There has to be an easier way to make NPCs it be amazing if you could make an NPC with a wizard like the character creation wizard that way you could customize new NPCs easier than typing it all out.
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There has to be an easier way to make NPCs it be amazing if you could make an NPC with a wizard like the character creation wizard that way you could customize new NPCs easier than typing it all out.
You don't need to type it all out.
Make a copy of an existing NPC and edit it to suit your needs. Whilst a character wizard would be great there's no real way in which to use it in the same way as there is for player characters. In all rulesets that I'm aware of there's no functionality that could be used to create an NPC. NPC's don;t have classes, backgrounds, ancestries, races, or any of that kind of stuff. So in addition to creating a Wizard you'd also need to create all of that as well in order to make an NPC wizard useful. And since there are probably hundreds of possible actions and abilities and traits that an NPC could have that would be a fairly extensive list of things. So whilst it might be useful it would be a huge amount of work for a fairly small return.
You don't say what ruleset you are using but for 5e there is this https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...-Module-Parser
There may be similar utilities for some of the other rulesets.
There is a paid/commercial product on the DMsGuild to do this. I've never used it or even looked at it, but it might be of interest to you. https://fantasygrounds.com/forums/sh...0-NPC-Maker-5E
The NPC Maker 5E is a pretty powerful NPC creation tool. There's a little learning curve, mostly following up on things like setting the right DC for abilities, but it allows you to take multiple NPC stat blocks and combine them. Once you have an understanding of how it works, it's fast and for me fun :) In the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure, my players were in an area where things had been changed into zombies from spores, while it's not part of the actual adventure, my players made mention of after having killed some creatures, that "wonder if they'll come back as zombies too"....so I made them into Zombies! Muhahahaha! It was great, I even made a zombie green dragon (for the one that is on the cover of the adventure) just because I could! These were all on the fly and without actually slowing anything up beyond having to open up the NPC Maker window and drag and drop in the NPC Stat blocks. Read through the abilities quickly to make sure it matches up with what you want\expect and you have a new critter! You can also bring in other abilities, et al to create this new creature but you could do parts of that with a standard NPC stat block or copying an existing NPC stat block and modifying it as necessary, as Zacchaeus stated above.
I was actually really surprised to notice there is no NPC generator in the software. Although in my case I was after humanoid NPCs and not monsters. It felt obvious to me that there was a "generate" button for an NPC that takes in just a couple optional basics, CR, race and class. Set those or none of them and hit generate. The software would then just simply randomly put together a sheet for the NPC. I guess it's not that common to use NPCs that are built using character sheets?
It depends on the ruleset. Some rulesets have the ability to switch records from PC to NPC or back. 5E does not because RAW NPCs are not created using PC classes, stats or abilities. EDIT: nor do they have many of the same fields, such as proficiency bonus.Quote:
Originally Posted by Straikkeri
For example, create a Xth level fighter PC in D&D 5E. Then take that PC and crunch the numbers for determining CR of an NPC from the DMG. The CR will not equal the level you selected. Nor is it linearly related. You will note that NPC hitpoints go up rapidly based upon CR, while to hit and damage output do not.
Now, that said, I do sometimes create plot specific NPCs using PC rules, but I still usually have to add additional hit points or such. Plus, at high levels, I often remove PC abilities, because an NPC with 30 spells in their list is just not useful in combat against the players. If they last rounds, I just need the 5 or 10 spells they are likely to use.
Check out the link I gave for the NPC Maker, I think it can create racial commoners similar to what you are looking for. Though I also know Rob2e has another module with pregens like you are talking about.
Keep in mind that in 5E for FG, there's going to be a difference between "NPC" which is a very specifically setup object in Fantasy Grounds and a NPC that you wish to use fleshed out as a PC (using a standard PC's character sheet). There are several products on the DMsGuild for some random\pregenerated PC's (which can be used as NPC's with a character sheet, in the event you want to allow players to use them).
I point this out, just so we don't get anyone confused between the two things, in FG a NPC is any non-PC stat block that would be added to the combat tracker, where most people will just think of a Non-Player Character for NPC and might think that a NPC stat block could be added as a PC sheet which isn't supported.
NPC's = cannon fodder
NPC's that stick around = Make a PC for them