Sample NPCs & Random NPC Generators?

[Darkholme]

What would you recommend for all of these?

I'm very interested in decent sources of sample NPCs. I've got the ones from rpg.org, but that's only a handful of NPCs. any good sources for more?

Thanks.

 

[strega]

How many do you need?

There's the NPC generator that someone did that is on a recent thread. Excellent work, but more detailed than you might need.

For most NPC's all you need is a name, a description and the chart covering Hirelings and cohorts in Arms and Equipment. I cross the name and description off the list and write them down together with the skills from the chart separately so I can always come back to them later should the PCs revisit the person. If that person becomes a regular contact I might make them more of a character by giving them stats and more skills, but that doesn't happen most of the time.

I use Swordgleam's http://chaoticshiny.com to generate lots of stuff like random motives and opinions where NPCs need them, plus descriptions, http://www.behindthename.com/random/ for names.

 

[Darkholme]

I like to use alot of humanoid enemies. Those are the variety I feel I need more of.

Soldiers, Enemy Adventurers, Mages, Tough Bandits, A Variety of Mercenary types, etc. - The statblocks are mainly what I'm looking for.

Named merchants and whatnot are pretty easy as you mentioned, You mostly need names and motivations.

 

[strega]

Most of the npcs you mention are easily dealt with. Do one and then use the mook rules in Legend for all the others. I've done sheets of these where I put the basic stat block at the top of the page together with the Combat Notes. I then make a table in my word processor, label the rows 1 through 10, put their HP values in column two, major wound values in column three, space for current HP in column four, and status effects (ensnared, prone etc.) in column five. This takes maybe ten minutes per gang after I've set up the format. I use a die roller to generate random values in the xD6+Y range for the HP's to get a little variability.

For these nameless individuals you don't need more than this and you have the whole gang on one sheet ready for combat.

The Runequest multi npc generator that was recently posted works really well if you want to do more than one full stat'ed npc, it prints them out 2 per page.