I've been browsing through the NPC and Enemies list, and what I find lacking is "special" npcs, like, let's say a Thief or a Bandit.

What do you guys normally do on these occations where you actually need a band of thugs to test your PCs swords against.

Let us say we've got 4 Bandits and a Leader raiding the PCs camp at night, what stats would you use for them? And the Dwarf Boatsman who's unwilling to fare the PCs because they got an elf in the group, what stats would you use for him for the social encounter and optional future combat?

As I see it my only option is to draft custom characters from the character creations point of view, and store them so I can bring them out when I need them, but that would take quite some work to draft NPCs for each and every option that might come up during a session.

Just give it to me straight, what do you guys useually do?

i just make it up on the fly to what ever makes sence. a boat man dwarf would nor have ws traind but thay are strong 3-4 caricteistc dice would make sence for st just use your best jugment a random npc shouldent be overpowerd

I would use Soldiers, mix them up a bit on stats and wounds, throw a couple of different actions in. Maybe the leader gets Improved Parry and Improved Dodge and a bolstering social action.

Other times I just reskin things. A nameless Chaos Horror was really simply a Boar with a Fear Rating.

Rob

Thanks for the feedback really helped a lot last night.

Also, give Fortune dices as appropriate Characteristic improvement to special NPCs, such as the Leader.

Remember that the Agression / Cunning/ Expertise system mechanics was drawn (at least IMO) to work as specializing general NPC stats. Thus you could give fortune or even expertise dices to rolls that you think the NPC in question would have better training. You could also give them more or less A/C/E.

But I think that generally I do just as angrydragon said. :]

Also, remember that equipement can customise NPCs (a Ungor Beastman with a 2 hand Axe will have a 4(7)=11 damage rating)

If you seek weak bandits, use common townfolk with heavy-cloth armor (3 all stats, soak 1) and dagger-like weapons (DR 4 / CR 3) with a Soldier type leader in Leather or chainshirt with a hand weapon

A real bandit threat would be Soldier-based bandits with Leather and hand weapons, with a leader in chainmail, a Fortune or 2 and an Action card or 2, 2 weapons or a 2 Handed one.

All depends on the challenge level you seek for your player group composition (if you have no melee character, don't create a Wargor like enemy for that group)

If you need to create a visual threat with numbers, use henchmen groups : 1 "creature" will be (number of PCs)xbandits with the henchmen rules.
It looks really well (you don't tell your player of course, but they'll figure it out quick) and it will often strike fear into your players ("oh sh*t, 20 beastmen, really ?! but we are 4!!!!")

You should also find that you can write up a few 'standby' NPCs pretty easily, and just re-dress them every time you need someone new.

Off the top of my head: weak rogue/villain, experienced rogue/villain, weak bureaucrat, experienced bureaucrat, weak 'hill-man' and experienced 'hill-man' would probably be fine.

eg. Surrounded by gang of thugs: use 3 weak rogues and and experienced rogue as their leader, but give them all an extra point of strength and swap their knives for clubs.

Walk into a bar full of drunken sailors: use a mix of weak rogues and experienced rogues. Add an extra point of toughness and give them all the 'swim' ability.

Get into an argument with a peasant mob in the middle of a village: use lots of weak rogues.

Thrown into a gladatorial arena and made to fight against the owner's best fighters: use experienced rogues with no armour.

You see how coming up with some basic statlines can be used in a lot of different situations. Almost any new situation your players walk into you can use these stats to fall back on, give you confidence that you're not going to be stuck for ideas and give you a base-line to work from. If you immediately think 'but I can't possibly used 'rogue' stats for sailors, because sailors should be able to swim', then you've just answered your own question: just give them the swim ability and the players don't need to know that everyone they interact with has virtually identical stat-lines!

(One final note: a lot of sailors probably can't swim, so it perhaps wasn't a good example, but it was just to explain the idea!)