlined choices for feats and skills. Other feats (like improved initiative and the save bonus ones), were "calculated in" gradually. And his best advice was to just pick toughness and save your self the work. Download it for $5: http://paizo.com/dungeon/products/issues/2002/v5748btpy7zeq
For an even better example, see Savage Worlds. In that game, the rules for PCs don't apply to NPCs. The GM just picks the abilities he wants the foe to have and goes on with the game. It really makes the granularity fine for the players but coarse for the GM, maintaing the character advancement game within the game while freeing the GM from a lot of drudge work & calculations.
See also the new Gamma World. Most of the monsters are expressed in a block that is about the size of an index card (some are the bigger index card size but still very manageable). I love it. Makes it very easy to run. Akin to the stat blocks from earlier editions of D&D--especially the Rules Compendium.
If you want to do the work yourself, just take the foes and streamline them. A dragon really doesn't have to do more that breathe fire (or whatever). All the rest of it is just icing on the cake. But, don't let the frosting get in the way of the cake you're trying to eat. That is, don't let the complexity of the game keep you from running it.
