Ok I'm making some NPCs and a thought hit me. They don't get Qualities do they? How then do I represent professionals and mages? Weird I know but I'm still puzzling my way through various stuff. Any help would be appreciated.

give mages magic stats (if you expect them to cast spells) and otherwise just roleplay professionals as professionals, and mages as mages.

npc's are one of those places in the game where the numbers *don't* have to add up perfectly, especially since the vast majority will never see combat.

if you mean combat specific: just roleplay professionalism (or give knowledge skill ranks or something), ultimately, it won't matter to your players whether the guy has 4 firearms and 3 professional or 4 firearms and (he's a professional). the encounter will still play out about the same.

Well something to remember is that your average NPC will have a Dicepool of 6 in the area(s) that he's focused in, and unless she's a total badass her Dicepool really shouldn't exceed 8 before equipment Modifiers are counted.


Also most Mages only have a Magic of 2-3 and many of them should have at least a few bits of Cyber.

One of the things I do with my NPCs is write down a few skills and some dicepools, specific to combat and then some non-combat stuff. You certainly don't want to go through chargen for all your NPCs.

I've thought about putting together a little chart to express general dicepools mapped to challenge levels, just so I know what range of dicepool I should be using for common stuff. Honestly, I normally just roleplay my NPCs and if they need a skill for something, I give it to them on the fly. The only time I "really" need to be detailed is if my group will end up with their equipment...so guns and comms and ammo I pretty much will have to detail out...

I agree with you on Smartlinks, I just lumped them under equipment and as thus didn't count them as part of the Natural Dicepool.

As for Specializations, well personally if I give an average NPC a Specialization, I tend to drop her Base Skill by one as well for a net gain of +1. It might not be for everyone, but it works for me.


Oh also, I've started encouraging my Players to branch out and take lower Skill Ratings themselves, they are allowed to start with 1 Skill @ Rating 5 or 2 Skills @ Rating 4 and everything else is 3 or lower. So far it seems like it balances out and puts a little more 'grit' into the game as well as making more rounded Runners. (Stats are unchanged, but I use the Optional Rule about Skill Ratings capping your sucesses as well.)

(good) mook: agi 2, firearms 2 (weapon of choice +2), smartlink (+2)

yeah. looks like 8 dice to me deek, so 8-10 would be fine (could easily see 3 agi or 3 firearms skill)

it's six dice for most non-weapon tests though.