Just wonderin if anyone has any guidelines forbuilding NPC's? For example, I'm running the first Darkest hour and one of the mini missions has them facing off against a Toxic Reaper Shaman. So I built him up using the 400BP method. Just curious what other GM's do to build their's.

I use karmagen for named NPCs, most of the time the npcs end up with ~800-850 karma. Also, i ignore availability and such - if it (realistically) fits the concept, then the NPC has it.

If the NPC doesn't really need a character sheet, I ballpark using the guidelines I mention here.

If the NPC needs a character sheet [or if I just feel like making one] then I use those same skill and attribute charts to assign values to the NPC. "How good is he with Pistols? Professional, but not quite Veteran? Then he gets a Pistols of 3." And then I give the NPC the gear, spells, augmentations, whatever, that the NPC would have.

I don't balance my NPCs against my PCs, because when I GM, my players expect that, as in real life, they'll sometimes be in completely over their heads. Not all players enjoy this style of play, which maybe explains why I GM so rarely.

I had a question regarding NPCs. More specifically, contacts: ANyone know the average BP cost of contacts, if you want to stat up your own instead of using the provided stats in one of the books?

As far as the rules are concerned, the Build Point cost of a contact is the same whether your Contact has a Strength of 5 or 15: the Connection and Loyalty are all that count, because they determine how much the contact can affect the world, and how much affecting they're willing to do on your behalf, irrespective of their own abilities. So it doesn't really matter if your Contact has a Hacking of 25; he'll still only give you 2 Loyalty points worth of hacking.

edit: I take that back. SR4a, p285 suggests that if you want to stat Contacts, you make them Inferior or Equal, meaning 80-110 percent the average BP of the characters. My bad.

Emphasis mine. Pretty sure that's wrong. Connections tends to be a dice pool modifier to the things contacts roll, which is why contacts have a bunch of different skills, stats, and the like. Some are actually worth taking, or abusing their lack of social skills to convince them to give you things cheaper.
Or, in my case, being annoyed at their halfassiness, and wanting to tweak my contacts so they are less dumb in some areas.

nice catch on the page #. totally missed it.

I ignore build costs entirely. I use the guidelines for what the ratings of abilities mean. If someone's a professional gunman, he gets a Firearms rating of 4 or so, for example.

On stuff that's not so obvious, because the NPC's role or concept doesn't really specify it, I use whimsy. It could be interesting that the NPC is surprisingly good at something unrelated to his primary job (which adds an angle to him), or he might have some glaring weakness.

I don't care about BP. I just eyeball the numbers to guess if it's doable for the PCs.

Yeah, you're better off just free-assigning the stats you want.

Unless there is a reason for me to specifically fret over build points I build my NPC's with no regards to how high or low they'll actually bench mark in build points. I prefer to build people who fit where they belong, regardless of how many points the players have.

Kill enough goof ball corporate security goons and guess what? The really bad ass cats in fully active armor, with the grade A bang bang, cyber and magic show up. And they don't play nice.

I would only use build points to make an NPC if you like making characters. Otherwise, do what everyone else has suggested, and simply give them the stats that make sense for them (a lot of NPCs shouldn't even need that much work, stat-wise; they should simply be the standard grunt stats).

NPCs are a much wider spectrum than PCs, both on the low end and the high end. 400 build points is kind of lavish for a stripper, unless you are making the best stripper in the world, who has inadvertently started a gang war because three underworld bosses are vying for her favors. On the other hand, 400 build points is not really enough for things like Jaguar guards, Tir ghosts, and other major threats.

I ignore build costs, and assign the attributes I see as reasonable as per profession and competency.
Often, I do not have stats pregenned for everyone the runners are likely to encounter, so I slightly modify ones I already have, or just eyeball it - thankfully, Shadowrun allows for that.

I find BP building makes very poor NPCs, because BP is good for specialised characters, but really really bad for alrounder. I build NPC grunts on karmagen with old karma costs, and usually end up using around 300 to 400 karma, ignoring stuff like knowledge skills, lifestyles and vehicles.

However, I found out the hard way that these 300 karma NPCs are quite tough on a team of runners. I also found out last session that giving everyone recoil compensated (about 5-6 points) automatic weapons makes for quick knockouts on runners. A 300 karma grunt turns out as a fairly well trained combatant, and can shoot with 14 dice, combine that with NPC/GM dice that never roll less than 5-6 successes on a DP like that and runners have real problems. Add superior numbers... well, let's say my players weren't so happy. Add S&S and players get REALLY unhappy, because even if you soak the damage you might still fail the knockdown/incapacitation test. We had to just house-rule that away on the fly last session. (The players hadn't ever made use of it, we forgot about it, earlier.)

If I were to just assign numbers I would go with simple ratings:
Prof rating 1-3: 5+rating dice shooting, 1+rating reaction, 3+rating full defense, some basic armour, a basic weapon
Prof rating 4: 10-12 dice shooting, 4 reaction, 9-10 full def, 3-4 bod and 6-8 armour, a smartgun equipped automatic weapon

etc.

For contacts, I generally do a 400 BP if I need to really detail that contact. Otherwise I usually wing it based on the DMS (does it make sense) philosophy.

Regarding other NPC's I have three types:
VIPs:Usually fully stated
Mooks:Generally I give them a rating if planed based on what level of opposition I want to give them and base most rolls off this rating.
Mook Leaders: Generally one of the mooks is the SGT or LT. I give him slightly better stats. Some times this is the mage of the group.