Building NPCs (Rules)

Creatures that are meant to cleave closely to character classes or intended to represent people rather than monsters are NPCs. They might face more scrutiny around their mechanics than creatures because a player can more directly compare their operative to an NPC who acts like an operative. That doesn't mean you have to build an NPC exactly like a PC, though. You can build NPCs just like you would any other creature. If an NPC should work like they have a class, use the class features and feats of a suitable class to pick abilities, and look at both the class's proficiencies and attribute modifiers to determine how strong the NPC's statistics should be. Class Road Maps under PC-Style Build has pre-built road maps for Player Core classes to get you started. If the NPC isn't meant to work like they have a class (a vidgamer, for example), instead build the character separately. You can create new abilities as needed to get the NPC's interactions with the PCs to express their theme and role in the story. These NPCs can be level –1 or level 0. Their capabilities are below those of PCs, and they should typically not use any class features or feats from PC classes. Creatures of these levels tend to be extremely simple. It's highly recommended that you select NPC skills using proficiency ranks as you would a PC, though you don't need to be precise about the number of skill increases you give the NPC. You can give them earlier access to expert, master, or legendary proficiency if they're a skill-based NPC and better proficiency in narrow areas of expertise, like Sports Lore for a brutaris player NPC.