Building NPCs

[Ed Reppert]

I have no experience doing this, with or without HeroLab, so I thought I'd take a shot at building Kanker, an NPC from Seven Dooms For Sandpoint. My first shot was to use the "Detailed Monster or NPC using Game Mastery Guide" option. Seems to be going well, but.. Kanker is described as a "Male ghast alchemist". He's level 12. The level part I can do. But it looks like I have to pick and choose alchemist abilities rather than pick an option that says "12th level alchemist". Am I reading it right? Would it be better to start with the "player character rules" option? Although if I did that I'd have to figure out how to make him a ghast. Anyway, what say you?

 

[Mathias]

There's two ways to approach this - if you just need this for a single encounter, and just good enough to use for initiative and other basic things, then use "Basic Monster" - that'll let you just fill in values for the AC, HP, saves, etc. and go from there.


Detailed Monster will give you a more functional end product. Sounds like this is a custom monster - so for the Ancestry, choose Custom NPC - the very first item in the list, and then start filling out stats, and adding various abilities. You'll likely end up adding several custom abilities, so that you can fill out the unique things this monster can do.


In PF2, monsters only get major abilities from classes, if they've got some class-like things. Often, what they get is a variation of the PC version, re-designed to be just what's needed for one monster for one encounter - nothing long-term, and with some of the PC complexities removed sometimes.

 

[Ed Reppert]

Thanks, Mathias. Looks like I'm on the right track with the detailed monster stats. I'll see what I can do with alchemist abilities.